5. The Communists and the Communist Party

This section deals with the necessity of a special role for Communists and a Communist Party, according to Marx and Engels in ‘The Communist Manifesto’ and Lenin in ‘What Is To Be Done.’ Lenin deals with the need for a Communist Party and its essential qualities – the so-called ‘theory of the Party of the new type.’ Democratic centralism and the principles of organization are discussed by Lenin, as well as factionalism and inner Party democracy.

Georgi Dimitrov’s Report to the 7th World Congress of the CI, 1935 is then quoted in dealing with cadre – existing or potential leadership people at all levels. The section concludes with a number of quotations from Marx, Engels, and Lenin on criticism and self-criticism by the Communists. Lenin’s last quotation deals with what the Communists need to learn from the capitalists who had been granted business concessions if the revolution was to prove itself in the economic field and finally win out.

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement…”

Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Sec.IV, p.43 of IP Ed, MESW, IP 1977, P.62

“It [Marxism] made clear the real task of a revolutionary socialist party: not to draw up plans for refashioning society, not to preach to the capitalists and their hangers-on about improving the lot of the workers, not to hatch conspiracies, but to organize the class struggle of the proletariat and to guide this struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the organization of a socialist society…”

Lenin, Our Programme, Oct. 1899, CW, Vol.4, p.210-11 Lenin, What Is To Be Done? Feb. 1902 (Excerpts)

“There are no people – yet there is a mass of people. There is a mass of people because the working class and increasingly varied social strata, year after year, produce from their ranks an increasing number of discontented people who desire to protest, who are ready to render all the assistance they can in the struggle against absolutism, the intolerableness of which, though not yet recognized by all, is more and more acutely sensed by increasing masses of the people. At the same time, we have no people, because we have no leaders, no political leaders, no talented organizers capable of arranging extensive and at the same time uniform and harmonious work that would employ all forces, even the most inconsiderable.

IP, p.25; CW, Vol.5, p.468)

“‘We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals…In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social- Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia….Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers.

IP, p.31-32; CW, Vol.5, p.375)

“This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop that knowledge. But in order that workingmen may succeed in this more often, every effort must be made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers in general..

(IP, p.40; CW, Vol.5, p.384)

“It is often said that the working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the causes of the misery of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily, provided, however, this theory does not itself yield to spontaneity, provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself…The working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism; nevertheless, most widespread (and continuously and diversely revived) bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater extent.

(IP, p.42; CW, Vol.5, p.386)

“Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities. But it utilizes ‘economic’ agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also (and primarily)) the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government. Moreover,it considers it its duty to present this demand to the government on the basis, not of the economic struggle alone, but of all manifestations in general of public and political life. In a word, it subordinates the struggle for reforms, as the part to the whole, to the revolutionary struggle for freedom and for socialism. Martynov, however, resuscitates the theory of stages in a new form and strives to prescribe, as it were, an exclusively economic path of development for the political struggle.

IP, p.62; CW, Vol.5, p.405)

“Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected – unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other. The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class- consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population. Those who concentrate the attention, observation, and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not Social-Democrats; for the self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding or rather, not so much with the theoretical, as with the practical, understanding – of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society, acquired through the experience of political life. For this reason the conception of the economic struggle as the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into the political movement, which our Economists preach, is so extremely harmful and reactionary in its practical significance. In order to become a Social-Democrat, the worker must have a clear picture in his mind of the economic nature and the social and political features of the landlord and the priest, the high state official and the peasant, the student and the vagabond…

IP, p.69-70; CW, Vol.5, p.412)

“In recent years, even the enlightened workers have been ‘engaged almost exclusively in the economic struggle.’ That is the first point. On the other hand, the masses will never learn to conduct the political struggle until we help to train leaders from this struggle, both from among the enlightened workers and from among the intellectuals. Such leaders can acquire training solely by systematically evaluating all the everyday aspects of our political life, all attempts at protest and struggle on the part of the various classes and on various grounds. Therefore, to talk of ‘rearing political organizations’ and at the same time to contrast the ‘paper work’ of a political newspaper to ‘live political work in the localities’ is plainly ridiculous.

IP, p.157; CW, Vol.5, p.500)

“And the revolution itself must not by any means be regarded as a single act…, but a series of more or less powerful outbreaks rapidly alternating with periods of more or less complete calm. For that reason, the principal content of the activity of our Party organization, the focus of this activity, should be work that is both possible and essential in the period of a most powerful outbreak as well as in the period of complete calm, namely, work, of political agitation, connected throughout Russia, illuminating all aspects of life, and conducted among the broadest possible strata of the masses. But this work is unthinkable in present-day Russia without an All-Russian newspaper, issued very frequently. The organization, which will form around this newspaper, the organization of its collaborators (in the broad sense of the word, i.e., all those working for it), will be ready for everything, from upholding the honor, the prestige, and the continuity of the Party in periods of acute revolutionary ‘depression’ to preparing for, appointing the time for, and carrying out the nation-wide armed uprising.”

IP, p.172; CW, Vol. 5, p.514) Lenin, What Is To Be Done? Feb. 1902, IP, pp.25-172, ,CW, Vol.5, pp.375-514

“In its struggle for power, the proletariat has no other weapon but organization… the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only when its ideological unification by the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity of an organization welding millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither the decrepit role of Russian tsarism, nor the ageing rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army.”

Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, 1904, CW, Vol.7, p.383

“We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that is most free from vacillations.”

Lenin, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising, Feb. 21, 1905, CW, Vol.8, p.159

“The wider the new streams of the social movement become the greater becomes the importance of a strong Social Democratic organization capable of creating new channels for these streams. The more the democratic propaganda and agitation conducted independently of us works to our advantage, the greater becomes the importance of an organized Social-Democratic leadership to safeguard the independence of the working class from the bourgeois democrats.”

Lenin, New Tasks & New Forces, March 8, 1905, CW, Vol.8, p.216

“Parties belonging to the Communist International must be organized on the principle of democratic centralism. In this period of acute civil war, the Communist parties, can perform their duty only if they are organized in a most centralized manner, are marked by an iron discipline bordering on military discipline, and have strong and authoritative party centres invested with wide powers and enjoying the unanimous confidence of the membership.”

Lenin, Theses for the 2nd Congress of the Communist International, June 1920, CW, Vol..31, pp.209-10
Lenin, Preliminary Draft Resolution of the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. on Party Unity, March 1921 (Excerpts)

“1. The Congress calls the attention of all members of the Party to the fact that the unity and cohesion of the ranks of the Party, the guarantee of complete mutual confidence among Party members and genuine team-work that really embodies the unanimity of will of the vanguard of the proletariat, are particularly essential at the present time, when a number of circumstances are increasing the vacillation among the petty-bourgeois population of the country.”

2. Notwithstanding this, even before the general Party discussion on the trade unions, certain signs of factionalism had been apparent in the Party – the formation of groups with separate platforms, striving to a certain degree to segregate and create their own group discipline… “All class-conscious workers must clearly realize that factionalism of any kind is harmful and impermissible, for no matter how members of individual groups may desire to safeguard Party unity, factionalism in practice inevitably leads to the weakening of team- work and to intensified and repeated attempts by the enemies of the governing Party, who have wormed their way into it, to widen the cleavage and to use it for counter-revolutionary purposes…

“3. In this question, propaganda should consist, on the one hand, in a comprehensive explanation of the harmfulness and danger of factionalism from the standpoint of Party unity and of achieving unanimity of will among the vanguard of the proletariat as the fundamental condition for the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat; and, on the other hand, in an explanation of the peculiar features of the latest tactical devices of the enemies of the Soviet power…

“6. In the practical struggle against factionalism, every organization of the Party must take strict measures to prevent all factional actions. Criticism of the Party’s shortcomings, which is absolutely necessary, must be conducted in such a way that every practical proposal shall be submitted immediately, without any delay, in the most precise form possible, for consideration and decision to the leading local and central bodies of the Party. Moreover, every critic must see to it that the form of his criticism takes account of the position of the Party, surrounded as it is by a ring of enemies, and that the content of his criticism is such that, by directly participating in Soviet and Party work, he can test the rectification of the errors of the Party or of individual Party members in practice. Analyses of the Party’s general line, estimates of its practical experience, check-ups of the fulfilment of its decisions, studies of methods of rectifying errors, etc. must under no circumstances be submitted for preliminary discussion to groups formed on the basis of ‘platforms’, etc., but must in all cases be submitted for discussion directly to all the members of the Party. For this purpose, the Congress orders a more regular publication of Diskussionny Listok and special symposiums to promote unceasing efforts to ensure that criticism shall be concentrated on essentials and shall not assume a form capable of assisting the class enemies of the proletariat.

“5. Rejecting in principle the deviation towards syndicalism and anarchism, which is examined in a special resolution, and instructing the Central Committee to secure the complete elimination of all factionalism, the Congress at the same time declares that every practical proposal concerning questions to which the so-called Workers’ Opposition group, for example, has devoted special attention, such as purging the Party of non- proletarian and unreliable elements, combating bureaucratic practices, developing democracy and workers’ initiative, etc., must be examined with the greatest care and tested in practice. The Party must know that we have not taken all the necessary measures in regard to these questions because of various obstacles, but that, while ruthlessly rejecting impractical and factional pseudo- criticism, the Party will unceasingly continue – trying out new methods – to fight with all the means at its disposal against the evils of bureaucracy, for the extension of democracy and initiative, for detecting, exposing and expelling from the Party elements that have wormed their way into its ranks, etc.

“7. In order to ensure strict discipline within the Party and in all Soviet work and to secure the maximum unanimity in eliminating all factionalism, the Congress authorizes the Central Committee, in cases of breach of discipline or of a revival or toleration of factionalism, to apply all Party penalties, including expulsion, and in regard to members of the Central Committee, reduction to the status of alternate members and, as an extreme measure, expulsion from the Party. A necessary condition for the application of such an extreme measure to members of the Central Committee, alternate members.. and members of the Control Commission is the convocation of a Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee, to which all alternate members… and all members of the Control Commission shall be invited. If such a general assembly of the most responsible leaders of the Party deems it necessary by a two-thirds majority to reduce a member of the Central Committee to the status of alternate member or to expel him from the Party, this measure shall be put into effect immediately.”

Lenin, Preliminary Draft Resolution of the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. on Party Unity, March 1921, CW, Vol.32, p.241-244 Dimitrov, George, “United Front Against Fascism”, Speech in Reply to Discussion, 7th World Congress, Communist International, 1935 (Excerpts)

Cadres

“…The problem of what shall be the correct policy with regard to cadres is a very serious one for our Parties, as well as for the Young Communist Leagues and for all other mass organizations – for the entire revolutionary labor movement.

“What does a correct policy with regard to cadres imply? “First, knowing one’s people. As a rule there is no systematic study of cadres in our Parties… The experience of these Parties has shown that as soon as they began to study their people, Party workers were discovered who had remained unnoticed before. On the other hand, the Parties began to be purged of alien elements who were ideologically and politically harmful…

“Second, proper promotion of cadres. Promotion should not be something casual but one of the normal functions of the Party. It is bad when promotion is made exclusively on the basis of narrow Party considerations, without regard to whether the Communist promoted has contact with the masses or not. Promotion should take place on the basis of the ability of the various Party workers to discharge particular functions, and of their popularity among the masses…

“…in the majority of cases promotions are made in an unorganized and haphazard manner, and therefore are not always fortunate. Sometimes moralizers, phrasemongers and chatterboxes who actually harm the cause are promoted to leading positions.

Third, the ability to use people to the best advantage. We must be able to ascertain and utilize the valuable qualities of every single active member. There are no ideal people; we must take them as they are and correct their weaknesses and shortcomings. We know of glaring examples in our Parties of the wrong utilization of good, honest Communists who might have been very useful had they been given work that they were better fit to do.

“Fourth, proper distribution of cadres. First of all, we must see to it that the main links of the movement are in the charge of strong people who have contacts with the masses, have sprung from the very depths of the masses, who have initiative and are staunch. The more important districts should have an appropriate number of such activists. In capitalist countries it is not an easy matter to transfer cadres from one place to another. Such a task encounters a number of obstacles and difficulties, including lack of funds, family considerations, etc., difficulties which must be taken into account and properly overcome. But usually we neglect to do this altogether.

“Fifth, systematic assistance to cadres. This assistance should take the form of careful instruction, comradely control, rectification of shortcomings and mistakes and concrete, everyday guidance.

“Sixth, proper care for the preservation of cadres. We must learn promptly to withdraw Party workers to the rear whenever circumstances so require, and replace them by others. We must demand that the Party leadership, particularly in countries where the Parties are illegal, assume paramount responsibility for the preservation of cadres…

“Only a correct policy in regard to cadres will enable our Parties to develop and utilize all available forces to the utmost, and obtain from the enormous reservoir of the mass movement ever fresh reinforcements of new and better active workers.

“What should be our main criteria in selecting cadres? First, absolute devotion to the cause of the working class, loyalty to the Party, tested in face of the enemy – in battle, in prison, in court.

“Second, the closest possible contact with the masses. The comrades concerned must be wholly absorbed in the interests of the masses, feel the life pulse of the masses, know their sentiments and requirements. The prestige of the leaders of our Party organization should be based, first of all, on the fact that the masses regard them as their leaders, and are convinced through their own experience of their ability as leaders, and of their determination and self-sacrifice in struggle.

“Third, ability independently to find one’s bearings and not to be afraid of assuming responsibility in taking decisions…Cadres develop and grow best when they are placed in the position of having to solve concrete problems of the struggle independently, and are aware that they are fully responsible for their decisions. “Fourth, discipline and Bolshevik hardening in the struggle against the class enemy as well as in their irreconcilable opposition to all deviations from the Bolshevik line.

“We must place all the more emphasis on these conditions which determine the correct selection of cadres, because in practice preference is very often given to a comrade who, for example, may be able to write well and be a good speaker but is not a man or woman of action, is not as suited for the struggle as some other comrade who perhaps may not be able to write or speak so well, but is a staunch comrade, possessing initiative and contacts with the masses, and is capable of going into battle and leading others into battle. Have there not been ever so many cases of sectarians, doctrinaires or moralizers crowding out loyal mass workers, genuine working-class leaders?

“Our leading cadres should combine the knowledge of what they must do – with Bolshevik stamina, revolutionary strength of character and the will power to carry it through.”

Dimitrov, George, “United Front Against Fascism”, New Century 1950, pp.119-123, Speech in Reply to Discussion, 7th World Congress, Communist International, 1935

“Working class revolutions … criticize themselves, constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin afresh, deride with merciless thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses, and meagerness of their first attempts.”

Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852, p.17, IP Ed, MESW, P.100; MECW, Vol.11, p.106-07

“If, then, we have been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning. And, fortunately, the probably very short interval of rest which is allowed us between the close of the first and the beginning of the second act of the movement, gives us time for a very necessary piece of work: the study of the causes that necessitated both the late outbreak, and its defeat; causes that are not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors or treacheries of some of the leaders, but in the general social state and conditions of existence of each of the convulsed nations.. That the sudden movements of February and March, 1848, were not the work of single individuals, but spontaneous, irresistible manifestations of national wants and necessities, more or less clearly understood, but very distinctly felt by numerous classes in every country, is a fact recognized everywhere; but when you inquire into the causes of the counter- revolutionary successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That, who ‘betrayed’ the people. Which reply may be very true, or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything – not even show how it came to pass that the ‘people’ allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact, that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted…All these petty personal quarrels and recriminations – all these contradictory assertions, that it was Marrast, or Ledru- Rollin, or Louis Blanc, or any other member of the Provisional Government, or the whole of them, that steered the revolution amidst the rocks upon which it foundered…No man in his senses will ever believe that eleven men, mostly of very indifferent capacity, either for good or evil, were able in three months to ruin a nation of thirty-six millions, unless those thirty-six millions saw as little of their way before them as the eleven did.”

Engels, Revolution & Counter-Revolution in Germany,1852, MECW, Vol.11, p.6

“The attitude of a political party towards its own mistakes, is one of the surest tests of its seriousness, and of its ability to fulfill its duties towards its class and towards the laboring masses. Frank admission of an error, discovery of its causes, analysis of the situation in which it occurred, careful study of the ways by which the mistake can be remedied – these are the signs whereby a serious party can be recognized. That is fulfillment of duty. That is the education of the class and of the masses.”

Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder, 1920, CW, Vol. 31, p.57

“The proletariat is not afraid to admit this or that thing has succeeded splendidly in its revolution, and this or that has not succeeded. All revolutionary parties which have hitherto perished, did so because they grew conceited, failed to see where their strength lay, and feared to speak of their weaknesses. But we shall not perish, for we do not fear to speak of our weaknesses and shall learn to overcome them.”

Lenin, Reply to Discussion of Political Report to 11th Party Congress, March 28, 1922, CW, Vol.33, p.311

“We must realize that the fight against bureaucracy is an absolutely essential one, and that it is just as complicated as the fight against the petty bourgeois element. Bureaucracy in our state system has become a malady of such gravity that it is spoken of in our Party programme, and that is because it is connected with this petty bourgeois element and their wide dispersion.”

Lenin Report on Political Activity of the CC, RCP (B) at the 10th Congress, March 8, 1921, CW, Vol.32, p.191

“Communists are in duty bound, not to gloss over short-comings in their movement, but to criticize them openly so as to remedy them the more speedily and radically. For this purpose it is necessary: first, to define as concretely as possible, particularly on the basis of the practical experience already acquired, the content of the concepts “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “Soviet power”; second, to specify the precise content of the immediate and systematic preparatory work to be carried on in all countries so as to give effect to these slogans; and third, to specify the methods and means of rectifying the faults in our movement.”

Lenin, Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International, July 4, 1920, CW, Vol.31, p.185

“When you hear such criticism, criticism without any content, criticism for the sake of criticism, be on your guard; make inquiry to find out whether the criticizing comrade’s vanity has not been injured in some way; perhaps he has been offended or is irritated, which drives him towards groundless opposition, opposition for its own sake.”

Lenin, Concluding Remarks to General Meeting of Communists of Zamoskvorechye District, Moscow, Nov.29, 1920, CW, Vol.31, 436

“…But now that ordinary Russian and foreign capitalists are joining the Communists in forming mixed companies, we say ‘We can do things after all; bad as it is, meager as it is, we have got something for a start.’…Of course, they will cheat us in these companies, cheat us so that it will take several years before matters are straightened out. But that does not matter. I do not say that that is victory; it is a reconnaissance, which shows that we have an arena, we have a terrain, and can now stop the retreat….The retreat has come to an end; it is now a matter of regrouping our forces….The principal methods of operation, of how we are to work with the capitalists, are outlined. We have examples, even if an insignificant number. Stop philosophizing and arguing about NEP [the New Economic Policy – DR]… Show by your practical efforts that you can work no less efficiently than the capitalists. The capitalists create an economic link with the peasants in order to amass wealth; you must create a link with peasant economy in order to strengthen the economic power of the proletarian state….Cast off the tinsel, the festive communist garments, learn a simple thing simply, and we shall beat the private capitalist. We possess political power; we possess a host of economic weapons. If we beat capitalism and create a link with peasant farming we shall become an absolutely invincible power. Then the building of socialism will not be the task of that drop in the ocean, called the Communist Party, but the task of the entire mass of the working people. Then the rank-and-file peasants will see that we are helping them and they will follow our lead. Consequently, even if the pace is a hundred times slower,it will be a million times more certain and more sure.”

Lenin, Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP (B) to 11th Congress, March 27, 1922, CW, Vol.33, pp.284-285

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Reproduction of this booklet has been paid for by the Committees of Correspondence Education Fund, Rm. 506, 11 John St., New York, NY, 10038.

3. Democracy, Fascism and the State

This section begins with Engels and Lenin discussing the role of the state and democracy, as a form of the state and its class characteristics. Lenin then discusses the importance of democracy and the fight for it under capitalism. A class approach to freedom, equality and democracy is discussed. There follows a discussion of democracy under socialism, the initial advances in democracy, problems of its implementation and Lenin’s attitude toward solving those problems, including his attempt to remove Stalin shortly before his death. There is also a brief quote from Lenin indicating how he then saw the relationship between the Communist Party and the state.

Since fascism developed primarily after Lenin, the subject of this form of the capitalist state, its nature and how to fight the fascist danger is dealt with through excerpts from the Report of Georgi Dimitrov to the 7th World Congress of the Communist International (CI) in 1935. Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party, was the General Secretary of the CI. He had experienced fascism first hand in his famous trial by the Nazis who had framed him for burning down the Reichstag. A world-wide campaign and his own brilliant court-room defense had freed him. “The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which under our modern conditions of society is more and more becoming an inevitable necessity, and is the form of the state in which alone the last decisive struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out – the democratic republic officially knows nothing any more of property distinctions. In it wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely…the possessing class rules directly through the medium of universal suffrage. As long as the oppressed class, in our case, therefore, the proletariat is not yet ripe to emancipate itself, it will in its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible and, politically, will form the tail of the capitalist class, its extreme Left wing. To the extent, however, that this class matures for its self-emancipation, it constitutes itself as its own party and elects its own representatives, and not those of the capitalists. Thus, universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state; but that is sufficient…

“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe.”

Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property & the State, May 1884, MECW, Vol.26, pp.271-72; IP 1972 Ed, pp.231-32

“…when we founded a big newspaper in Germany, our banner was determined as a matter of course. It could only be that of democracy, but that of democracy which everywhere emphasized in every point to specific proletarian character which it could not yet inscribe once for all on its banner. If we did not want to do that, if we did not want to take up the movement, adhere to its already existing, most advanced, actually proletarian side and to push it further, then there was nothing left for us to do but to preach communism in a little provincial sheet and to found a tiny sect instead of a great party of action.”

Engels, Marx & the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, March 1884, MESW, Vol.3, pp.165; MECW, Vol.26, p.122

“Political liberty will not at once deliver the working people from poverty, but it will give the workers a weapon with which to fight poverty. There is no other means and there can be no other means of fighting poverty except the unity of the workers themselves. But millions of people can not unite unless there is political liberty.”

Lenin, To the Rural Poor, March 1903, CW, Vol.6, p.369

“To the proletariat the struggle for political liberty and a democratic republic in a bourgeois society is only one of the necessary stages in the struggle for the social revolution which will overthrow the bourgeois system. Strictly differentiating between stages that are essentially different, soberly examining the conditions under which they manifest themselves, does not at all mean indefinitely postponing one’s ultimate aim, or slowing down one’s progress in advance. On the contrary, it is for the purpose of accelerating the advance and of achieving the ultimate aim as quickly and securely as possible that it is necessary to understand the relation of classes in modern society. Nothing but disillusionment and unending vacillation await those who shun the allegedly one-sided class point of view, who would be socialists, yet are afraid openly to call the impending revolution in Russia – the revolution that has begun in Russia – a bourgeois revolution.”

Lenin, The Autocracy & the Proletariat, Jan.4, 1905, CW, Vol.8, pp.23-24

“Whosoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy, will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and political sense” Lenin, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,

June-July 1905, SW, p.60, CW, Vol.9, p.29

“The very position of the proletariat as a class compels it to be consistently democratic. The bourgeoisie looks backward in fear of democratic rights which threaten to strengthen the proletariat. The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains, and with the aid of democratism it has the whole world to win.”

Lenin, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, June-July 1905, SW, p.78, CW, Vol.9, p.51

“The proletariat takes advantage of every breach, every weakness of the regime, every concession and sop in order to wage a more extensive, more determined, more intense and more mass struggle; the bourgeoisie uses them to cause the struggle gradually to calm down, weaken and die out, to curtail its aims and moderate its forms.”

Lenin, The Fight for Power & the ‘Fight’ for Sops, June 14, 1906, CW, Vol.11, p.28

“All ‘democracy’ consists in the proclamation and realization of ‘rights’ which under capitalism are realizable only to a very small degree and only relatively. But without the proclamation of these rights, without a struggle to introduce them now, immediately, without training the masses in the spirit of this struggle, socialism is impossible.”

Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism & Imperialist Economism, Aug.-Oct. 1916, CW, Vol.23, pp.72-74

“The bourgeois republic, parliament, universal suffrage – all represent great progress from the standpoint of the world development of society. Mankind moved towards capitalism, and it was capitalism alone which, thanks to urban culture, enabled the oppressed proletarian class to become conscious of itself and to create the world working class movement, the millions of workers organized all over the world in parties – the socialist parties which are consciously leading the struggle of the masses. Without parliamentarism, without an electoral system, this development of the working class would have been impossible.”

Lenin, The State, July 11, 1919, CW, Vol.29, pp.484-86

“To develop democracy to the utmost, to find the forms for this development, to test them by practice, and so forth – all this is one of the component tasks of the struggle for the social revolution. Taken separately, no kind of democracy will bring socialism. But in actual life democracy will never be ‘taken separately;’ it will be ‘taken together’ with other things, it will exert its influence on economic life as well, will stimulate its transformation; and in its turn it will be influenced by economic development and so on. This is the dialectics of living history.”

Lenin, State & Revolution, Aug-Sept 1917, SW, p.297, CW, Vol.25, p.452-53
Lenin, The State & Revolution, 1917 (Excerpt)

“Democracy is of enormous importance to the working class in its struggle against the capitalists for its emancipation. But democracy is by no means a boundary not to be overstepped; it is only one of the stages on the road from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to communism.

“Democracy means equality. The great significance of the proletariat’s struggle for equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes. But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing farther, from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ By what stages, by means of what practical measures humanity will proceed to this supreme aim we do not and cannot know. But it is important to realize how infinitely mendacious is the ordinary bourgeois conception of socialism as something lifeless, rigid, fixed once and for all, whereas in reality only socialism will be the beginning of a rapid, genuine, truly mass forward movement, embracing first the majority and then the whole of the population, in all spheres of public and private life.

“Democracy is a form of the state, one of its varieties. Consequently, like every state, it represents on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism – the proletariat, and enables it to crush, smash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire population…

“From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism – from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the ‘state’ which consists of the armed workers, and which is ‘no longer a state in the proper sense of the word’, the more rapidly every form begins to wither away… “Under socialism much of ‘primitive’ democracy will inevitably be revived, since, for the first time in the history of civilized society, the mass of the population will rise to taking an independent part, not only in voting and elections, but also in the every day administration of the state. Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.”

Lenin, The State & Revolution, 1917, CW, Vol.25, pp.492-93 Democracy Under Socialism

“Our aim is to draw the whole of the poor into the practical work of administration, and all steps are taken in this direction – the more varied they are, the better – should be carefully recorded, studied, systematized, tested by wider experience and embodied in law. Our aim is to ensure that every toiler, having finished his eight hours’ ‘task’ in productive labor, shall perform state duties without pay, the transition to this is particularly difficult but this transition alone can guarantee the final consolidation of socialism.”

Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, April 1918, CW, Vol.27, pp.272-75

“The combination of the proletarian dictatorship with the new democracy for the working people – of civil war with the widest participation of the people in politics – such a combination can not be brought about at one stroke, nor does it fit in with the outworn modes of routine parliamentary democracy…It is not surprising that this [new socialist] world does not come into being ready-made…The old bourgeois-democratic constitutions waxed eloquent about formal equality and right of assembly; but our proletarian and peasant Soviet Constitution casts aside the hypocrisy of formal equality…’Freedom of assembly’ for workers and peasants is not worth a farthing when the best buildings belong to the bourgeois. Our Soviets have confiscated all the good buildings in town and country from the right and have transferred all of them to the workers and peasants for their unions and meetings. This is our freedom of assembly for the working people.”

Lenin, Letter to American Workers, Aug.20, 1918, CW, Vol.28, pp.72- 73

“It is precisely in making the benefits of culture, civilization and democracy really available to the working and exploited people that Soviet power sees its most important work which it must continue unswervingly in the future.”

Lenin, Draft Programme of the RCP(B), Feb.23, 1919, CW, Vol.29, p.105

“General talk about freedom, equality and democracy is in fact but a blind repetition of concepts shaped by relations of commodity production. To attempt to solve the concrete problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat by such generalities is tantamount to accepting the theories and principles of the bourgeoisie in their entirety. From the point of view of the proletariat, the question can be put only in the following way — freedom from oppression by which class? equality of which class with which? democracy based on private property, or on struggle for the abolition of private property? – and so forth.

“Long ago Engels in his ‘Anti-Duhring’ explained that the concept ‘equality’ is molded from the relations of commodity production; equality becomes a prejudice if it is not understood to mean the abolition of classes.”

Lenin, Economics & Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Oct.30, 1919, CW, Vol. 30, pp.116-17

“Vital and pressing issue is that of the organization and administration of the state. It is not enough to preach democracy, not enough to proclaim it and decree it, not enough to entrust the people’s representatives in representative institutions with its implementation. Democracy must be built at once, from below through the initiative of the masses themselves, through their effective participation in all fields of state activity, without ‘supervision’ from above, without the bureaucracy…

“The more initiative, variety, daring and creativeness the masses contribute to this, the better…

“To teach the people, down to the very bottom, the art of government not only in theory but in practice, by beginning to make immediate use everywhere of the experience of the masses.”

Lenin, Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, April 16, 1917, CW, Vol.24, pp.169-170

“Because the system of proportional representation is more democratic than the majority system, it demands more complex measures for the exercise of the right of recall, that is, the actual subordination of the elected to the people.”

Lenin, Draft Decree on the Right of Recall, Nov.19, 1919, CW, Vol.26, p.336

“No important political or organizational question is decided by any state institution in our republic without the guidance of the Party’s Central Committee.”

Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder, May 1920, CW, Vol.31, p.23
Lenin, Letter to 12th Congress CPSU, Dec. 24, 1922 (Excerpt)

“…I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a split in the immediate future, and I intend to deal here with a few ideas concerning personal qualities.

“I think that from this standpoint the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the Central Committee as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make up the greater part of the danger of a split, which could be avoided, and this purpose, in my opinion, would be served among other things, by increasing the number of C.C. members to 50 or 100.

“Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People’s Commissariat for Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.”These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly. “I shall not give any further appraisals of the personal qualities of other members of the C.C. I shall just recall that the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky.

“Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the youngest ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favorite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it). December 25. “As for Pyatakov, he is unquestionably a man of outstanding will and outstanding ability, but shows too much zeal for administrating and the administrative side of the work to be relied upon in a serious political matter.

“Both of these remarks, of course, are made only for the present, on the assumption that both those outstanding and devoted Party workers fail to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge and amend their one-sidedness.

Lenin, Letter to 12th Congress CPSU, Dec.24, 1922, CW, Vol.35, p.593-604
Addition to the Letter of Dec.24, 1922

“Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, it is not a detail, or it is a detail which can assume decisive importance. (Taken down by L.F., Jan. 4, 1923)

By Henry Winston
Chapter 7 from Class, Race and Black Liberation, 1977, International Publishers Co.

The aspirations of Robert L. Allen, editor of The Black Scholar, are in direct conflict with the aims of Daniel P. Moynihan. Yet, in Reluctant Reformers by Robert Allen, with the collaboration of Pamela P. Allen, and in Ethnicity by Moynihan and Glazer, one finds a parallel treatment of the question of race and class.

Reluctant Reformers (Howard University Press, Washington, D.C., 1974)—subtitled “The Impact of Racism on American Social Reform Movements,” and spanning the years from 1776 to the present—has a fundamental flaw: In attempting to portray the impact of racism on movements for social change, the author deemphasizes the impact of these multi-racial movements on this country’s history. This in turn leads to deemphasizing the impact of Frederick Douglass, Karl Marx and W.E.B. Du Bois on past and present struggles against oppression and exploitation. Such a view of the movements for social change flows from a failure to recognize the objective laws of class struggle and the capitalist class as the source of racism and therefore results in a failure to differentiate among the changing class forces involved in these movements during different periods of this country’s history.

As a result, the book’s thrust is not directed toward overcoming racism’s impact on the people’s struggles; instead, it projects a defeatist estimate of the people’s ability to struggle. This is apparent in the very concept of “reluctant reformers,” which in itself implies an inverted form of voluntarism. Contrary to the “thought of Mao,” history can neither be “pushed” nor “stopped” by the will of individuals or groups, without regard to the specific mode of production in a given society and the contradictions that give rise to the struggle to resolve them.

The many-sided and historically changing forms of “reluctance”— whose core today consists of racism and anti-Communism—can retard but not halt the forward thrust of the multi-racial international working class, including its contingent in the United States: “Reluctance” could not stop the struggle leading to the “irresistable conflict” that abolished slavery, nor can “reluctance” halt the anti-monopoly struggle.

The source of Allen’s defeatist attitude toward the anti-racist struggle and thus toward movements for social change as a whole, is revealed in the following:

Of course, if the locus of racism is white society, then one must conclude that some kind of basic change must be made in this society if racism is to be eliminated. This is not to suggest that white society is somehow monolithic or static; on the contrary, numerous strata and competing interest groups exist, and changes of greater or lesser extent are almost constantly occurring. (Reluctant Reformers, p. 5.Emphasis added—H.W.)

To speak of a “white society” fits in with the “two societies” concept projected in the sixties. This idea was promoted from both a “radical” and a “liberal” (via the “Kerner Report”) standpoint, which portrayed Blacks as forming an internal colony in the United States. But Black people are discriminated against and suffer de facto segregation within the single U.S. capitalist economy. Both Black and white are locked into one society dominated by corporate monopoly. To imply the division of this country into two societies obscures its real division into two basic classes, the white monopolist minority and the multi-racial working class.

By situating the “locus of racism” in a generalized “white society,” Allen in effect denies that racism originates in and is perpetuated by the class interests of monopoly. Via a theory of “interest groups,” Allen attempts to back up his portrayal of the United States as a society dominated by “classless” whites instead of white monopoly capitalists. Although Allen asserts “white society” should not be regarded as “monolithic,” he confirms that the term is without class meaning by defining it as consisting of “numerous strata and competing interest groups.”

Further, to speak merely of “interest groups” is to fall within the orbit of Moynihan’s “ethnicity” strategy, which denies the fundamental contradiction between monopoly and the multi-racial working class, the Black and other oppressed minorities and the majority of the population.

According to Moynihan, each “ethnic” group has its own demands, all presumably of equal importance, thus denying the special racist oppression of Blacks. And the logic of Allen’s “interest group” concept also leads to a denial of class exploitation as the source of oppression of Black and other minorities.

Moynihan’s ideology promotes the primacy of “ethnicity” while simultaneously suggesting that the primacy of race links all white “ethnic” groups against non-whites, who are depicted as a competitive threat. And the “interest groups” concept objectively reinforces this ideology: Allen as well as Moynihan denies that monopoly is the enemy of the multi-racial working class and the masses of the people.

According to both Moynihan and Allen, each “ethnic” or “interest group” has a stake only in its “own” particular interest which can presumably be advanced only in opposition to the needs of other “ethnic groups” and “interest groups.” Such theories encourage Black and white to regard each other as the enemy; in particular, they influence white workers to accept racism—and even fight to maintain it.

What has happened in South Boston symbolizes the logic of these concepts: An “ethnic” group is made to feel deprived by the anti-racist struggle and thus white workers are misled into helping to forge the chains of their own impoverishment.

The “ethnicity” and “group interest” theories reverse reality for both Black and white, portraying the anti-racist struggle/ not racism, as contradicting the interests of the white masses. It would be hard to think of a more effective way to advance the interests of racist monopoly!

Who Has A ‘Stake’ in Racism?

In his article on the Pan-African Congress, Lerone Bennett polemizes against Marxists and progressives who place anti-racist struggle at the core of the fight for anti-imperialist unity. In his book on social movements in the United States, Robert Allen polemizes against Marxists and progressives who see the need for combining the self- action of Blacks with working-class struggles in the anti-racist fight at home. In fact, he goes so far as to deny the basis for unity of the multi-racial working class—alleging that white workers have a “stake” in racism. Asserting that the Communist Party has had an “oversimplified view of racism, and the history of racial antagonism,” he states: ‘

If racism was simply a device used by the capitalist ruling class to divide the workers, then it followed that the workers have no material stake in the maintenance of racism. Once apprised of their true interests the workers could be expected to join the forces opposing racism. Such has not yet been the case, as the history of the labor movement amply illustrates. Yet Communist writers insisted upon regarding the white working class as the bearer of true enlightenment and fraternity; at the very minimum they contended that only if the workers would accept Marxism-Leninism then racial antagonisms would fade away. (Allen, op. cit., p. 224. Emphasis in the original.)

In this statement Allen attempts to “settle” the race/class question by “establishing” the primacy of race: If white workers have a “material stake” in racism, it would mean there is no antagonistic contradiction between them and the white monopolists (that is, their stake would be in the color of their skin).

Of course, U.S. capitalism through all stages of its development has perpetuated inequality between Black and white masses. But in order to do so it has had to perpetuate the illusion, from slavery to the present, that the white exploited have a “material stake” in Black oppression. And the survivals of racist “advantages,”—originating in the slave system—still lend credibility to the racist-fostered illusion that white workers on the assembly lines and in the unemployed lines have a “material stake” in the different degree to which monopoly exploits them as compared to Black workers.

In reality, white as well as Black workers have a “material stake” in eradicating racism. To assert that white workers have a “material stake” in racism is to profoundly exaggerate monopoly’s ability to sustain this illusion—particularly in the face of the deepening general crisis of capitalism. Such a concept is based on an overestimation of the strength of imperialism, and consequently an underestimation—in fact, a denial—of the intensifying contradiction between monopoly and the working class as a whole—Black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Asian and Native American Indian.

To argue that whites have a “material stake” in racism is to say that 180 million whites, the overwhelming majority, have no “material stake” in economic and social progress, which would mean there is no perspective for fundamental change.

The Black minority alone could not defeat the slave power. That was achieved via a strategy combining the interests of those forces and classes with a stake in victory over the slavocracy. And today the Black minority cannot by itself defeat the monopoly oppressors. What is required is not a go-it-alone policy for Blacks but an independent strategy for Black liberation as part of a wider anti-monopoly strategy—combining all those with a stake in the defeat of corporate monopoly into a great people’s coalition. And in the perspective for such a coalition, one cannot overlook the revolutionary implications of the proletarianization of the majority of the multi-racial masses.

If one says white workers have a “material stake” in racism, one implies they have a “material stake” in monopoly instead of its defeat. In other words, such a concept denies the common interest of Black and white workers in class unity and a broad anti-monopoly strategy. After all, one cannot expect people to fight against racism if they have a “material stake” in it. Thus, Allen’s views would at best promote reliance on “gradualism”—tokenist reformism—the direct opposite of a perspective for ending the triple oppression of Blacks and other oppressed minorities.

In saying that white workers have a “material stake” in racism, Allen is not only denying the possibility of a mass alternative to monopoly. He is also denying the fundamental class contradiction between the monopoly ruling class and the working class, that is, he is denying the class struggle. In viewing racism as divorced from monopoly’s class interests, he fails to see that racism contradicts the common stake all workers have in the class struggle against their common enemy. The concept of white workers having a “material stake” in racism is a noil-struggle approach, contradicting the cause of Black liberation as well as the needs of all those seeking solutions to the crisis confronting them.

Of course. Communists would regard the infinitely complex anti- racist struggle as a very simple matter indeed if—as Allen alleges—they considered it merely a matter of “apprising” the white workers of “their true interests” in order for them to “join the forces opposing racism.” Standing aside and waiting for the workers to “accept Marxism- Leninism” would, obviously, be helpful only to monopoly and its divide-and-rule strategy.

What is required to achieve class unity is a fight to wipe out every form of material and social inequality. And white workers have a heavy, special responsibility in this struggle because it is they who have been infected by racism and are consequently its “bearers” within the multi-racial working class. Marxism-Leninism is a guide to, not a substitute for, the anti-racist struggle and therefore a guide also to the “fraternity” of the working class. And as this struggle for class unity advances, “enlightenment” begins to replace racism in the minds of those who have been its “bearers.” Further, the Communist Party is the only organization requiring, as a condition of membership, that whites accept and act in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of the special responsibility of white workers in the anti-racist struggle.

One must recognize that to dismiss this Marxist-Leninist approach is to leave the anti-racist struggle to Black people—which would make it a “go-it-alone” fight of the Black minority against a “white society” that includes both the white masses and the white corporate minority.

Illusion and Reality

To take the position that white workers have a “material stake” in sustaining instead of fighting against racist inequality is to support the monopolist enemy that perpetuates this illusion. To claim white workers have a “material stake” in maintaining inequalities between Black and white income—a view that fits in with the class collaborationist policies of the Meanys and their right social democratic supporters—is to say white workers have no stake in overcoming their own unemployment, their own diminishing quality of life and poverty.

It is decisive to recognize that neither the depressed levels for white workers nor the still more depressed levels of poverty and unemployment for Black workers can be effectively challenged without an intensifying struggle for unity of the multi-racial working class.

The situation of Black workers is graphically described in the NAACP’s annual report, published in January 1976: “It is now clear that the slow and hard gains made by black wage earners during the past quarter of a century were fragile and temporary/’ states the report’s employment section, written by Herbert Hill, the association’s National Labor Director.

Continuing, the report says:

In every category of measurement—unemployment rates, duration of joblessness, in earnings and in labor force entry of young workers—the black community is being forced back into patterns that were commonplace during the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

While government figures place unemployment rates for whites at 7.6 percent and 14.1 percent for Blacks, the NAACP reports a “truer picture of 13.6 percent for whites and 25.5 for Blacks.” And in the 25 major areas of Black urban population, these figures rise to 30 percent for adults and 40 percent for teenagers. If these trends continue, the report asserts, “the black worker can never catch up to the white worker in this country.” The report adds:

Discrimination in employment is not the result of random acts of malevolence; it does not usually occur because of individual bigotry, but rather is the consequence of systematic institutionalized patterns that are rooted in the society.

There is no getting around the fact that the trends described in the NAACP report accentuate the urgency for unity of the multi-racial working class and for its participation in forging an independent political trend, the only alternative to the trend monopoly’s two parties impose on the oppressed and exploited.

As part of the struggle for such an alternative, mutual trust and united action must be won between the various components of the multi-racial working class. And achieving these requisites is in the first place the obligation of white workers, who must support the fight against inequality in wages, conditions and opportunities. This is not a matter of abstract morality, but of working-class solidarity, whose source lies in recognition of the imperatives of class struggle. It is only in class unity that the fight for material conditions and quality of life for all workers— Black, white, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian and Native American Indian—can be advanced.

The white workers’ illusion of their “material stake” in racist inequalities is given circumstantial credibility by the widening gap between themselves and Black workers in income and employment. This gap, which creates a contradiction within the working class, is a reality. But that white workers have a “material stake” in maintaining this capitalist-enforced contradiction is an illusion. Illusions have nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism, but they are reinforced by Maoism, which substitutes subjective opinions for realities in the class struggle.

Contrary to Mao’s writings on “the correct handling of contradictions among the people,” the contradictions in the working class cannot be interpreted as antagonistic contradictions between class or racial enemies. To claim white workers have a “material stake” in inequality is to fuel monopoly’s racist lie that an antagonistic contradiction exists between Black and white workers, which of course diverts the struggle from the antagonistic contradictions between the working class as a whole and monopoly.

The contradictions within the ranks of the working class and masses are of a totally different character from the antagonistic class contradiction between the working class and the monopoly capitalist class. The contradictions among the people are non-antagonistic and can be resolved by a strategy advancing the special struggle against racist division and inequality—a strategy recognizing that the interests of each component of the working class, and of the Black and other oppressed peoples, can be advanced only through a united struggle against the ruling class.

Monopoly ceaselessly generates racist ideology to—as Marx put it—”deform” the class struggle. The essence of racist strategy is to create the illusion in the minds of both Black and white workers that the differential in their levels of existence does not arise from capitalism. Among whites, this strategy perpetuates the illusion that the Black people’s inferior standard of living results from the inherent inferiority of people with dark skins. Among Blacks, this strategy creates the parallel illusion that racism is inherent in the white masses—not in monopoly control of the economy and government.

What “Shapes” Racism

The United States was born in anti-colonial struggle, and its present course of development is today in sharper contrast than ever to that of its birth. Today’s racism and inequality mock this country’s birth cries of “liberty” and “equality.”

U.S. monopoly has made this country not only the internal center of racist oppression, but also the principal upholder of classical and neo-colonialist plunder in southern Africa. U.S. imperialism—which has apartheid South Africa as its military surrogate in Angola—is now recognized everywhere as the central mainstay of racism, reaction and repression at home and internationally.

Yet many white liberals are among those fostering the illusion that the inferior status of Blacks is determined not by the class interests of those controlling the system but by the difference in skin color. This view is expressed in typical form by Tom Wicker, associate editor of The New York Times, who asserts that “the instinctive white man’s reaction to the color black sets the nature of the white-black relationship.” (A Time to Die, Quadrangle-NYT Book Co., New York, 1975, p. 148)

Robert Allen comes very close to Wicker’s view when, in his book, Reluctant Reformers, he asserts that racism has become a “social- psychological force, shaping and directing behavior, not merely reflecting it.” (Allen, op. cit., p. 224)

Of course, it is true that behavior can be “shaped” by society. But scientific social analysis—Marxism-Leninism—shows that racist “behavior” is not “shaped” by “classless” psychological factors but by the monopoly ruling class.

Both Wicker and Allen are saying the source of racism lies in white reaction to “the color black.” To take this position in any of its varieties is to deny that the “white-black relationship” is “set” by capitalism’s material stake in racial dissension. Marx pointed this out when he said the exploiting class will do all in its power to “disfigure” the class struggle by fomenting racial conflict. To claim the “white-black relationship” is determined by instinctive “social-psychological” responses—with an independent, self-perpetuating existence apart from the social system—is to take the ruling class off the hook for perpetuating this “disfigurement” of the working-class struggle.

Certainly, racism is a “social-psychological force” polluting the nation! But Allen—not just in one quote, but throughout his book— parallels Wicker’s conception of the “white-black relationship” as unrelated to monopoly control of the dominant culture, whose core is racism.

Allen shifts responsibility for the source of racism from monopoly to white workers. He states, for example, that Communists see racism as “a device used by the capitalist class to divide the workers. . . .” By oversimplifying the Communist position—an ideology with all its ramifications cannot be termed a mere “device”—he can dismiss the ever-intensifying role the capitalist class has assigned racism in its economic, political, educational and cultural policies through each stage of its history. On the other hand, he makes every effort to reinforce the idea that white workers have a “material stake” in sustaining racism and in order to do so makes no distinction between the effect of illusion and reality in shaping white workers’ attitudes.

When Allen argues that Communists fail to see racism as having its own, self-perpetuating “psychological” existence, he is advancing a Hegelian reversal of reality: Such a concept of racism conceals the fact that the dominant culture in a particular social system is inseparable from the class in power. This characteristic of Allen’s concept is not altered by his frequent but abstract references to the capitalist system.

Under capitalism, the dominant culture does not originate with the class operating the means of production. This dominant culture is determined by the class that owns the means of production, and it is generated by the superstructure through which this class controls the state and its agencies, and the mass media.

Today, when racism is widely recognized as institutional, it seems strangely out-of-date to attribute to it either an independent existence or assert that it can be perpetuated outside of the rule of monopoly- controlled institutions.

Yet Allen’s concept of racism oscillates between these two poles: at one end, he sees it as having an independent existence; at the other, he sees a source for it—the white workers’ presumed “material stake” in racism. But racism does not originate apart from the social system itself, nor does it originate within the working class, neither at the point of production nor in workers’ homes. On the contrary, it is directed through the superstructure to the workers at the point of production, in their homes and in the schools they attended.

Allen’s concepts of racism ignore the nature of the production of surplus value—the source of capitalist profit—which places the capitalist class’s interest in racism in contradiction to the interests of the working class. It is the capitalist drive to maximize the unpaid and minimize the paid portions of the value produced by the working class that generates the class struggle. In this constantly spiraling, constantly intensifying struggle, only the monopolists have a material stake in racism (and they have never been known to be passive when their interests are at stake!).

Those who say white workers have a “material stake” in racism draw this conclusion from the premise that the interests of white capitalists and the white workers are identical.

The minuscule white corporate minority controlling the social means of production cannot compete with a unified working class. In this period of the general crisis and decline of capitalism, monopoly’s power is only as great as the divisions in the working class—the result of racism and anti-Communism.

Allen’s New Theory of “Ultra-Imperialism”

In a further attempt to bolster his thesis of a “material stake” for white workers in racism. Allen avails himself of a quotation from Lenin concerning oppressed nations and peoples as a source of superprofits for imperialism, part of which is used to create the basis for opportunism, of which racism and anti-Communism are the most divisive forms among sections of the workers in imperialist nations.

“Lenin warned that imperialism,” Allen writes, tends to “create privileged sections . . . among the workers, and to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.” (Reluctant Reformers, p. 211. Deletions in quote from Lenin are Allen’s—H.W.)

From the quotation. Allen draws these conclusions:

Thus, the resulting racism and chauvinism among white workers were much more than mere diversionary tactics introduced by conniving capitalists to divide the world working class; on the contrary, these ideological manifestations were firmly grounded in the dynamics of imperialist development. Consequently, Lenin insisted that “the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.” (Ibid., p. 211. Emphasis added—H.W.)

At first glance. Allen’s conclusions may appear to have a “Marxist” ring. Closer examination, however, reveals them to be in conflict with a Marxist-Leninist analysis of both the “dynamics of imperialist development” and the scope of monopoly’s social, economic and political strategy in class struggle at home and against the colonial liberation struggles in Africa and elsewhere.

First, one must question Allen’s understanding of the most elementary capitalist behavior: If the imperialists do not have an overwhelming “material stake” in carrying out “diversionary tactics” to “divide the world working class,” why do they use part of their superprofits to bribe sections of the white workers? Why don’t they just keep all of the superprofits for themselves?

Further, one cannot ignore, as Allen does, the role of the state in mobilizing material and ideological resources to bolster imperialism’s unstable objective basis for “detaching” segments of the workers from unity with their class, that is, for atomizing the working class into “ethnic” and “interest groups,” and for imposing racist, class- collaborationist policies on the labor movement.

Allen cites Lenin in a way to make it seem that Lenin’s views and his own coincide on the question of opportunism. At the same time, however. Allen argues that racism has an independent existence apart from class, while Lenin regarded racism and all other forms of opportunism, including anti-Communism, as class weapons of the exploiters.

Allen sees all white workers as having a “material stake” in racism—but not the imperialists. This is a strange logic! Marxism- Leninism, however, polemizes not against the masses of workers but against the corruption of a privileged sector of the working class, and against the influence of racism, anti-Communism and all forms of opportunism wherever their poison spreads. Far from holding that white workers have a “material stake” in racism, Marxism-Leninism shows that racism is an obstacle to class unity and that white as well as Black workers have a “material stake” in removing this obstacle to progress.

Moreover, Allen not only argues that racism originates with the workers at the point of production instead of with the capitalist class and its drive for profits; he also insists that workers of an oppressor nation have a “material stake” in the oppression of other nations and colonies.

But Marx, Engels and Lenin revealed that the workers of an oppressor nation can win their liberation only if they recognize their stake in supporting the liberation struggles of every people oppressed by their “own” ruling class. This is why Marxist-Leninists recognize the struggle against opportunism—and racism and anti-Communism are its sharpest forms—as the pre-condition for the unity of the multi-racial U.S. working class and its allies at home and internationally.

Once when Lenin was asked what he would “add” to Marx, he replied that in the context of the imperialist stage of capitalism, he would apply the essence of Marxism in Marx’s slogan “Workers of the World Unite” and the resulting slogan would then proclaim, “Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World Unite.” Unite against what? Lenin urges unity against imperialism. Therefore Lenin asserts that it is not the workers but the imperialists who have a stake in oppression.

Allen not only underestimates the scope of monopoly’s investment in “diversionary tactics” at home but internationally as well: The neo-colonialists’ use of superprofits to promote all varieties of opportunism—particularly outright betrayal—in “third world” countries is a central aspect of their strategy to uphold their far from “firmly grounded” positions. And U.S. imperialism’s cultivation of national treason also includes the investment of tens of millions of dollars to carry out “diversionary tactics” in NATO countries, as recent events in Portugal and Italy attest.

A crass assertion of this strategy in regard to the “third world” took place in January 1976, when Moynihan announced—via the “leaking” of a cable to U.S. embassies—that the United States’ “basic foreign policy goal” is “breaking up the massive blocs of nations, mostly new nations.” Moynihan stated that U.S. “aid” would go to reward those who acquiesced to neo-colonialist policies, and would be denied to those who dared maintain their independence. Outlining how this economic and political warfare would be carried out against the OAU and “Group of 77” non-aligned countries, Moynihan declared that their “bloc-like unity” could not last because “maintaining solid ranks was simply too expensive for too many members.” Shortly after the contents of this cable appeared on front pages throughout the world/ Ford and Kissinger announced that Moynihan was enunciating official U.S. policy. After Moynihan’s resignation. Ford reaffirmed his support of the racist policies proclaimed by Moynihan in the United Nations.

To give credence to his thesis that racism and chauvinism are “firmly grounded” in the “dynamics” of imperialism. Allen again calls upon Lenin. Allen writes: “Lenin insisted that ‘the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.’ ” (Ibid., p. 211)

Unfortunately, Allen takes Lenin’s statement out of context, thus turning it against Leninism. If one reads what comes just before the comment Allen cites/ one learns Lenin was polemizing against the “sham” and “humbug” of those who undermine the fight against opportunism by underestimating the contradictions within imperialism. In the preceding sentence Lenin pointed out that “the extraordinary rapidity and the particularly revolting character of the development of opportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be durable.” (V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, New York, International Publishers, 1939, p. 126. Emphasis added—H.W.)

In quoting Lenin out of context. Allen gives the impression Leninism upholds instead of contradicts the idea that white workers have a “material stake” in racism and chauvinism. Only if white workers had a “material stake” in racism and all forms of opportunism—instead of a “material stake” in the struggle against them—would it be possible to back up the claim that racism and chauvinism are “Firmly grounded in the dynamics of imperialist development.”

What Allen has developed is a theory of acceptance of—not struggle against—opportunism. In advancing such a thesis, he removes opportunism from the “dynamics” of the international class and anti- colonial liberation struggles—treating it as if it were immune to the impact of these sharpening battles. Further, he ignores the central contradiction between advancing socialism and declining capitalism, and the fact that the class, national and anti-colonial struggle merge in this era with the world transition to socialism.

In discussing imperialism in his polemics with Karl Kautsky, Lenin pointed out that a definition cannot “embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development.” (Ibid., p. 89)

And when Allen asserts that opportunism is “firmly grounded” in the “dynamics of imperialist development,” he is most certainly overlooking “the concatenations” of imperialism in its general crisis, which includes the anti-imperialist struggle and makes it infinitely less “firmly grounded” than at any time in its history. Allen’s concept, in fact, resembles right social democratic views on imperialism against which Lenin waged an irreconcilable struggle. Specifically, the idea of a “firmly grounded” imperialism suggests a crypto-Kautskian concept of “ultra-imperialism” that, as Lenin wrote, “detaches the politics of imperialism from its economics.” (Ibid., p. 92)

Kautsky and his followers, underestimating the contradictions of imperialism, failed to comprehend the political and social effects of the increasing unevenness in capitalist development. On the consequences of Kautsky’s view, Lenin wrote:

Kautskv’s theoretical critique of imperialism has nothing in common with Marxism and serves only as a preamble to propaganda for peace and unity with the opportunists and the social-chauvinists, precisely for the reason that it evades and obscures the very profound and fundamental contradictions of imperialism. (Ibid., p. 117)

While Kautsky anticipated an era of “ultra-imperialism,” Allen implies an era of ultra-neo-colonialism—emerging from a “firmly grounded” imperialism successfully extending its strategy against the “third world,” the socialist countries and the working classes and oppressed peoples in the capitalist countries.

But present-day imperialism is even less “firmly grounded” than imperialism in Lenin’s time; it is neither the enduring system conceived by Kautsky and his right social democratic followers, nor is it the “paper tiger” portrayed by the Maoist “left” face of social democracy—at a time when Maoism had not yet openly joined with right social democracy in attempting to uphold imperialism’s unstable positions in Africa and throughout the world.

By Fredrick Engels

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.

What is, then, the position of modern Socialism in this connection?

The present situation of society — this is now pretty generally conceded — is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organization. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward, the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces, evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie, developed with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalist mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class.

Now, in what does this conflict consist?

Before capitalist production — i.e., in the Middle Ages — the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments of labor — land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labor of single individuals, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day — this was precisely the historic role of capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth section of Capital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the handloom, the blacksmith’s hammer, were replaced by the spinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the production from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth, the metal articles that now come out of the factory were the joint product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready. No one person could say of them: “I made that; this is my product.”

But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of production is that spontaneous division of labor which creeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan, there the products take on the form of commodities, whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. And this was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, e.g., sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought from him the products of handicraft. Into this society of individual producers, of commodity producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production. The products of both were sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices at least approximately equal. But organization upon a definite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labor. The factories working with the combined social forces of a collectivity of individuals produced their commodities far more cheaply than the individual small producers. Individual producers succumbed in one department after another. Socialized production revolutionized all the old methods of production. But its revolutionary character was, at the same time, so little recognized that it was, on the contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and developing the production of commodities. When it arose, it found ready-made, and made liberal use of, certain machinery for the production and exchange of commodities: merchants’ capital, handicraft, wage-labor. Socialized production thus introducing itself as a new form of the production of commodities, it was a matter of course that under it the old forms of appropriation remained in full swing, and were applied to its products as well.

In the medieval stage of evolution of the production of commodities, the question as to the owner of the product of labor could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family. There was no need for him to appropriate the new product. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. His property in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labor. Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education, in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves.

Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.

This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation.

The first capitalists found, as we have said, alongside of other forms of labor, wage-labor ready-made for them on the market. But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural laborer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so organized that the journeyman to today became the master of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means of production became socialized and concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means of production, as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life. The number of these permanent was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity-producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social inter-relations. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.

But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has it peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social inter-relations — i.e., in exchange — and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producers.

In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, production was essentially directed toward satisfying the wants of the individual. It satisfied, in the main, only the wants of the producer and his family. Where relations of personal dependence existed, as in the country, it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In all this there was, therefore, no exchange; the products, consequently, did not assume the character of commodities. The family of the peasant produced almost everything they wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as the means of subsistence. Only when it began to produce more than was sufficient to supply its own wants and the payments in kind to the feudal lords, only then did it also produce commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized exchange and offered for sale, became commodities.

The artisan in the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce for exchange. But they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part of their individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land. They turned their cattle out into the communal forest, which, also, yielded them timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so forth. Production for the purpose of exchange, production of commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, exchange was restricted, the market narrow, the methods of production stable; there was local exclusiveness without, local unity within; the mark in the country; in the town, the guild.

But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity-production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. It became apparent that the production of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialized production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organization of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things was ended. Wherever this organization of production was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by its side. The field of labor became a battle-ground. The great geographical discoveries, and the colonization following them, multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities. The local struggles begat, in their turn, national conflicts, the commercial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world-market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.

The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that “vicious circle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin.

But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845 [3], available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.

Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that the instruments of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the laborer; that they very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation.

Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions; that machinery,

“the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.” (Capital, English edition, p. 406)

Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market.

“The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Marx’s Capital, p. 661)

And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalist mode of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.

We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similarly compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child’s play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another “vicious circle”.

As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years. Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little, the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877), we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first “crise plethorique”, a crisis from plethora.

In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange.

The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But “abundance becomes the source of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social production forces.

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the capital class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of an industry in a particular country unite in a “Trust”, a union for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of a particular industry is turned into one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion of 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a single plan, and with a capital of 6,000,000 pounds.

In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers.

In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.

If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control, except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But,with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilized by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with, them. But, when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and, by means of them, to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production, and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail.

But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hand working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning in the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.

Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slaveowning citizens;

in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords;

in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realization were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequences of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society — so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction of labor, State business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labor that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. it does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working-class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.

But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself, has become a obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development.

This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every 10 years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face-to-face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production burst the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly-accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialized appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today, and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now, for the first time, here, but it is here.

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution.

I. Mediaeval Society — Individual production on a small scale. Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either of the producer himself or his feudal lord. Only where an excess of production over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, only in its infancy. But already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production of society at large.

II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence, their transformation from individual to social means of production — a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.

A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction between socialized organization in the individual factory and social anarchy in the production as a whole.

C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents. The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange.

D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.

III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and this the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.

By V. I. Lenin

Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of “pernicious sect”. And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital.

But this is not all. The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling “sectarianism” in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.

The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.

It is these three sources of Marxism, which are also its component parts that we shall outline in brief.

I

The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Throughout the modern history of Europe, and especially at the end of the eighteenth century in France, where a resolute struggle was conducted against every kind of medieval rubbish, against serfdom in institutions and ideas, materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth. The enemies of democracy have, therefore, always exerted all their efforts to “refute”, under mine and defame materialism, and have advocated various forms of philosophical idealism, which always, in one way or another, amounts to the defence or support of religion.

Marx and Engels defended philosophical materialism in the most determined manner and repeatedly explained how profoundly erroneous is every deviation from this basis. Their views are most clearly and fully expounded in the works of Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring, which, like the Communist Manifesto, are handbooks for every class-conscious worker.

But Marx did not stop at eighteenth-century materialism: he developed philosophy to a higher level, he enriched it with the achievements of German classical philosophy, especially of Hegel’s system, which in its turn had led to the materialism of Feuerbach. The main achievement was dialectics, i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of the human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter. The latest discoveries of natural science—radium, electrons, the transmutation of elements—have been a remarkable confirmation of Marx’s dialectical materialism despite the teachings of the bourgeois philosophers with their “new” reversions to old and decadent idealism.

Marx deepened and developed philosophical materialism to the full, and extended the cognition of nature to include the cognition of human society. His historical materialism was a great achievement in scientific thinking. The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned in views on history and politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory, which shows how, in consequence of the growth of productive forces, out of one system of social life another and higher system develops—how capitalism, for instance, grows out of feudalism.

Just as man’s knowledge reflects nature (i.e., developing matter), which exists independently of him, so man’s social knowledge (i.e., his various views and doctrines—philosophical, religious, political and so forth) reflects the economic system of society. Political institutions are a superstructure on the economic foundation. We see, for example, that the various political forms of the modern European states serve to strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat.

Marx’s philosophy is a consummate philosophical materialism which has provided mankind, and especially the working class, with powerful instruments of knowledge.

II

Having recognised that the economic system is the foundation on which the political superstructure is erected, Marx devoted his greatest attention to the study of this economic system. Marx’s principal work, Capital, is devoted to a study of the economic system of modern, i.e., capitalist, society.

Classical political economy, before Marx, evolved in England, the most developed of the capitalist countries. Adam Smith and David Ricardo, by their investigations of the economic system, laid the foundations of the labour theory of value. Marx continued their work; he provided a proof of the theory and developed it consistently. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent on its production.

Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation between people. The exchange of commodities expresses the connection between individual producers through the market. Money signifies that the connection is becoming closer and closer, inseparably uniting the entire economic life of the individual producers into one whole. Capital signifies a further development of this connection: man’s labour-power becomes a commodity. The wage-worker sells his labour-power to the owner of land, factories and instruments of labour. The worker spends one part of the day covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the other part of the day he works without remuneration, creating for the capitalist surplus-value, the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class.

The doctrine of surplus-value is the corner-stone of Marx’s economic theory.

Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes the worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of unemployed. In industry, the victory of large-scale production is immediately apparent, but the same phenomenon is also to be observed in agriculture, where the superiority of large-scale capitalist agriculture is enhanced, the use of machinery increases and the peasant economy, trapped by money-capital, declines and falls into ruin under the burden of its backward technique. The decline of small-scale production assumes different forms in agriculture, but the decline itself is an indisputable fact.

By destroying small-scale production, capital leads to an increase in productivity of labour and to the creation of a monopoly position for the associations of big capitalists. Production itself becomes more and more social—hundreds of thousands and millions of workers become bound together in a regular economic organism—but the product of this collective labour is appropriated by a handful of capitalists. Anarchy of production, crises, the furious chase after markets and the insecurity of existence of the mass of the population are intensified.

By increasing the dependence of the workers on capital, the capitalist system creates the great power of united labour.

Marx traced the development of capitalism from embryonic commodity economy, from simple exchange, to its highest forms, to large-scale production.

And the experience of all capitalist countries, old and new, year by year demonstrates clearly the truth of this Marxian doctrine to increasing numbers of workers.

Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.

III

When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people. Various socialist doctrines immediately emerged as a reflection of and protest against this oppression. Early socialism, however, was utopian socialism. It criticised capitalist society, it condemned and damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it had visions of a better order and endeavoured to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation.

But utopian socialism could not indicate the real solution. It could not explain the real nature of wage-slavery under capitalism, it could not reveal the laws of capitalist development, or show what social force is capable of becoming the creator of a new society.

Meanwhile, the stormy revolutions which everywhere in Europe, and especially in France, accompanied the fall of feudalism, of serfdom, more and more clearly revealed the struggle of classes as the basis and the driving force of all development.

Not a single victory of political freedom over the feudal class was won except against desperate resistance. Not a single capitalist country evolved on a more or less free and democratic basis except by a life-and-death struggle between the various classes of capitalist society.

The genius of Marx lies in his having been the first to deduce from this the lesson world history teaches and to apply that lesson consistently. The deduction he made is the doctrine of the class struggle.

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, how ever barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle.

Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.

Independent organisations of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing irresistibly.

The CPUSA Houston club is posting a Tuesday series of readings of classical Marxist-Leninist thought, intended to educate the community about the value of these ideas.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.