Marx and Engels on Revolution

[FalceMartello]

Do you think Marx and Engels actually expected a workers revolution leading to communism to occur in the 19th century? Given that the material conditions were not present on a worldwide level.

[Delirium]

Of course, this was they hey-day of the "Guilded Age" , this was the age of the twelve-fourteen hour (conservative estimate), of child labour, and a huge and ever increasing gap between the rich and poor.

If there were ever a time for revolution this was it, No tv to placate the masses, no perscription drugs to sedate them. There were of course more brutal methods to keep them subjugated.

This at least seems to me to be the ideal time for revolution, and it draws many parallels with society in this age. Somehow revolution did not sweep europe and the promised global transformation simply lost momentum.

[DisIllusion]

This at least seems to me to be the ideal time for revolution, and it draws many parallels with society in this age. Somehow revolution did not sweep europe and the promised global transformation simply lost momentum.

Nowadays, we have pop culture, television, fashions and other fantastic brain-deadening things to keep us happy and under control.

[KC]

Nowadays, we have pop culture, television, fashions and other fantastic brain-deadening things to keep us happy and under control.

In other words, the Spectacle.

[gewehr_3]

You should read the book The Jungle by upton sinclair and then you could get a taste of what factory life was like in the late 19th early 20th centuries

EDIT:spelling

[redstar2000]

Marx and Engels were both "revolutionary optimists"...if you look at the letters they exchanged, they are almost constantly expressing their views of the news of the day in terms of "is this the beginning of the revolution" in this or that country.

I think this is because they lived in "the era of bourgeois revolutions" in the "west". And they thought that the period of bourgeois state power would be historically brief...that the economic crises characteristic of early capitalism would "quickly" result in victorious proletarian revolutions in the most advanced capitalist countries.

If they did not consider the full implications of their own historical materialist views, I don't think they can be "blamed" for that.

All of us, I suspect, are guilty of the same "optimistic" error -- mistaking some sort of social turmoil "of the day" as the "beginning of the revolution". It's something that we want to happen "therefore" it must be beginning to happen "right now".

In fact, an excess of optimism is probably an "occupational hazard" of being a revolutionary at all. It's part of the process of rebelling against the profound pessimism of the prevailing social order.

This is all there is and all there will ever be! :o

Who of us would not vehemently reject that council of futility!

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[red_che]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 12:45 AM
Do you think Marx and Engels actually expected a workers revolution leading to communism to occur in the 19th century? Given that the material conditions were not present on a worldwide level.
You've answered it already. Marx and Engels weren't that dumb or that much excited of achieving communism. They know the conditions weren't ripe then. They were optimistic, yeh, that's right. In fact they've tried achieving it in Paris Commune. But they were also the first to know, from that experience, that Communism isn't yet ripe in that moment.

Engels, in his Principles of Communism, stated this:


Question 19 : Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
Answer : No. By creating the world market, large-scale industry has already brought all the peoples of the earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of all civilized countries to such an extent that in all of them bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the two decisive classes of society and the struggle between them the main struggle of the day. The communist revolution, therefore, will be not merely a national one; it will take place in all civilized countries simultaneously, that is to say, at least in England, America, France and Germany. It will in each of these countries develop more quickly or more slowly according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence it will go most slowly and will meet most obstacles in Germany; most rapidly and easily in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world and will radically alter and accelerate their course of development up to now. It is a universal revolution and so will have universal range.

Here, it is clear to him, and consequently to Marx, as Engels showed him this draft, that they were not expecting communism to be achieved at a sooner time, in their period.