Marx on Revolutionary Terror

[¿Que?]

So, someone posted a thread on Revolutionary Terror, somewhat implying that Marx advocated revolutionary terror, and I asked for a direct quote, but received no reply. So I took it upon myself to find out what the hubbub was about. Anyway, I checked out the wikipedia page for "Revolutionary Terror" and lo and behold, a reference to a quote by Marx saying the following:

"There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new – revolutionary terror"The article, though does not mention in which of Marx's works or letters the quote is derived from. The reference next to the quote is for a book by Edvard Radzinsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Radzinsky)on Stalin.

I then did a search for the quote, by punching it into google withing quotation marks, in order to search for that specific quote. It came up with a few responses, but none of them specifically said which one of Marx's works this quote is from. They all reference the Radzinsky book.

So, can anyone please tell me where this quote is from.

[Adil3tr]

It could be a made up/distorted translation by stalin. However, I do remeber reading in multiple places that what he said was that "violence can be the midwife of the revolution" not the child

[chegitz guevara]

I've never seen the quote before.

[Zanthorus]

I saw an anti-communist documentary piece that had something like this as well however I've never seen it anywhere in Marx.

[Jazzhands]

Me neither. It seems to be bullshit. he DID say this.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/18.htm

[el_chavista]

La violencia es la partera de la historia (Violence is the midwife of history)


Marx's own attitude to the tradition of political thought was one of conscious rebellion. Crucial among [certain key statements containing his political philosophy] are the following: "Labor created man". "Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one", hence: violence is the midwife of history. Finally, there is the famous last thesis on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is, however, to change it", which, in the light of Marx's thought, one could render more adequately as: The philosophers have interpreted the world long enough; the time has come to change it. For this last statement is in fact only a variation of another: "You cannot aufheben philosophy without realizing it".
1 CPGB: Force: The Midwife of Revolution www.marxists.org/archive/paul-william/articles/.../force.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/paul-william/articles/.../force.htm)
Force: The Midwife of Revolution .... But even here the violence is controlled by the organised forces of the revolution. To neglect to prepare for such an ...

2 Mao on Violence sfr-21.org/mao-violence.html
A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class ... through Anti-Dühring in which they describe violence as the "midwife of history. ...

3 Engels: Anti-Dühring sfr-21.org/anti-Duhring.html
These are of great importance for those who struggle for revolution, explaining how things ... he and Marx see it as the midwife of history: "in the words of Marx, ... Manifesto and the origins of the state as an agent of violence.

[¿Que?]

Thanks for the responses. I had a feeling that was a misquote. Particularly when I inquired about it on the original thread and got no response from the OP.

[ZeroNowhere]

It's quoted in this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/05/19c.htm) article. On the one hand, it's not clear who wrote the original, and the article which quotes it refers to Marx in the third person. On the other, he was Editor-in-Chief, although I'm not sure that this necessarily means agreement with all published, or indeed that he was even editing that edition, given the suppression and whatnot at the time.


"The purposeless massacres perpetrated since the June and October events, the tedious offering of sacrifices since February and March, the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."

There isn't any context to make it clear what the phrase means here, either.

Edit: The early Engels did use it, however:


But a mass uprising and a general insurrection of the people are means which royalty is terrified of using. These are means to which only a republic resorts — 1793 is proof of that. These are means, the application of which presupposes revolutionary terror, and where has there been a monarch who could resolve to use that?

What ruined the Italians, therefore, was not the defeat at Novara and Vigevano; it was the cowardice and moderation that monarchy forces on them. The lost battle at Novara resulted merely in a strategic disadvantage; the Italians were cut off from Turin, whereas the way to it lay open to the Austrians. This disadvantage would have been entirely without significance if the lost battle had been followed by a real revolutionary war, if the remainder of the Italian army had forthwith proclaimed itself the nucleus of a national mass uprising, if the conventional strategic war of armies had been turned into a people’s war, like that waged by the French in 1793.

But, of course, a monarchy will never consent to a revolutionary war, a mass uprising and terror. It would make peace with its bitterest enemy of equal rank rather than ally itself with the people.

The only other reference which I found was this, from 'The Holy Family':


Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution.

Engels refers to 'terror' in 1870:

The defence of Paris, if nothing extraordinary happens in the course of it, will be an entertaining episode. These perpetual little panics of the French – which all arise from fear of the moment when they will really have to learn the truth – give one a much better idea of the Reign of Terror. We think of this as the reign of people who inspire terror; on the contrary, it is the reign of people who are themselves terrified. Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves. I am convinced that the blame for the Reign of Terror in 1793 lies almost exclusively with the over-nervous bourgeois, demeaning himself as a patriot, the small petty bourgeois beside themselves with fright and the mob of riff-raff who know how to profit from the terror. These are just the classes in the present minor terror too.

It seems to have some connection with revolution in this letter from Engels to Kautsky in 1889:


As for the terror it was essentially a war measure so long as there was any sense to it. The class or the factional group of the class which alone could safeguard the victory of the revolution not only maintained itself in power by this means (that was the least after victory over the revolts) but ensured itself freedom of motion, elbow-room, the possibility of concentrating forces at the decisive spot, the border. At the end of 1793 that was already fairly secure; 1794 started well. French armies scored progress almost everywhere. The Commune with its extreme course became superfluous. Its propagation of revolution became a hindrance to Robespierre as well as to Danton both of whom, but each in his own way, wanted peace. From this conflict of three elements Robespierre emerged victorious, but now terror became in his hands a means of self-preservation and thus absurd. On June 26 Jourdan at Fleurus laid the whole of Belgium at the feet of the republic. Thereby terror became untenable. On July 27 Robespierre fell and the bourgeois orgy began.

Also in Marx's 'Moralising Criticism...' (the connection of the terror in France with the rule of the non-propertied classes, albeit with an immature proletariat, was put forward by Engels elsewhere):

If therefore the proletariat overthrows the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory will only be temporary, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in the year 1794, as long as in the course of history, in its “movement”, the material conditions have not yet been created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and therefore also the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie. The terror in France could thus by its mighty hammer-blows only serve to spirit away, as it were, the ruins of feudalism from French soil. The timidly considerate bourgeoisie would not have accomplished this task in decades. The bloody action of the people thus only prepared the way for it. In the same way, the overthrow of the absolute monarchy would be merely temporary if the economic conditions for the rule of the bourgeois class had not yet become ripe. Men build a new world for themselves, not from the “treasures of this earth”, as grobian superstition imagines, but from the historical achievements of their declining world. In the course of their development they first have to produce the material conditions of a new society itself, and no exertion of mind or will can free them from this fate.

Then there's the famous formulation from 'On Authority':

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.

Here it refers to the emotion, it seems, which was used by Engels quite frequently (the proletariat casting terror into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, etc). This sense had also been used by Marx in this well-known letter:


Perhaps you will point to the Paris Commune; but apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a town under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it be. With a small amount of sound common sense, however, they could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people -- the only thing that could be reached at the time. The appropriation of the Bank of France alone would have been enough to dissolve all the pretensions of the Versailles people in terror, etc., etc.

Otherwise, when it comes to early works, it seems to be mainly Engels' thing. For example:

The Austrian pan-Slavists ought to understand that all their desire insofar as they can be fulfilled, have been realised in the restoration of the “Austrian united monarchy” under Russian protection. If Austria collapses, what is in store for them is the revolutionary terrorism of the Germans and Magyars, but by no means, as they imagine, the liberation of all the nations enslaved under the sceptre of Austria. They must therefore wish that Austria continues to hold together, and indeed that Galicia remains with Austria, so that the Slavs retain a majority in the state. Here, therefore, pan-Slavist interests are already directly opposed to the restoration of Poland, for a Poland without Galicia, a Poland that does not extend from the Baltic to the Carpathians, is no Poland. But equally for that reason a “Slav Austria” is still a mere dream; for without the supremacy of the Germans and Magyars, without the two centres of Vienna and Budapest, Austria will once again fall apart, as its whole history up to recent months has proved. Accordingly, the realisation of pan-Slavism would have to be restricted to Russian patronage over Austria. The openly reactionary pan-Slavists were therefore quite right in holding fast to the preservation of the united monarchy; it was the only means of saving anything. The so-called democratic pan-Slavists, however, were in an acute dilemma: either renunciation of the revolution and at least a partial salvation of nationality through the united monarchy, or abandonment of nationality and salvation of the revolution by the collapse of the united monarchy. At that time the fate of the revolution in Eastern Europe depended on the position of the Czechs and Southern Slavs; we shall not forget that at the decisive moment they betrayed the revolution to Petersburg and Olmütz for the sake of their petty national hopes.
This was essentially based around opposition to certain nationalisms based on their role in the 1848 rebellion, given that he expected another one soon (I believe that the crisis was supposed to hit in 1850 or something of the sort.)

Indeed, in the later Marx 'terror' was generally used to refer to the Brits in Ireland or the putting down of the Paris Commune, whereas Engels used it as follows:

Now we are strong enough to stand any quantity of educated Quarcks [sp?] and to digest them, and I foresee that in the next eight or ten years we shall recruit enough young technicians, doctors, lawyers and schoolmasters to enable us to have the factories and big estates administered on behalf of the nation by Party comrades. Then, therefore, our entry into power will be quite natural and will be settled up quickly – relatively, if, on the other hand, a war brings us to power prematurely, the technicians will be our chief enemies; they will deceive and betray us wherever they can and we shall have to use terror against them but shall get cheated all the same. It is what always happened, on a small scale, to the French revolutionaries; even in the ordinary administration they had to leave the subordinate posts, where real work is done, in the possession of old reactionaries who obstructed and paralysed everything. Therefore I hope and desire that our splendid and secure development, which is advancing with the calm and inevitability of a process of nature, may remain on its natural lines.

[Dave B]

It looks like the following which was made in reference to the bourgeois revolution I think;

Final Issue Neue Rheinische Zeitung May 1849



will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/05/19c.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/05/19c.htm)


compare;




There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new – revolutionary terror"

[el_chavista]

Young adult Marx an ultra-leftist? Good for my avatar (comandante "Carlos")! Which comrade has not once in life flattered ultra-leftism?