Tower of Bebel
20th July 2009, 19:36
I did not intend to let this become a quote fest, but now it is too late. For me it was simply the easiest way. The following came up after replying (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1495855&postcount=2) to a topic in the history forum.
This is bothering me for a while, and maybe it's something specificly tied to being part of the CWI (http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2009/07/2002.html)/IMT (article): what is the relation between transitional demands and Karl Marx? To be more precise: did Marx (consciously) write down transitional demands in his Communist Manifesto?
I'll split the following quote into two parts because two important claims are being made. One is about the Communist Manifesto and the other goes on about the so called difference between Marx and "Classic Social Democracy" (Trotsky).
Marx and Engels formulated demands for the developing workers’ movement in Europe in the 1848 Communist Manifesto. This contrasted with the method and programme adopted by the social democratic parties in the later part of the 19th century. The German social democratic Erfurt programme was adopted at a time of general capitalist upswing, which had a huge influence on the outlook of the social democratic leaders. The ‘maximum programme’ put forward the idea of socialism being incrementally brought into being sometime, some time in the indefinite future. At the same time, the Erfurt programme called minimum reforms within the confines of the capitalist system.
However, with the development of imperialism and the outbreak of World War One, the need for workers to have a transitional programme to end deep capitalist crisis became urgent. The Bolsheviks developed demands, including Lenin’s crucial 'April Theses' in 1917, which called for the working class to fight for power in Russia. The victory of the October socialist revolution led to the building of the Communist International and its programme of demands for the international working class. But the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Russian revolution (mainly due to its isolation and the failure of other international revolutions) led to the Communist International abandoning a transitional programme for socialist change.
In the 1930s, Trotsky put forward ‘immediate’ daily demands (e.g. that concern workplace issues and social conditions), ‘democratic demands’ and ‘transitional’ demands’ that touch on the need to change society. These demands are interlinked and at different times various demands take prominence, depending upon circumstances and the struggles and needs of the working class.
In the first paragraph the following is claimed: Marx wrote down demands for the developing workers' movement. This is what he wrote:
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc, etc.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In the recent past I have read an article (http://www.marxists.org/archive/thalheimer/works/strategy.htm) written by a German member of the KPD (A. Thalheimer) from the early twenties. He wrote that the younger members of the party don't know the difference between transitional demands (slogans) and transitional measures:
Now we come to the question of transitional slogans in general, and to the question whether transitional slogans may be propagated in non-acute revolutionary situations.
According to rumours of which I have become aware, some comrades have accused me of a frightful theoretical misunderstanding of the meaning of the transitional slogans of Marx and Engels. In the opinion of Marx and Engels they should only be propagated in an acute revolutionary situation, in the revolutionary overturn itself.
Furthermore: with transitional slogans in the sense of Marx and Engels are meant slogans that could only be realised after the conquest of power by the working class. The grave theoretical mistake here is wholly on the side of the comrades who mention the above described conception.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels speak of 'despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production'. Which transition should these demands or measures effect? That from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production. Which force should effect this transition? The working class, which 'raises itself to the position of ruling class', which conquers 'political power', which has won 'the battle of democracy'. The word democracy, used here by Marx and Engels without further definition, would appear to mean the workers' and peasants ' democratic dictatorship. The revolutionary democracy of the Jacobins and not the parliamentary form. The proletarian dictatorship was defined in more detail by them to signify the smashing of the bourgeois stale machine only after the experience of the Commune.
Which demands or measures are posed here by Marx and Engels for fulfilment after the conquest of power?
[...]
As one can immediately see, here it is a question of exclusively transitional measures after the conquest of power by the working class. Hence, they are mostly maximum slogans (except for the 'heavy progressive tax', although it too has a revolutionary meaning here).
Transitional slogans in the sense of the tactical theory of the Third Congress of the CI are, by their nature, as by the period of their use, something else. They are slogans which in the course of the struggle for power, that is, in an acutely revolutionary situation, are taken up and partially realised, even before the working class has established its state power, but where it is already capable, in a number of areas, if not yet in a centralised form, of weakening capitalist rule in the factories and the bourgeois state power, and of strengthening its own class power. The implementation of these measures against the resistance of the bourgeoisie, the attempt to extend them, unfolds the question of power in its full extent. The resistance of the bourgeoisie poses for the working class the alternative: either to wholly lose the partial gains again or to continue advancing further.
To make the transition to part two (concerning the difference between Marx, Engels and the Erfurt Programme for instance) I recall Rosa Luxemburg who defended the Spartacist Programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/31.htm) by going back to Engels and Marx:
The time has come when the entire Social Democratic socialist program of the proletariat has to be placed on a new foundation. Comrades! In so doing, we connect ourselves to the threads which Marx and Engels spun precisely seventy years ago in the Communist Manifesto. As you know, the Communist Manifesto dealt with socialism, with the realization of the ultimate goals of socialism as the immediate task of the proletarian revolution. This was the conception advocated by Marx and Engels in the Revolution of 1848; and it was what they conceived as the basis for international proletarian action as well. In common with all the leading spirits in the proletarian movement, both Marx and Engels then believed that the immediate task was the introduction of socialism. All that was necessary, they thought, was to bring about a political revolution, to seize the political power of the state in order to make socialism immediately enter the realm of flesh and blood. Subsequently, as you are aware, Marx and Engels undertook a thoroughgoing revision of this standpoint. In their joint Preface to the republication of the Communist Manifesto in 1872, they say:
No special stress is to be laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II. That passage would, in many respects, be differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of modern industry during the last twenty-five years and of the accompanying progress of the organization of the party of the working class: in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two months, this program has in some aspects been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, namely, that the “working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.”
What is the actual wording of the passage which is said to be dated? It reads as follows:
[...]
As you see, with a few variations, these are the tasks that confront us today: the introduction, the realization of socialism. Between the time when the above program was formulated and the present moment, there have intervened seventy years of capitalist development, and the dialectical movement of history has brought us back to the conception which Marx and Engels had abandoned in 1872 as erroneous. At that time, there were good reasons for believing that their earlier views had been wrong. The further development of capital has, however, led to the fact that what was incorrect in 1872 has become truth today, so that our immediate task today is to fulfill what Marx and Engels thought they would have to accomplish in 1848. But between that point in the development, that beginning, and our own views and our immediate task, there lies the whole development not only of capitalism but also of the socialist labor movement, above all in Germany as the leading land of the modern proletariat. This development has taken a peculiar form.
When, after the disillusionments of the Revolution of 1848, Marx and Engels had given up the idea that the proletariat could immediately realize socialism, there came into existence in all countries Social Democratic socialist parties inspired with very different conceptions. The immediate task of these parties was declared to be detail work, the petty daily struggle in the political and economic realms, in order, by degrees, to form the armies of the proletariat which would be ready to realize socialism when capitalist development had matured. The socialist program was thereby established upon an utterly different foundation, and in Germany the change took a very typical form.
According to Luxemburg there was probably no such thing as programmatic ideas that "contrasted" (see first quote). Marx and Engels supposedly had the same programmatic idea for that period of time.
You see, in 1880 Marx wrote a draft to Guesde (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm) for the French Parti Ouvrier's programme:
This document was drawn up in May 1880, when French workers' leader Jules Guesde came to visit Marx in London. The Preamble was dictated by Marx himself, while the other two parts of minimum political and economic demands were formulated by Marx and Guesde, with assistance from Engels and Paul Lafargue, who with Guesde was to become a leading figure in the Marxist wing of French socialism. The programme was adopted, with certain amendments, by the founding congress of the Parti Ouvrier (PO) at Le Havre in November 1880.
Concerning the programme Marx wrote: “this very brief document in its economic section consists solely of demands that actually have spontaneously arisen out of the labour movement itself. There is in addition an introductory passage where the communist goal is defined in a few lines.” Engels described the first, maximum section, as “a masterpiece of cogent argumentation rarely encountered, clearly and succinctly written for the masses; I myself was astonished by this concise formulation” and he later recommended the economic section to the German social democrats in his critique of the draft of the 1891 Erfurt Programme.
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/legalite.jpg) After the programme was agreed, however, a clash arose between Marx and his French supporters arose over the purpose of the minimum section. Whereas Marx saw this as a practical means of agitation around demands that were achievable within the framework of capitalism, Guesde took a very different view: “Discounting the possibility of obtaining these reforms from the bourgeoisie, Guesde regarded them not as a practical programme of struggle, but simply ... as bait with which to lure the workers from Radicalism.” The rejection of these reforms would, Guesde believed, “free the proletariat of its last reformist illusions and convince it of the impossibility of avoiding a workers ’89.” Accusing Guesde and Lafargue of “revolutionary phrase-mongering” and of denying the value of reformist struggles, Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”).We probably all know what Marx had against the Gotha Programme. But let's have a look at what Engels wrote (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm) about the programme of Erfurt:
The present draft differs very favourably from the former programme [at Gotha].The strong survivals of outmoded traditions — both the specific Lassallean and vulgar socialistic — have in the main been removed, and as regards its theoretical aspect the draft is, on the whole, based on present-day science and can be discussed on this basis.
[...]
The political demands of the draft have one great fault. It lacks precisely what should have been said. If all the 10 demands were granted we should indeed have more diverse means of achieving our main political aim, but the aim itself would in no wise have been achieved. As regards the rights being granted to the people and their representatives, the imperial constitution is, strictly speaking, a copy of the Prussian constitution of 1850, a constitution whose articles are extremely reactionary and give the government all the real power, while the chambers are not even allowed to reject taxes; a constitution, which proved during the period of the conflict that the government could do anything it liked with it. The rights of the Reichstag are the same as those of the Prussian chamber and this is why Liebknecht called this Reichstag the fig-leaf of absolutism. It is an obvious absurdity to wish “to transform all the instruments of labour into common property” on the basis of this constitution and the system of small states sanctioned by it, on the basis of the “union” between Prussia and Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, in which one has as many square miles as the other has square inches.
To touch on that is dangerous, however. Nevertheless, somehow or other, the thing has to be attacked. How necessary this is is shown precisely at the present time by opportunism, which is gaining ground in a large section of the Social-Democratic press. Fearing a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law, or recalling all manner of over-hasty pronouncements made during the reign of that law, they now want the party to find the present legal order in Germany adequate for putting through all party demands by peaceful means. These are attempts to convince oneself and the party that “present-day society is developing towards socialism” without asking oneself whether it does not thereby just as necessarily outgrow the old social order and whether it will not have to burst this old shell by force, as a crab breaks its shell, and also whether in Germany, in addition, it will not have to smash the fetters of the still semi-absolutist, and moreover indescribably confused political order. One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people. But in Germany where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to advocate such a thing in Germany, when, moreover, there is no need to do so, means removing the fig-leaf from absolutism and becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness.
In the long run such a policy can only lead one’s own party astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, which at the moment of the first great events, the first political crisis automatically pose themselves. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed? Must there be a repetition of what happened with protective tariffs, which were declared to be a matter of concern only to the bourgeoisie, not affecting the interests of the workers in the least, that is, a matter on which everyone could vote as he wished? Are not many people now going to the opposite extreme and are they not, in contrast to the bourgeoisie, who have become addicted to protective tariffs, rehashing the economic distortions of Cobden and Bright and preaching them as the purest socialism — the purest Manchesterism? This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present, may be “honestly” meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and “honest” opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all!
Which are these ticklish, but very significant points?
First. If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown. It would be inconceivable for our best people to become ministers under an emperor, as Miquel. It would seem that from a legal point of view it is inadvisable to include the demand for a republic directly in the programme, although this was possible even under Louis Phillippe in France, and is now in Italy. But the fact that in Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can be established in a cosy, peaceful way.
However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the people’s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it is impossible to go any further.
Engels is all in favor of the current programme, but he wrote his ammendments of course. He doesn't seem to be against the method or intensions of the programme. The Erfurt Programme needed some changing in order for it to be used also as a programme of agitation, but in general the programme was acceptable.
So... am I a) hopelessly confused, b) proving that the quoted article from the CWI is wrong (and that Luxemburg was right), or... c) is there's something else?
:confused:
This is bothering me for a while, and maybe it's something specificly tied to being part of the CWI (http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2009/07/2002.html)/IMT (article): what is the relation between transitional demands and Karl Marx? To be more precise: did Marx (consciously) write down transitional demands in his Communist Manifesto?
I'll split the following quote into two parts because two important claims are being made. One is about the Communist Manifesto and the other goes on about the so called difference between Marx and "Classic Social Democracy" (Trotsky).
Marx and Engels formulated demands for the developing workers’ movement in Europe in the 1848 Communist Manifesto. This contrasted with the method and programme adopted by the social democratic parties in the later part of the 19th century. The German social democratic Erfurt programme was adopted at a time of general capitalist upswing, which had a huge influence on the outlook of the social democratic leaders. The ‘maximum programme’ put forward the idea of socialism being incrementally brought into being sometime, some time in the indefinite future. At the same time, the Erfurt programme called minimum reforms within the confines of the capitalist system.
However, with the development of imperialism and the outbreak of World War One, the need for workers to have a transitional programme to end deep capitalist crisis became urgent. The Bolsheviks developed demands, including Lenin’s crucial 'April Theses' in 1917, which called for the working class to fight for power in Russia. The victory of the October socialist revolution led to the building of the Communist International and its programme of demands for the international working class. But the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Russian revolution (mainly due to its isolation and the failure of other international revolutions) led to the Communist International abandoning a transitional programme for socialist change.
In the 1930s, Trotsky put forward ‘immediate’ daily demands (e.g. that concern workplace issues and social conditions), ‘democratic demands’ and ‘transitional’ demands’ that touch on the need to change society. These demands are interlinked and at different times various demands take prominence, depending upon circumstances and the struggles and needs of the working class.
In the first paragraph the following is claimed: Marx wrote down demands for the developing workers' movement. This is what he wrote:
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc, etc.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In the recent past I have read an article (http://www.marxists.org/archive/thalheimer/works/strategy.htm) written by a German member of the KPD (A. Thalheimer) from the early twenties. He wrote that the younger members of the party don't know the difference between transitional demands (slogans) and transitional measures:
Now we come to the question of transitional slogans in general, and to the question whether transitional slogans may be propagated in non-acute revolutionary situations.
According to rumours of which I have become aware, some comrades have accused me of a frightful theoretical misunderstanding of the meaning of the transitional slogans of Marx and Engels. In the opinion of Marx and Engels they should only be propagated in an acute revolutionary situation, in the revolutionary overturn itself.
Furthermore: with transitional slogans in the sense of Marx and Engels are meant slogans that could only be realised after the conquest of power by the working class. The grave theoretical mistake here is wholly on the side of the comrades who mention the above described conception.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels speak of 'despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production'. Which transition should these demands or measures effect? That from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production. Which force should effect this transition? The working class, which 'raises itself to the position of ruling class', which conquers 'political power', which has won 'the battle of democracy'. The word democracy, used here by Marx and Engels without further definition, would appear to mean the workers' and peasants ' democratic dictatorship. The revolutionary democracy of the Jacobins and not the parliamentary form. The proletarian dictatorship was defined in more detail by them to signify the smashing of the bourgeois stale machine only after the experience of the Commune.
Which demands or measures are posed here by Marx and Engels for fulfilment after the conquest of power?
[...]
As one can immediately see, here it is a question of exclusively transitional measures after the conquest of power by the working class. Hence, they are mostly maximum slogans (except for the 'heavy progressive tax', although it too has a revolutionary meaning here).
Transitional slogans in the sense of the tactical theory of the Third Congress of the CI are, by their nature, as by the period of their use, something else. They are slogans which in the course of the struggle for power, that is, in an acutely revolutionary situation, are taken up and partially realised, even before the working class has established its state power, but where it is already capable, in a number of areas, if not yet in a centralised form, of weakening capitalist rule in the factories and the bourgeois state power, and of strengthening its own class power. The implementation of these measures against the resistance of the bourgeoisie, the attempt to extend them, unfolds the question of power in its full extent. The resistance of the bourgeoisie poses for the working class the alternative: either to wholly lose the partial gains again or to continue advancing further.
To make the transition to part two (concerning the difference between Marx, Engels and the Erfurt Programme for instance) I recall Rosa Luxemburg who defended the Spartacist Programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/31.htm) by going back to Engels and Marx:
The time has come when the entire Social Democratic socialist program of the proletariat has to be placed on a new foundation. Comrades! In so doing, we connect ourselves to the threads which Marx and Engels spun precisely seventy years ago in the Communist Manifesto. As you know, the Communist Manifesto dealt with socialism, with the realization of the ultimate goals of socialism as the immediate task of the proletarian revolution. This was the conception advocated by Marx and Engels in the Revolution of 1848; and it was what they conceived as the basis for international proletarian action as well. In common with all the leading spirits in the proletarian movement, both Marx and Engels then believed that the immediate task was the introduction of socialism. All that was necessary, they thought, was to bring about a political revolution, to seize the political power of the state in order to make socialism immediately enter the realm of flesh and blood. Subsequently, as you are aware, Marx and Engels undertook a thoroughgoing revision of this standpoint. In their joint Preface to the republication of the Communist Manifesto in 1872, they say:
No special stress is to be laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II. That passage would, in many respects, be differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of modern industry during the last twenty-five years and of the accompanying progress of the organization of the party of the working class: in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two months, this program has in some aspects been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, namely, that the “working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.”
What is the actual wording of the passage which is said to be dated? It reads as follows:
[...]
As you see, with a few variations, these are the tasks that confront us today: the introduction, the realization of socialism. Between the time when the above program was formulated and the present moment, there have intervened seventy years of capitalist development, and the dialectical movement of history has brought us back to the conception which Marx and Engels had abandoned in 1872 as erroneous. At that time, there were good reasons for believing that their earlier views had been wrong. The further development of capital has, however, led to the fact that what was incorrect in 1872 has become truth today, so that our immediate task today is to fulfill what Marx and Engels thought they would have to accomplish in 1848. But between that point in the development, that beginning, and our own views and our immediate task, there lies the whole development not only of capitalism but also of the socialist labor movement, above all in Germany as the leading land of the modern proletariat. This development has taken a peculiar form.
When, after the disillusionments of the Revolution of 1848, Marx and Engels had given up the idea that the proletariat could immediately realize socialism, there came into existence in all countries Social Democratic socialist parties inspired with very different conceptions. The immediate task of these parties was declared to be detail work, the petty daily struggle in the political and economic realms, in order, by degrees, to form the armies of the proletariat which would be ready to realize socialism when capitalist development had matured. The socialist program was thereby established upon an utterly different foundation, and in Germany the change took a very typical form.
According to Luxemburg there was probably no such thing as programmatic ideas that "contrasted" (see first quote). Marx and Engels supposedly had the same programmatic idea for that period of time.
You see, in 1880 Marx wrote a draft to Guesde (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm) for the French Parti Ouvrier's programme:
This document was drawn up in May 1880, when French workers' leader Jules Guesde came to visit Marx in London. The Preamble was dictated by Marx himself, while the other two parts of minimum political and economic demands were formulated by Marx and Guesde, with assistance from Engels and Paul Lafargue, who with Guesde was to become a leading figure in the Marxist wing of French socialism. The programme was adopted, with certain amendments, by the founding congress of the Parti Ouvrier (PO) at Le Havre in November 1880.
Concerning the programme Marx wrote: “this very brief document in its economic section consists solely of demands that actually have spontaneously arisen out of the labour movement itself. There is in addition an introductory passage where the communist goal is defined in a few lines.” Engels described the first, maximum section, as “a masterpiece of cogent argumentation rarely encountered, clearly and succinctly written for the masses; I myself was astonished by this concise formulation” and he later recommended the economic section to the German social democrats in his critique of the draft of the 1891 Erfurt Programme.
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/legalite.jpg) After the programme was agreed, however, a clash arose between Marx and his French supporters arose over the purpose of the minimum section. Whereas Marx saw this as a practical means of agitation around demands that were achievable within the framework of capitalism, Guesde took a very different view: “Discounting the possibility of obtaining these reforms from the bourgeoisie, Guesde regarded them not as a practical programme of struggle, but simply ... as bait with which to lure the workers from Radicalism.” The rejection of these reforms would, Guesde believed, “free the proletariat of its last reformist illusions and convince it of the impossibility of avoiding a workers ’89.” Accusing Guesde and Lafargue of “revolutionary phrase-mongering” and of denying the value of reformist struggles, Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”).We probably all know what Marx had against the Gotha Programme. But let's have a look at what Engels wrote (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm) about the programme of Erfurt:
The present draft differs very favourably from the former programme [at Gotha].The strong survivals of outmoded traditions — both the specific Lassallean and vulgar socialistic — have in the main been removed, and as regards its theoretical aspect the draft is, on the whole, based on present-day science and can be discussed on this basis.
[...]
The political demands of the draft have one great fault. It lacks precisely what should have been said. If all the 10 demands were granted we should indeed have more diverse means of achieving our main political aim, but the aim itself would in no wise have been achieved. As regards the rights being granted to the people and their representatives, the imperial constitution is, strictly speaking, a copy of the Prussian constitution of 1850, a constitution whose articles are extremely reactionary and give the government all the real power, while the chambers are not even allowed to reject taxes; a constitution, which proved during the period of the conflict that the government could do anything it liked with it. The rights of the Reichstag are the same as those of the Prussian chamber and this is why Liebknecht called this Reichstag the fig-leaf of absolutism. It is an obvious absurdity to wish “to transform all the instruments of labour into common property” on the basis of this constitution and the system of small states sanctioned by it, on the basis of the “union” between Prussia and Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, in which one has as many square miles as the other has square inches.
To touch on that is dangerous, however. Nevertheless, somehow or other, the thing has to be attacked. How necessary this is is shown precisely at the present time by opportunism, which is gaining ground in a large section of the Social-Democratic press. Fearing a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law, or recalling all manner of over-hasty pronouncements made during the reign of that law, they now want the party to find the present legal order in Germany adequate for putting through all party demands by peaceful means. These are attempts to convince oneself and the party that “present-day society is developing towards socialism” without asking oneself whether it does not thereby just as necessarily outgrow the old social order and whether it will not have to burst this old shell by force, as a crab breaks its shell, and also whether in Germany, in addition, it will not have to smash the fetters of the still semi-absolutist, and moreover indescribably confused political order. One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people. But in Germany where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to advocate such a thing in Germany, when, moreover, there is no need to do so, means removing the fig-leaf from absolutism and becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness.
In the long run such a policy can only lead one’s own party astray. They push general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thereby concealing the immediate concrete questions, which at the moment of the first great events, the first political crisis automatically pose themselves. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party suddenly proves helpless and that uncertainty and discord on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed? Must there be a repetition of what happened with protective tariffs, which were declared to be a matter of concern only to the bourgeoisie, not affecting the interests of the workers in the least, that is, a matter on which everyone could vote as he wished? Are not many people now going to the opposite extreme and are they not, in contrast to the bourgeoisie, who have become addicted to protective tariffs, rehashing the economic distortions of Cobden and Bright and preaching them as the purest socialism — the purest Manchesterism? This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present, may be “honestly” meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and “honest” opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all!
Which are these ticklish, but very significant points?
First. If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown. It would be inconceivable for our best people to become ministers under an emperor, as Miquel. It would seem that from a legal point of view it is inadvisable to include the demand for a republic directly in the programme, although this was possible even under Louis Phillippe in France, and is now in Italy. But the fact that in Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can be established in a cosy, peaceful way.
However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the people’s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it is impossible to go any further.
Engels is all in favor of the current programme, but he wrote his ammendments of course. He doesn't seem to be against the method or intensions of the programme. The Erfurt Programme needed some changing in order for it to be used also as a programme of agitation, but in general the programme was acceptable.
So... am I a) hopelessly confused, b) proving that the quoted article from the CWI is wrong (and that Luxemburg was right), or... c) is there's something else?
:confused: