Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for backgrond information concerning the great nationwide coal strike of 1977-78, a classic class-war battle with many lesson, good and bad, for today's labor militants.
Markin comment:
In the wake of the recent somewhat isolated strike action at Verizon this summer and the struggle of the public worker unions in Wisconsin earlier this year that cried out for general strike solidarity action by all of organized labor, private and public, a little glimpse at the kind of solidarity actions by other parts of the organized, if only as an exemplary action, is worth taking note of. The class battles looming ahead will provide of opportunity to take these measures from paper to power. Forward!
ILWU Votes One-Day Work Stoppage to Support Miners
The Spartacist League championed attempts by labor militants to bring other unions out on strike to smash Taft-Hartley and exposed the fake-lefts who helped sabotage this crucial defense of the miners...
—excerpted from WV No. 197, 17 March 1978
SAN FRANCISCO, March 14—As the mine workers face the most critical hour in their 100-day-old strike, the labor movement must ensure that they do not stand alone. With Carter lowering the boom by invoking Taft-Hartley it is the urgent duty of the unions to undertake protest strike action against this government strikebreak¬ing. Last week the International Longshoremen's and Warehouse¬men's Union (ILWU) became the first major U.S. union to move in this direction.
On Friday, March 10 the ILWU International Executive Board (IEB) adopted a resolution whose substance was as follows:
1) to authorize the International officers to call a 24-hour longshore strike coastwide, to protest the use of Taft-Hartley against the miners; 2) to call on the rest of the ILWU, particularly Hawaii and the Warehouse Division, to join in this action; 3) to call on the rest of organized labor in cities where the ILWU has locals to join the 24-hour stop-work action.
Such solidarity action with the coal miners is precisely what is needed at this moment. It could be the spark which ignites the rest of labor to join in this crucial battle, but some of the ILWU tops are predictably dragging their feet. Trade-union militants must raise an urgent clamor demanding that a coastwide dock shutdown and citywide work stoppages against Taft-Hartley and for victory to the miners strike be implemented NOW!...
Ferment in the ILWU
The earliest breakthrough leading to the ILWU resolution came in Local 13 in the San Pedro/Long Beach/Los Angeles area where several hundred longshoremen passed a resolution at the March 2 membership meeting calling for a one-day work action. According to a statement circulated by Chick Loveridge, an IEB member: "Local13 is urging President Carter not to interfere on the side of the mine owners, no Taft-Hartley. Local 13 is calling for a one-day supporting action, by closing down the port of LB/ LA and urging all other ports on the West Coast to do the same. Local 13 is also inviting all other labor organizations to join us in a meeting of support on the day the ports are closed down"
Parallel to the Local 13 action, Stan Gow and Howard Keylor,
members of the Local 10 (S.F. longshore) Executive Board and
publishers of "Longshore Militant," a class-struggle opposition
newsletter in the Local, along with the Militant Caucus in Local 6,
began circulating a petition on March 8 to"call on president Herman
and the Bay Area 1LWU local presidents to organize a 24-hour Bay
Area-wide protest strike against government strikebreaking in the
coalfields." The petition quoted a statement made by Herman at a
February 24 rally, where he boasted: "If they try mining coal with
bayonets or visit harm on the miners, there will be actions here and
throughout the country "
With a couple of days' circulation the petition gathered over 100 signatures in Local 10 and 150 in Local 6, as well as the signatures of Local 13 president Art Almeida and Seattle Local 19 president Dick Moork. This petition was an important factor in forcing the Local 10 Executive Board on March 9 to come out for some kind of solidarity action in support of the miners strike.
Strike Support Coalition
Herman himself had made the call for solidarity actions before some 1,000 assembled trade unionists at a February 24 rally organized by the so-called "Miners Strike Labor/Community Support Coalition," a collection of top Bay Area labor bureaucrats such as John Crowley of the Central Labor Council and Walter Johnson, president of Retail Clerks Local 1100. When this coalition held an organizing meeting March 11 at the Retail Clerks headquarters, about 200 trade union militants showed up, clearly upsetting the conservative trade union tops. Early in the meeting the Coalition's co-chairman, Larry Wing, president of ILWU Local 10, mentioned that the ILWU IEB favored a 24-hour coastwide work stoppage and was calling the rest of labor to join in. Wing also noted the IEB had voted a $25,000 donation to the mine workers as well as a $1 per-month/per-member assessment of the ILWU membership for the miners' families.
At this point a militant Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) worker announced that a similar motion for a "one day stop work mass labor rally of all Bay Area labor" had been passed 44 to 1 at a membership meeting of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 on March 8. Noting the parallel course of the two unions, she put forward a motion calling for implementing the work-stoppage motions and extending them to Bay Area labor as a whole:
"This body calls for a 24-hour Bay Area-wide stop-work protest strike against government strikebreaking in the coalfields. We urge all local unions and the Central Labor Council of all nine Bay Area counties to immediately prepare for such an action."
This simple motion immediately polarized the meeting, for the encrusted U.S. labor bureaucracy cannot abide even such elementary actions of class solidarity. Caught off guard, the nervous bureaucrats sought a way out of this dilemma and found it with the criminal aid of the Communist Party (CP) and the SWP. While both groups are vying to play chief hatchetman against labor militancy for the union tops, at this meeting the SWP clearly led the pack in wrecking the chances of solidarity strike action.
The fight which followed found the CP supporters caught in the middle. With the BART militants' motion simply calling for implementing the 1LWU resolution, they did not want to completely disavow it. But aware that the ILWU bureaucracy was seeking to minimize its impact, neither did they want to go too far out on a limb. Thus early on in the heated discussion Franklin Alexander, well-known CP supporter in ILWU Local 6, said he was "not ready" to vote for such a motion because it was "too soon," and later tried to kill it by referring it to the steering committee. (Ironically Billy Proctor, a CP supporter in Local 10, had signed the "Longshore Militant" petition earlier in the week.)
But the SWP supporters present did not beat around the bush. Mobilizing their small army of hitherto silent "Coalition" members to come out and defeat the motion, they effectively denounced the ILWU resolution as "ultra-left"! First Roland Sheppard, SWP floor leader, openly attacked the solidarity motion on the grounds that:
1) "The job of this body is to support the miners" [read Miller]; 2) "The ILWU actually isn't calling for the action, only looking for the mood in the ranks"; and 3) One must "walk before you run." Actually the SWP is on its hands and knees, a position it got used to during its 1960's peace crawls. And as if the miners who have been on strike for three months would not appreciate the support of a solidarity strike, John Olmstead, a Teamster, seconded Sheppard's remarks and actually cautioned that the motion would "alienate the union membership"!...
At this point a militant Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) worker announced that a similar motion for a "one day stop work mass labor rally of all Bay Area labor" had been passed 44 to 1 at a membership meeting of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 on March 8. Noting the parallel course of the two unions, she put forward a motion calling for implementing the work-stoppage motions and extending them to Bay Area labor as a whole:
"This body calls for a 24-hour Bay Area-wide stop-work protest strike against government strikebreaking in the coalfields. We urge all local unions and the Central Labor Council of all nine Bay Area counties to immediately prepare for such an action."
By voting time the several score SWP supporters had lined up a solid voting bloc of themselves and the most rabid right-wing bureaucrats present. Even so the first voice vote was disputed and a second hand vote was only defeated by a margin of roughly 120 to 70, with CP supporters such as Figueiredo, Franklin and several others abstaining. As if this wasn't enough, the SWP even opposed a subsequent proposal for nothing more frightening than a Saturday rally. (This was tabled to the steering committee!)
This sabotage of the solidarity strike proposal is the most blatant proof yet that the S WP's "turn to the unions" means covering for the bureaucrats and outright sabotage of vitally needed militant labor action. Surely the spectacle of these "socialists" denouncing the call of the ILWU Executive Board as, in substance, adventurist is downright grotesque. No conscious union militant can consider these reformists as anything but despicable betrayers of labor's cause. Because they are seeking to establish themselves as sophisticated braintrusters and apparatchiks for the liberal wing of labor officialdom these pimps for the bureaucracy are fiercely determined to maintain capitalist stability—sometimes even more so than the union tops themselves, who are occasionally subject to pressure from the ranks. Today the most rabid opponent of sympathy protest strikes to aid the miners—excepting only the reactionary Meanyites—is the SWP.
*********
Australian Labour Council Vows to Aid U.S. Coal Strike
SYDNEY—On 16 March the Newcastle, New South Wales Trades and Labour Council approved the following statement of solidarity with striking coal miners in America:
"The U.S. coal miners are currently in the forefront of American labour in their battle to safeguard their union rights and working conditions against the onslaught of the coal bosses and the Carter government. A victory by the miners in their strike is in the interest of the labour movement internationally and all attempts at strikebreaking by U.S. employers and the Carter government must be resisted. We pledge our full support and we condemn the U.S. government union bashing through its use of the Taft-Hartley Act."
The motion was referred for action to the Waterfront Group of Unions in Newcastle, which is a major port for shipment of Australian coal. On 21 March the WGU also passed this motion and sent a cable in solidarity with U.S. miners. Bob Rose, secretary of the Waterfront Group, told the Spartacist League that they are not going to ship coal to the U.S. as an expression of solidarity with the coal strike.
The Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand held demonstrations in support of the American miners strike in front of U.S. consulates in Sydney and Melbourne on 14 and 15 March respectively. At these demonstrations and in its press the SL/ ANZ called for a black ban [hot-cargoing] on all coal to the U.S. for the duration of the strike, a demand for which it alone on the Australian left has consistently fought.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Engels to Sorge-1886
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America (algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1886
Engels to Sorge-1886
Source: Science and Society Volume II, Number 3, 1938;
Translated and Edited: by Leonard E. Mins.
London, April 29, 1886.
Dear Sorge:
Your letters of February 15th and 28th and March 8th, and postcard of March 21st received.
The manuscript [of Capital] contains largely the same things that Marx noted in his copy for the third edition. In other passages, which provide for more insertions from the French, I am not binding myself to these unconditionally, (1) because the work for the third edition was done much later, and hence is decisive for me, and (2) because, for a translation to be made in America, far away from him, Marx would rather a have had many a difficult passage correctly translated from the French simplification than incorrectly from the German, and this consideration now vanishes. Nevertheless, it has given me many very useful hints which will, in time, find application for the German edition too. As soon as I am through with it I shall return it to you by registered mail....
The Broadhouse-Hyndman translation of Capital is nothing but a farce. The first chapter was translated from the German, full of mistakes to the point of ridiculousness. Now it is being translated from the French — the mistakes are the same. At the present rate of speed the thing won’t be finished by 1900.
Thanks for the calendar. I had, it is true, not suspected that Douais is so terribly underrated as a great man. Let him take the consciousness of his greatness, together with all of its underrating, with him into the grave without having it lessened in a pastry mold. But he was the right man for America, and if he had remained an ordinary democrat, I would have wished him the best of luck. But, as it is, he got into the wrong pew. As for the purist who declaims against our style and punctuation: he knows neither German nor English, else he wouldn’t find Anglicisms where there aren’t any. The German he admires, which was drilled into us in school, with its horrible periodic structure and the verb at the very end — separated from the subject by ten miles of intervening matter — it took me thirty years to unlearn that German again. That bureaucratic schoolmaster’s German, for which Lessing doesn’t exist at all, is on the decline even in Germany. What would this good fellow say if he heard the deputies speaking in the Reichstag, who have abolished this horrible construction because they always got tangled up in it, and spoke like the Jews: “Als der Bismarck ist gekommen vor die Zwangswahl, hat er lieber den Papst gekusst auf den Hintern als die Revolution auf den Mund.” This advance was first introduced by little Lasker; it is the only good thing he did. If Mr. Purist comes to Germany with his schoolmaster’s German, they will tell him he talks American. “You know how petty the learned German philistine is” — he seems to be particularly so in America. German sentence structure together with its punctuation as taught in the schools forty or fifty years ago deserves only to be thrown on the scrap-heap, and that is happening to it in Germany at last.
I think I have already written you that an American lady, married to a Russian, has gotten it into her head to translate my old book. I looked over the translation, which required considerable work. But she wrote that publication was assured and it had to be done at once, and so I had to do it. Now it turns out that she turned the negotiations over to a Miss Foster, the secretary of a women’s rights society, and the latter committed the blunder of giving it to the Socialist Labor Party. I told the translator what I thought of this, but it was too late. Moreover, I am glad that the gentlemen over there do not translate anything of mine; it would turn out beautifully. Their German is enough, and then their English!
The gentlemen of the Volkszeitung must be satisfied. They have gained control of the whole movement among the Germans and their business must be flourishing. It is a matter of course that a man like Dietzgen is pushed to the rear there. Playing with the boycott and with little strikes is, of course, much more important than theoretical enlightenment. But with all that the cause is moving ahead mightily in America. A real mass movement exists among the English-speaking workers for the first time. That it proceeds gropingly at first, clumsy, unclear, unknowing, is unavoidable. All that will be cleared up; the movement will and must develop through its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is a characteristic of all young peoples, but so is practical rapidity of development, too. As in England, all the preaching is of no use in America until the actual necessity exists. And this is present in America now, and they are becoming conscious of it. The entrance of the masses of native-born workers into the movement in America is for me one of the greatest events of 1886. As for the Germans over there, let the sort flourishing now join the Americans gradually; they will still be somewhat ahead of them. And lastly, there still is a central core among the Germans over there which retains theoretical insight into the nature and the course of the whole movement, keeps the process of fermentation going, and finally rises to the top again.
The second great event of 1886 is the formation of a workers party in the French Chamber by Basly and Camelinat, two handpicked “worker” deputies nominated and elected by the Radicals, who, contrary to all the regulations, did not become servants of their Radical masters, but spoke as workers. The Decazeville strike brought the split between them and the Radicals to a head — five other deputies joined them. The Radicals had to come out in the open with their policy towards the workers, and, as the government exists only with the Radicals’ support, that was dreadful, for they were justifiably held accountable by the workers for each of the government’s acts. In short, the Radicals: Clemenceau and all the others, behaved wretchedly; and then there took place what no preacher had succeeded in accomplishing up to then: the French workers’ defection from the Radicals. And the second result was: the union of all the socialist fractions for joint action. Only the miserable Possibilists kept apart, and consequently they are falling asunder more and more every day. The government helped this new departure tremendously by its blunders. For it wants to float a loan of 90,000,000 francs and needs high finance for this purpose, but the latter is also a stockholder in Decazeville and refuses to lend the money unless the government breaks the strike. Hence the arrest of Duc and Roche. The workers’ reply is: Roche’s candidacy in Paris for next Sunday (elections to the Chamber) and Due’s (Quercy’s) candidacy for the Municipal Council, where he is certain of election. In brief, a splendid movement is merrily under way in France again, and the best thing about it is that our people, Guesde, Lafargue, Deville, are the theoretical leaders.
The reaction upon Germany did not fail to make its appearance. The revolutionary speech and action of the Frenchmen made the whining of Geiser, Viereck, Auer and Co. appear more feeble than ever, and thus only Bebel and Liebknecht spoke in the Last debate on the Socialist Law, both of them very good. With this debate we can show our faces in respectable society again, which was by no means the case with all of them. In general it is good for the Germans to have their leadership disputed somewhat, especially since they have elected so many philistine elements (which was unavoidable, to be sure). In Germany everything becomes philistine in quiet periods; the spur of French competition then becomes absolutely necessary, nor will it be lacking. French socialism has suddenly grown from a sect into a party, and only now and only thereby is the mass affiliation of the workers possible, for the latter are sick and tired of sectarianism, and that was the secret of their following the extremist bourgeois party, the Radicals. Next Sunday will show considerable progress in the elections, though it is scarcely to be expected that Roche will win.
I think the printing of the English translation of Capital, Volume I, will begin in two to three weeks. I am far from through with revision, but 300 pages are ready for the printer and another hundred almost ready. Another thing. A Mr. J. T. McEnnis interviewed me a few days ago under the pretext of getting advice on labor legislation for, the State of Missouri. I soon discovered that newspaper business was behind it, and he confessed that he was working for the leading democratic paper of St. Louis, but gave me his word of honor that he would submit, every word to me in advance for revision. The man was sent to me by the Russian Stepniak. Nearly two weeks have passed, and I am afraid he did not keep his promise. I have forgotten the name of the St. Louis paper. Therefore, if anything is printed regarding the interview, please have the enclosed statement printed in the Sozialist, Volkszeitung, and anywhere else you think necessary. If the man does come and keep his promise, I shall of course, let you know at once, and you can then tear up the statement. Here the movement is not progressing at all, luckily enough. Hyndman and Co. are political careerists who spoil everything, while the anarchists are making rapid progress in the Socialist League. Morris and Bax — one as an emotional socialist and the other as a chaser after philosophical paradoxes — are wholly under their control for the present and must now undergo this experience in corpere vili. You will note from the Commonweal that Aveling, largely thanks to Tussy’s energy, no longer shares the responsibility for this swindle, and that is good. And these muddleheads want to lead the British working class! Fortunately the latter wants to have absolutely nothing to do with them.
Best regards,
Yours,
F. Engels
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America (algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1886
Engels to Sorge-1886
Source: Science and Society Volume II, Number 3, 1938;
Translated and Edited: by Leonard E. Mins.
London, April 29, 1886.
Dear Sorge:
Your letters of February 15th and 28th and March 8th, and postcard of March 21st received.
The manuscript [of Capital] contains largely the same things that Marx noted in his copy for the third edition. In other passages, which provide for more insertions from the French, I am not binding myself to these unconditionally, (1) because the work for the third edition was done much later, and hence is decisive for me, and (2) because, for a translation to be made in America, far away from him, Marx would rather a have had many a difficult passage correctly translated from the French simplification than incorrectly from the German, and this consideration now vanishes. Nevertheless, it has given me many very useful hints which will, in time, find application for the German edition too. As soon as I am through with it I shall return it to you by registered mail....
The Broadhouse-Hyndman translation of Capital is nothing but a farce. The first chapter was translated from the German, full of mistakes to the point of ridiculousness. Now it is being translated from the French — the mistakes are the same. At the present rate of speed the thing won’t be finished by 1900.
Thanks for the calendar. I had, it is true, not suspected that Douais is so terribly underrated as a great man. Let him take the consciousness of his greatness, together with all of its underrating, with him into the grave without having it lessened in a pastry mold. But he was the right man for America, and if he had remained an ordinary democrat, I would have wished him the best of luck. But, as it is, he got into the wrong pew. As for the purist who declaims against our style and punctuation: he knows neither German nor English, else he wouldn’t find Anglicisms where there aren’t any. The German he admires, which was drilled into us in school, with its horrible periodic structure and the verb at the very end — separated from the subject by ten miles of intervening matter — it took me thirty years to unlearn that German again. That bureaucratic schoolmaster’s German, for which Lessing doesn’t exist at all, is on the decline even in Germany. What would this good fellow say if he heard the deputies speaking in the Reichstag, who have abolished this horrible construction because they always got tangled up in it, and spoke like the Jews: “Als der Bismarck ist gekommen vor die Zwangswahl, hat er lieber den Papst gekusst auf den Hintern als die Revolution auf den Mund.” This advance was first introduced by little Lasker; it is the only good thing he did. If Mr. Purist comes to Germany with his schoolmaster’s German, they will tell him he talks American. “You know how petty the learned German philistine is” — he seems to be particularly so in America. German sentence structure together with its punctuation as taught in the schools forty or fifty years ago deserves only to be thrown on the scrap-heap, and that is happening to it in Germany at last.
I think I have already written you that an American lady, married to a Russian, has gotten it into her head to translate my old book. I looked over the translation, which required considerable work. But she wrote that publication was assured and it had to be done at once, and so I had to do it. Now it turns out that she turned the negotiations over to a Miss Foster, the secretary of a women’s rights society, and the latter committed the blunder of giving it to the Socialist Labor Party. I told the translator what I thought of this, but it was too late. Moreover, I am glad that the gentlemen over there do not translate anything of mine; it would turn out beautifully. Their German is enough, and then their English!
The gentlemen of the Volkszeitung must be satisfied. They have gained control of the whole movement among the Germans and their business must be flourishing. It is a matter of course that a man like Dietzgen is pushed to the rear there. Playing with the boycott and with little strikes is, of course, much more important than theoretical enlightenment. But with all that the cause is moving ahead mightily in America. A real mass movement exists among the English-speaking workers for the first time. That it proceeds gropingly at first, clumsy, unclear, unknowing, is unavoidable. All that will be cleared up; the movement will and must develop through its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is a characteristic of all young peoples, but so is practical rapidity of development, too. As in England, all the preaching is of no use in America until the actual necessity exists. And this is present in America now, and they are becoming conscious of it. The entrance of the masses of native-born workers into the movement in America is for me one of the greatest events of 1886. As for the Germans over there, let the sort flourishing now join the Americans gradually; they will still be somewhat ahead of them. And lastly, there still is a central core among the Germans over there which retains theoretical insight into the nature and the course of the whole movement, keeps the process of fermentation going, and finally rises to the top again.
The second great event of 1886 is the formation of a workers party in the French Chamber by Basly and Camelinat, two handpicked “worker” deputies nominated and elected by the Radicals, who, contrary to all the regulations, did not become servants of their Radical masters, but spoke as workers. The Decazeville strike brought the split between them and the Radicals to a head — five other deputies joined them. The Radicals had to come out in the open with their policy towards the workers, and, as the government exists only with the Radicals’ support, that was dreadful, for they were justifiably held accountable by the workers for each of the government’s acts. In short, the Radicals: Clemenceau and all the others, behaved wretchedly; and then there took place what no preacher had succeeded in accomplishing up to then: the French workers’ defection from the Radicals. And the second result was: the union of all the socialist fractions for joint action. Only the miserable Possibilists kept apart, and consequently they are falling asunder more and more every day. The government helped this new departure tremendously by its blunders. For it wants to float a loan of 90,000,000 francs and needs high finance for this purpose, but the latter is also a stockholder in Decazeville and refuses to lend the money unless the government breaks the strike. Hence the arrest of Duc and Roche. The workers’ reply is: Roche’s candidacy in Paris for next Sunday (elections to the Chamber) and Due’s (Quercy’s) candidacy for the Municipal Council, where he is certain of election. In brief, a splendid movement is merrily under way in France again, and the best thing about it is that our people, Guesde, Lafargue, Deville, are the theoretical leaders.
The reaction upon Germany did not fail to make its appearance. The revolutionary speech and action of the Frenchmen made the whining of Geiser, Viereck, Auer and Co. appear more feeble than ever, and thus only Bebel and Liebknecht spoke in the Last debate on the Socialist Law, both of them very good. With this debate we can show our faces in respectable society again, which was by no means the case with all of them. In general it is good for the Germans to have their leadership disputed somewhat, especially since they have elected so many philistine elements (which was unavoidable, to be sure). In Germany everything becomes philistine in quiet periods; the spur of French competition then becomes absolutely necessary, nor will it be lacking. French socialism has suddenly grown from a sect into a party, and only now and only thereby is the mass affiliation of the workers possible, for the latter are sick and tired of sectarianism, and that was the secret of their following the extremist bourgeois party, the Radicals. Next Sunday will show considerable progress in the elections, though it is scarcely to be expected that Roche will win.
I think the printing of the English translation of Capital, Volume I, will begin in two to three weeks. I am far from through with revision, but 300 pages are ready for the printer and another hundred almost ready. Another thing. A Mr. J. T. McEnnis interviewed me a few days ago under the pretext of getting advice on labor legislation for, the State of Missouri. I soon discovered that newspaper business was behind it, and he confessed that he was working for the leading democratic paper of St. Louis, but gave me his word of honor that he would submit, every word to me in advance for revision. The man was sent to me by the Russian Stepniak. Nearly two weeks have passed, and I am afraid he did not keep his promise. I have forgotten the name of the St. Louis paper. Therefore, if anything is printed regarding the interview, please have the enclosed statement printed in the Sozialist, Volkszeitung, and anywhere else you think necessary. If the man does come and keep his promise, I shall of course, let you know at once, and you can then tear up the statement. Here the movement is not progressing at all, luckily enough. Hyndman and Co. are political careerists who spoil everything, while the anarchists are making rapid progress in the Socialist League. Morris and Bax — one as an emotional socialist and the other as a chaser after philosophical paradoxes — are wholly under their control for the present and must now undergo this experience in corpere vili. You will note from the Commonweal that Aveling, largely thanks to Tussy’s energy, no longer shares the responsibility for this swindle, and that is good. And these muddleheads want to lead the British working class! Fortunately the latter wants to have absolutely nothing to do with them.
Best regards,
Yours,
F. Engels
The Latest From The British Leftist Blog-"Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism"
Click on the headline to link to the latest from the British Leftist blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism
Markin comment:
While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items it is not clear to me that this blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public may be these days.
Markin comment:
While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items it is not clear to me that this blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public may be these days.
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Kathy Mattea's"Black Lung"
Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Kathy Mattea performing about the classic coal country health issue that never goes away, "Black Lung".
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
Markin comment:
I can add nothing here to the song, except that the struggle portrayed in the accompanying film review on this date, "Harlan County, U.S.A.", brings that safety issue home in a very big way.
Black Lung Lyrics
Sign a petition under working condition
Union is in bed with the coal operators
Carry our freedom, looking for something
To get your family a better life for every single day
Some things keep me going
Well I got no one to blame
Five o'clock is comin'
Do you feel the same?
When a lonely whistle
Calls out your name?
All the men look the same
When they come out the mine
No prejudice for the mighty black lung
Rank and file workers, rank and file minds
Take off the gloves and sock it to 'em
Some things keep me going
Well I got no one to blame
Five o'clock is comin'
Do you feel the same?
When a lonely whistle
Calls out your name?
Hey unbeliever (Hey)
Black lung fever (Hey)
Transmit receiver (Hey)
Stand up deceiver (Hey)
Well I don't like it either (Hey)
No predjucide for the Black lung fever(no)
Some things keep me going
Well I got no one to blame
Five o'clock is comin'
Do you feel the same?
When a lonely whistle
Calls out your name
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
Markin comment:
I can add nothing here to the song, except that the struggle portrayed in the accompanying film review on this date, "Harlan County, U.S.A.", brings that safety issue home in a very big way.
Black Lung Lyrics
Sign a petition under working condition
Union is in bed with the coal operators
Carry our freedom, looking for something
To get your family a better life for every single day
Some things keep me going
Well I got no one to blame
Five o'clock is comin'
Do you feel the same?
When a lonely whistle
Calls out your name?
All the men look the same
When they come out the mine
No prejudice for the mighty black lung
Rank and file workers, rank and file minds
Take off the gloves and sock it to 'em
Some things keep me going
Well I got no one to blame
Five o'clock is comin'
Do you feel the same?
When a lonely whistle
Calls out your name?
Hey unbeliever (Hey)
Black lung fever (Hey)
Transmit receiver (Hey)
Stand up deceiver (Hey)
Well I don't like it either (Hey)
No predjucide for the Black lung fever(no)
Some things keep me going
Well I got no one to blame
Five o'clock is comin'
Do you feel the same?
When a lonely whistle
Calls out your name
Friday, September 23, 2011
“Yes, Now Is The Time For Your Tears.”-Troy Davis, R.I.P. - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!-Never Forget- A Short Additional Note
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Troy Anthony Davis and information on his case.
"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."
last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963
Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):
Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.
On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.
Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:
No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!
"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."
last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963
Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):
Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.
On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.
Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:
No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!
"Yes, Now Is The Time For Your Tears"- Photos Of Boston Protest Of The Execution Of Troy Davis By The State Of Georgia -Including His Last Statement To Supporters-Down With The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!
Click on the headline to link to a Boston IndyMedia entry for a post-execution protest, on September 22, 2011 at Copley Square in Boston, of the execution of Troy Anthony Davis by the State Of Georgia.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)-"Resolution On The Situation In Poland"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*******
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*******
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts.
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Interview with Karl Marx-by H.-Chicago Tribune, January 5 1879
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America (algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Internet Archive
Interview with Karl Marx-by H.-Chicago Tribune, January 5 1879
London, December 18 [1878] – In a little villa at Haverstock Hill, the northwest portion of London, lives Karl Marx, the cornerstone of modern socialism. He was exiled from his native country – Germany – in 1844, for propagating revolutionary theories. In 1848, he returned, but in a few months was again exiled. He then took up his abode in Paris, but his political theories procured his expulsion from that city in 1849, and since that year his headquarters have been in London. His convictions have caused him trouble from the beginning. Judging from the appearance of his home, they certainly have not brought him affluence. Persistently during all these years he has advocated his views with an earnestness which undoubtedly springs from a firm belief in them, and, however much we may deprecate their propagation, we cannot but respect to a certain extent the self-denial of the now venerable exile.
Our correspondent has called upon him twice or thrice, and each time the Doctor was found in his library, with a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He must be over seventy years of age.[18] His physique is well knit, massive, erect. He has the head of a man of intellect, and the features of a cultivated Jew. His hair and beard are long, and iron-gray in color. His eyes are glittering black, shaded by a pair of bushy eyebrows. To a stranger he shows extreme caution. A foreigner can generally gain admission; but the ancient-looking German woman [Helene Demuth] who waits upon visitors has instructions to admit none who hail from the Fatherland, unless they bring letters of introduction. Once into his library, however, and having fixed his one eyeglass in the corner of his eye, in order to take your intellectual breadth and depth, so to speak, he loses that self-restraint, and unfolds to you a knowledge of men and things throughout the world apt to interest one. And his conversation does not run in one groove, but is as varied as are the volumes upon his library shelves. A man can generally be judged by the books he reads, and you can form your own conclusions when I tell you a casual glance revealed Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Moliere, Racine, Montaigne, Bacon, Goethe, Voltaire, Paine; English, American, French blue books; works political and philosophical in Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, etc., etc. During my conversation I was struck with
His Intimacy with American Questions which have been uppermost during the past twenty years. His knowledge of them, and the surprising accuracy with which he criticized our national and state legislation, impressed upon my mind the fact that he must have derived his information from inside sources.[19] But, indeed, this knowledge is not confined to America, but is spread over the face of Europe. When speaking of his hobby – socialism – he does not indulge in those melodramatic flights generally attributed to him, but dwells upon his utopian plans for “the emancipation of the human race” with a gravity and an earnestness indicating a firm conviction in the realization of his theories, if not in this century, at least in the next.
Perhaps Dr. Karl Marx is better known in America as the author of Capital, and the founder of the International Society, or at least its most prominent pillar. In the interview which follows, you will see what he says of this Society as it at present exists. However, in the meantime I will give you a few extracts from the printed general rules of The International Society published in 1871, by order of the General Council, from which you can form an impartial judgment of its aims and ends. The Preamble sets forth “that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule; that the economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor – that is, the sources of life – lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence; that all efforts aiming at” the universal emancipation of the working classes “have hitherto failed from want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each country,” and the Preamble calls for “the immediate combination of the still-disconnected movements.” It goes on to say that the International Association acknowledges “no rights without duties, no duties without rights” – thus making every member a worker. the Association was formed at London “to afford a central medium of communication and cooperation between the workingmen’s societies in the different countries,” aiming at the same end, namely: “the protection, advancement, and complete emancipation of the working classes.” “Each member,” the document further says, “of the International Association, on removing his domicile from one country to another, will receive the fraternal support of the associated workingmen."
The Society Consists of a general Congress, which meets annually, a general Council, which forms “an international agency between the different national and local groups of the Association, so that the workingmen in one country can be constantly informed of the movements of their class in every other country." This Council receives and acts upon the applications of new branches or sections to join the International, decides differences arising between the sections, and, in fact, to use an American phrase, “runs the machine." The expenses of the General Council are defrayed by an annual contribution of an English penny per member. Then come the federal councils or committees, and local sections, in the various countries. The federal councils are bound to send one report at least every month to the General Council, and every three months a report on the administration and financial state of their respective branches. whenever attacks against the International are published, the nearest branch or committee is bound to send at once a copy of such publication to the General Council. The formation of female branches among the working classes is recommended.
The General Council comprises the following: R. Applegarth, M.T. Boon, Frederick Bradnick, G.H. Buttery, E. Delahaye, Eugene Dupont (on mission), William Hales, G. Harris, Hurliman, Jules Johannard, Harriet Law, Frederick Lessner, Lochner, Charles Longuet, C. Martin, Zevy Maurice, Henry Mayo, George Milner, Charles Murray, Pfander, John Pach, Ruhl Sadler, Cowell Stepney, Alfred Taylor, W. Townshend, E. Vaillant, John Weston. The corresponding secretaries for the various countries are: Leo Frankel, for Austria and Hungary; A. Herman, Belgium; T. Mottershead, Denmark; A. Serrailler, France; Karl Marx, Germany and Russia; Charles Rochat, Holland; J.P. McDonell, Ireland; Frederick Engels, Italy and Spain; Walery Wroblewski, Poland; Hermann Jung, Switzerland; J.G. Eccarius, United States; Le Moussu, for French branches of United States.
During my visit to Dr. Marx, I alluded to the platform given by J.C. Bancroft Davis in his official report of 1877 as the clearest and most concise exposition of socialism that I had seen.[20] He said it was taken from the report of the socialist reunion at Gotha, Germany, in May, 1875. The translation was incorrect, he said, and he Volunteered Corrections which I append as he dictated:[21]
First: Universal, direct, and secret suffrage for all males over twenty years, for all elections, municipal and state.
Second: Direct legislation by the people.[22] War and peace to be made by direct popular vote.
Third: Universal obligation to militia duty. No standing army.
Fourth: Abolition of all special legislation regarding press laws and public meetings.
Fifth: Legal remedies free of expense. Legal proceedings to be conducted by the people.
Sixth: Education to be by the state – general, obligatory, and free. Freedom of science and religion.[23]
Seventh: All indirect taxes to be abolished. Money to be raised for state and municipal purposes by direct progressive income tax.
Eighth: Freedom of combination among the working classes.
Ninth: The legal day of labor for men to be defined. The work of women to be limited, and that of children to be abolished.
Tenth: Sanitary laws for the protection of life and health of laborers, and regulation of their dwelling and places of labor, to be enforced by persons selected by them.
Eleventh: Suitable provision respecting prison labor. In Mr. Bancroft Davis’ report there is
A Twelfth Clause[24], the most important of all, which reads: “State aid and credit for industrial societies, under democratic direction.” I asked the Doctor why he omitted this, and he replied:
“When the reunion took place at Gotha, in 1875, there existed a division among the Social Democrats. The one wing were partisans of Lassalle, the others those who had accepted in general the program of the International organization, and were called the Eisenach party. The twelfth point was not placed on the platform, but placed in the general introduction by way of concession to the Lassallians. Afterwards it was never spoken of. Mr. Davis does not say that is was placed in the program as a compromise having no particular significance, but gravely puts it in as one of the cardinal principles of the program.”[25]
“But,” I said, “socialists generally look upon the transformation of the means of labor into the common property of society as the grand climax of the movement.”
“Yes; we say that this will be the outcome of the movement, but it will be a question of time, of education, and the institution of higher social status.”
“This platform,” I remarked, “applies only to Germany and one or two other countries.”
“Ah!” he returned, “if you draw your conclusions from nothing but this, you know nothing of the activity of the party. Many of its points have no significance outside of Germany. Spain, Russia, England, and America have platforms suited to their peculiar difficulties. The only similarity in them is the end to be attained.”
“And that is the supremacy of labor?”
“That is the Emancipation of Labor”
“Do European socialists look upon the movement in America as a serious one?”
“Yes: it is the natural outcome of the country’s development. It has been said that the movement has been imported by foreigners. When labor movements became disagreeable in England, fifty years ago, the same thing was said; and that was long before socialism was spoken of. In American, since 1857, only has the labor movement become conspicuous.[26] Then trade unions began to flourish; then trades assemblies were formed, in which the workers in different industries united; and after that came national labor unions. If you consider this chronological progress, you will see that socialism has sprung up in that country without the aid of foreigners, and was merely caused by the concentration of capital and the changed relations between the workmen and employers.”
“Now,” asked our correspondent, “what has socialism done so far?”
“Two things,” he returned. “Socialists have shown the general universal struggle between capital and labor – The Cosmopolitan Chapter in one word – and consequently tried to bring about an understanding between the workmen in the different countries, which became more necessary as the capitalists became more cosmopolitan in hiring labor, pitting foreign against native labor not only in America, but in England, France, and Germany. International relations sprang up at once between workingmen in the three different countries, showing that socialism was not merely a local, but an international problem, to be solved by the international action of workmen. The working classes move spontaneously, without knowing what the ends of the movement will be. The socialists invent no movement, but merely tell the workmen what its character and its ends will be.”
“Which means the overthrowing of the present social system,” I interrupted.
“This system of land and capital in the hands of employers, on the one hand,” he continued, “and the mere working power in the hands of the laborers to sell a commodity, we claim is merely a historical phase, which will pass away and give place to A Higher Social Condition.
We see everywhere a division of society. The antagonism of the two classes goes hand in hand with the development of the industrial resources of modern countries. From a socialistic standpoint the means already exist to revolutionize the present historical phase. Upon trade unions, in many countries, have been built political organizations. In America the need of an independent workingmen’s party has been made manifest. They can no longer trust politicians. Rings and cliques have seized upon the legislatures, and politics has been made a trade. But America is not alone in this, only its people are more decisive than Europeans. Things come to the surface quicker. There is less cant and hypocrisy that there is on this side of the ocean.”
I asked him to give me a reason for the rapid growth of the socialistic party in Germany, when he replied:
“The present socialistic party came last. Theirs was not the utopian scheme which made headway in France and England. The German mind is given to theorizing, more than that of other peoples. From previous experience the Germans evolved something practical. This modern capitalistic system, you must recollect, is quite new in Germany in comparison to other states. Questions were raised which had become almost antiquated in France and England, and political influences to which these states had yielded sprang into life when the working classes of Germany had become imbued with socialistic theories. therefore, from the beginning almost of modern industrial development, they have formed an Independent Political Party.
They had their own representatives in the German parliament. There was no party to oppose the policy of the government, and this devolved upon them. To trace the course of the party would take a long time; but I may say this: that, if the middle classes of Germany were not the greatest cowards, distinct from the middle classes of America and England, all the political work against the government should have been done by them.”
I asked him a question regarding the numerical strength of the Lassallians in the ranks of the Internationalists.
“The party of Lassalle,” he replied, “does not exist. Of course there are some believers in our ranks, but the number is small. Lassalle anticipated our general principles. When he commenced to move after the reaction of 1848, he fancied that he could more successfully revive the movement by advocating cooperation of the workingmen in industrial enterprises. It was to stir them into activity. He looked upon this merely as a means to the real end of the movement. I have letters from him to this effect.”[27]
“You would call it his nostrum?”[28]
“Exactly. He called upon Bismarck, told him what he designed, and Bismarck encouraged Lassalle’s course at that time in every possible way.”
“What was his object?”
“He wished to use the working classes as a set-off against the middle classes who instigated the troubles of 1848.”
“It is said that you are the head and front of socialism, Doctor, and from your villa here pull the wires of all the associations, revolutions, etc., now going on. What do you say about it?”
The old gentleman smiled: “I know it.”
“It Is Very Absurd yet it has a comic side. For two months previous to the attempt of Hoedel, Bismarck complained in his North German Gazette that I was in league with Father Beck, the leader of the Jesuit movement, and that we were keeping the socialist movement in such a condition that he could do nothing with it.”
“But your International Society in London directs the movement?”
“The International Society has outlived its usefulness and exists no longer.[29] It did exist and direct the movement; but the growth of socialism of late years has been so great that its existence has become unnecessary. Newspapers have been started in the various countries. These are interchanged. That is about the only connection the parties in the different countries have with one another. The International Society, in the first instance, was created to bring the workmen together, and show the advisability of effecting organization among their various nationalities. The interests of each party in the different countries have no similarity. This specter of the Internationalist leaders sitting at London is a mere invention. It is true that we dictated to foreign societies when the Internationalist organization was first accomplished. We were forced to exclude some sections in New York, among them one in which Madam Woodhull was conspicuous.[30] that was in 1871. there are several American politicians – I will not name them – who wish to trade in the movement. They are well known to American socialists.”
“You and your followers, Dr. Marx, have been credited with all sorts of incendiary speeches against religion. Of course you would like to see the whole system destroyed, root and branch.”
“We know,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation, “that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, Religion Will Disappear.
Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part.”
“The Reverend Joseph Cook,[31] of Boston – you know him –”
“We have heard of him, a very badly informed man upon the subject of socialism.”
“In a lecture lately upon the subject, he said, ‘Karl Marx is credited now with saying that, in the United States, and in Great Britain, and perhaps in France, a reform of labor will occur without bloody revolution, but that blood must be shed in Germany, and in Russia, and in Italy, and in Austria.’”
“No socialist,” remarked the Doctor, smiling, “need predict that there will be a bloody revolution in Russia, Germany, Austria, and possibly Italy if the Italians keep on in the policy they are now pursuing. The deeds of the French Revolution may be enacted again in those countries. That is apparent to any political student. But those revolutions will be made by the majority. No revolution can be made by a party, but By a Nation”.
“The reverend gentleman alluded to,” I remarked, “gave an extract from a letter which he said you addressed to the Communists of Paris in 1871. Here it is:
‘We are as yet but 3,000,000 at most. In twenty years we shall be 50,000,000 – 100,000,000 perhaps. Then the world will belong to us, for it will be not only Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, which will rise against odious capital, but Berlin, Munich, Dresden, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Brussels, St. Petersburg, New York – in short, the whole world. And before this new insurrection, such as history has not yet known, the past will disappear like a hideous nightmare; for the popular conflagration, kindled at a hundred points at once, will destroy even its memory!’
Now, Doctor, I suppose you admit the authorship of that extract?”
“I never wrote a word of it. I never write Such Melodramatic Nonsense.
I am very careful what I do write. That was put in Le Figaro, over my signature, about that time. There were hundreds of the same kind of letters flying about them. I wrote to the London Times and declared they were forgeries; but if I denied everything that has been said and written of me, I would require a score of secretaries.”
“But you have written in sympathy with the Paris Communists?”
“Certainly I have, in consideration of what was written of them in leading articles; but the correspondence from Paris in English papers is quite sufficient to refute the blunders propagated in editorials. The Commune killed only about sixty people; Marshal MacMahon and his slaughtering army killed over 60,000. There has never been a movement so slandered as that of the Commune.”
“Well, then, to carry out the principles of socialism do its believers advocate assassination and bloodshed?”
“No great movement,” Karl answered, “has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed.
“The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination,” he went on to say, “it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell. These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.”
I asked Dr. Marx What He Thought of Bismarck.
He replied that “Napoleon was considered a genius until he fell; then he was called a fool. Bismarck will follow in his wake. He began by building up a despotism under the plea of unification. his course has been plain to all. The last move is but an attempted imitation of a coup d’etat; but it will fail. The socialists of Germany, as of France, protested against the war of 1870 as merely dynastic. They issued manifestoes foretelling the German people, if they allowed the pretended war of defense to be turned into a war of conquest, they would be punished by the establishment of military despotism and the ruthless oppression of the productive masses. The Social-Democratic party in Germany, thereupon holding meetings and publishing manifestoes for an honorable peace with France, were at once prosecuted by the Prussian Government, and many of the leaders imprisoned. Still their deputies alone dared to protest, and very vigorously too, in the German Reichstag, against the forcible annexation of French provinces. However, Bismarck carried his policy by force, and people spoke of the genius of a Bismarck. The war was fought, and when he could make no conquests, he was called upon for original ideas, and he has signally failed. The people began to lose faith in him. His popularity was on the wane. He needs money, and the state needs it. Under a sham constitution he has taxed the people for his military and unification plans until he can tax them no longer, and now he seeks to do it with no constitution at all. For the purpose of levying as he chooses, he has raised the ghost of socialism,[32] and has done everything in his power To Create an Emeute.”
“You have continual advice from Berlin?”
“Yes,” he said; “my friends keep me well advised. It is in a perfectly quiet state, and Bismarck is disappointed. He has expelled forty-eight prominent men – among them Deputies Hasselman and Fritsche and Rackow, Bauman, and Adler, of the Freie Presse.[33] These men kept the workmen of Berlin quiet. Bismarck knew this. He also knew that there were 75,000 workmen in that city upon the verge of starvation. Once those leaders were gone, he was confident that the mob would rise, and that would be the cue for a carnival of slaughter. The screws would then be put upon the whole German Empire; his petty theory of blood and iron would then have full sway, and taxation could be levied to any extent. So far no emeute has occurred, and he stands today confounded at the situation and the ridicule of all statesmen.”
H.[34]
Transcribed in 1996 by Zodiac
Html Markup in 1999 by Brian Baggins.
Notes and Introduction added by Ellen Schwartz
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America (algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Internet Archive
Interview with Karl Marx-by H.-Chicago Tribune, January 5 1879
London, December 18 [1878] – In a little villa at Haverstock Hill, the northwest portion of London, lives Karl Marx, the cornerstone of modern socialism. He was exiled from his native country – Germany – in 1844, for propagating revolutionary theories. In 1848, he returned, but in a few months was again exiled. He then took up his abode in Paris, but his political theories procured his expulsion from that city in 1849, and since that year his headquarters have been in London. His convictions have caused him trouble from the beginning. Judging from the appearance of his home, they certainly have not brought him affluence. Persistently during all these years he has advocated his views with an earnestness which undoubtedly springs from a firm belief in them, and, however much we may deprecate their propagation, we cannot but respect to a certain extent the self-denial of the now venerable exile.
Our correspondent has called upon him twice or thrice, and each time the Doctor was found in his library, with a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He must be over seventy years of age.[18] His physique is well knit, massive, erect. He has the head of a man of intellect, and the features of a cultivated Jew. His hair and beard are long, and iron-gray in color. His eyes are glittering black, shaded by a pair of bushy eyebrows. To a stranger he shows extreme caution. A foreigner can generally gain admission; but the ancient-looking German woman [Helene Demuth] who waits upon visitors has instructions to admit none who hail from the Fatherland, unless they bring letters of introduction. Once into his library, however, and having fixed his one eyeglass in the corner of his eye, in order to take your intellectual breadth and depth, so to speak, he loses that self-restraint, and unfolds to you a knowledge of men and things throughout the world apt to interest one. And his conversation does not run in one groove, but is as varied as are the volumes upon his library shelves. A man can generally be judged by the books he reads, and you can form your own conclusions when I tell you a casual glance revealed Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Moliere, Racine, Montaigne, Bacon, Goethe, Voltaire, Paine; English, American, French blue books; works political and philosophical in Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, etc., etc. During my conversation I was struck with
His Intimacy with American Questions which have been uppermost during the past twenty years. His knowledge of them, and the surprising accuracy with which he criticized our national and state legislation, impressed upon my mind the fact that he must have derived his information from inside sources.[19] But, indeed, this knowledge is not confined to America, but is spread over the face of Europe. When speaking of his hobby – socialism – he does not indulge in those melodramatic flights generally attributed to him, but dwells upon his utopian plans for “the emancipation of the human race” with a gravity and an earnestness indicating a firm conviction in the realization of his theories, if not in this century, at least in the next.
Perhaps Dr. Karl Marx is better known in America as the author of Capital, and the founder of the International Society, or at least its most prominent pillar. In the interview which follows, you will see what he says of this Society as it at present exists. However, in the meantime I will give you a few extracts from the printed general rules of The International Society published in 1871, by order of the General Council, from which you can form an impartial judgment of its aims and ends. The Preamble sets forth “that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule; that the economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor – that is, the sources of life – lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence; that all efforts aiming at” the universal emancipation of the working classes “have hitherto failed from want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each country,” and the Preamble calls for “the immediate combination of the still-disconnected movements.” It goes on to say that the International Association acknowledges “no rights without duties, no duties without rights” – thus making every member a worker. the Association was formed at London “to afford a central medium of communication and cooperation between the workingmen’s societies in the different countries,” aiming at the same end, namely: “the protection, advancement, and complete emancipation of the working classes.” “Each member,” the document further says, “of the International Association, on removing his domicile from one country to another, will receive the fraternal support of the associated workingmen."
The Society Consists of a general Congress, which meets annually, a general Council, which forms “an international agency between the different national and local groups of the Association, so that the workingmen in one country can be constantly informed of the movements of their class in every other country." This Council receives and acts upon the applications of new branches or sections to join the International, decides differences arising between the sections, and, in fact, to use an American phrase, “runs the machine." The expenses of the General Council are defrayed by an annual contribution of an English penny per member. Then come the federal councils or committees, and local sections, in the various countries. The federal councils are bound to send one report at least every month to the General Council, and every three months a report on the administration and financial state of their respective branches. whenever attacks against the International are published, the nearest branch or committee is bound to send at once a copy of such publication to the General Council. The formation of female branches among the working classes is recommended.
The General Council comprises the following: R. Applegarth, M.T. Boon, Frederick Bradnick, G.H. Buttery, E. Delahaye, Eugene Dupont (on mission), William Hales, G. Harris, Hurliman, Jules Johannard, Harriet Law, Frederick Lessner, Lochner, Charles Longuet, C. Martin, Zevy Maurice, Henry Mayo, George Milner, Charles Murray, Pfander, John Pach, Ruhl Sadler, Cowell Stepney, Alfred Taylor, W. Townshend, E. Vaillant, John Weston. The corresponding secretaries for the various countries are: Leo Frankel, for Austria and Hungary; A. Herman, Belgium; T. Mottershead, Denmark; A. Serrailler, France; Karl Marx, Germany and Russia; Charles Rochat, Holland; J.P. McDonell, Ireland; Frederick Engels, Italy and Spain; Walery Wroblewski, Poland; Hermann Jung, Switzerland; J.G. Eccarius, United States; Le Moussu, for French branches of United States.
During my visit to Dr. Marx, I alluded to the platform given by J.C. Bancroft Davis in his official report of 1877 as the clearest and most concise exposition of socialism that I had seen.[20] He said it was taken from the report of the socialist reunion at Gotha, Germany, in May, 1875. The translation was incorrect, he said, and he Volunteered Corrections which I append as he dictated:[21]
First: Universal, direct, and secret suffrage for all males over twenty years, for all elections, municipal and state.
Second: Direct legislation by the people.[22] War and peace to be made by direct popular vote.
Third: Universal obligation to militia duty. No standing army.
Fourth: Abolition of all special legislation regarding press laws and public meetings.
Fifth: Legal remedies free of expense. Legal proceedings to be conducted by the people.
Sixth: Education to be by the state – general, obligatory, and free. Freedom of science and religion.[23]
Seventh: All indirect taxes to be abolished. Money to be raised for state and municipal purposes by direct progressive income tax.
Eighth: Freedom of combination among the working classes.
Ninth: The legal day of labor for men to be defined. The work of women to be limited, and that of children to be abolished.
Tenth: Sanitary laws for the protection of life and health of laborers, and regulation of their dwelling and places of labor, to be enforced by persons selected by them.
Eleventh: Suitable provision respecting prison labor. In Mr. Bancroft Davis’ report there is
A Twelfth Clause[24], the most important of all, which reads: “State aid and credit for industrial societies, under democratic direction.” I asked the Doctor why he omitted this, and he replied:
“When the reunion took place at Gotha, in 1875, there existed a division among the Social Democrats. The one wing were partisans of Lassalle, the others those who had accepted in general the program of the International organization, and were called the Eisenach party. The twelfth point was not placed on the platform, but placed in the general introduction by way of concession to the Lassallians. Afterwards it was never spoken of. Mr. Davis does not say that is was placed in the program as a compromise having no particular significance, but gravely puts it in as one of the cardinal principles of the program.”[25]
“But,” I said, “socialists generally look upon the transformation of the means of labor into the common property of society as the grand climax of the movement.”
“Yes; we say that this will be the outcome of the movement, but it will be a question of time, of education, and the institution of higher social status.”
“This platform,” I remarked, “applies only to Germany and one or two other countries.”
“Ah!” he returned, “if you draw your conclusions from nothing but this, you know nothing of the activity of the party. Many of its points have no significance outside of Germany. Spain, Russia, England, and America have platforms suited to their peculiar difficulties. The only similarity in them is the end to be attained.”
“And that is the supremacy of labor?”
“That is the Emancipation of Labor”
“Do European socialists look upon the movement in America as a serious one?”
“Yes: it is the natural outcome of the country’s development. It has been said that the movement has been imported by foreigners. When labor movements became disagreeable in England, fifty years ago, the same thing was said; and that was long before socialism was spoken of. In American, since 1857, only has the labor movement become conspicuous.[26] Then trade unions began to flourish; then trades assemblies were formed, in which the workers in different industries united; and after that came national labor unions. If you consider this chronological progress, you will see that socialism has sprung up in that country without the aid of foreigners, and was merely caused by the concentration of capital and the changed relations between the workmen and employers.”
“Now,” asked our correspondent, “what has socialism done so far?”
“Two things,” he returned. “Socialists have shown the general universal struggle between capital and labor – The Cosmopolitan Chapter in one word – and consequently tried to bring about an understanding between the workmen in the different countries, which became more necessary as the capitalists became more cosmopolitan in hiring labor, pitting foreign against native labor not only in America, but in England, France, and Germany. International relations sprang up at once between workingmen in the three different countries, showing that socialism was not merely a local, but an international problem, to be solved by the international action of workmen. The working classes move spontaneously, without knowing what the ends of the movement will be. The socialists invent no movement, but merely tell the workmen what its character and its ends will be.”
“Which means the overthrowing of the present social system,” I interrupted.
“This system of land and capital in the hands of employers, on the one hand,” he continued, “and the mere working power in the hands of the laborers to sell a commodity, we claim is merely a historical phase, which will pass away and give place to A Higher Social Condition.
We see everywhere a division of society. The antagonism of the two classes goes hand in hand with the development of the industrial resources of modern countries. From a socialistic standpoint the means already exist to revolutionize the present historical phase. Upon trade unions, in many countries, have been built political organizations. In America the need of an independent workingmen’s party has been made manifest. They can no longer trust politicians. Rings and cliques have seized upon the legislatures, and politics has been made a trade. But America is not alone in this, only its people are more decisive than Europeans. Things come to the surface quicker. There is less cant and hypocrisy that there is on this side of the ocean.”
I asked him to give me a reason for the rapid growth of the socialistic party in Germany, when he replied:
“The present socialistic party came last. Theirs was not the utopian scheme which made headway in France and England. The German mind is given to theorizing, more than that of other peoples. From previous experience the Germans evolved something practical. This modern capitalistic system, you must recollect, is quite new in Germany in comparison to other states. Questions were raised which had become almost antiquated in France and England, and political influences to which these states had yielded sprang into life when the working classes of Germany had become imbued with socialistic theories. therefore, from the beginning almost of modern industrial development, they have formed an Independent Political Party.
They had their own representatives in the German parliament. There was no party to oppose the policy of the government, and this devolved upon them. To trace the course of the party would take a long time; but I may say this: that, if the middle classes of Germany were not the greatest cowards, distinct from the middle classes of America and England, all the political work against the government should have been done by them.”
I asked him a question regarding the numerical strength of the Lassallians in the ranks of the Internationalists.
“The party of Lassalle,” he replied, “does not exist. Of course there are some believers in our ranks, but the number is small. Lassalle anticipated our general principles. When he commenced to move after the reaction of 1848, he fancied that he could more successfully revive the movement by advocating cooperation of the workingmen in industrial enterprises. It was to stir them into activity. He looked upon this merely as a means to the real end of the movement. I have letters from him to this effect.”[27]
“You would call it his nostrum?”[28]
“Exactly. He called upon Bismarck, told him what he designed, and Bismarck encouraged Lassalle’s course at that time in every possible way.”
“What was his object?”
“He wished to use the working classes as a set-off against the middle classes who instigated the troubles of 1848.”
“It is said that you are the head and front of socialism, Doctor, and from your villa here pull the wires of all the associations, revolutions, etc., now going on. What do you say about it?”
The old gentleman smiled: “I know it.”
“It Is Very Absurd yet it has a comic side. For two months previous to the attempt of Hoedel, Bismarck complained in his North German Gazette that I was in league with Father Beck, the leader of the Jesuit movement, and that we were keeping the socialist movement in such a condition that he could do nothing with it.”
“But your International Society in London directs the movement?”
“The International Society has outlived its usefulness and exists no longer.[29] It did exist and direct the movement; but the growth of socialism of late years has been so great that its existence has become unnecessary. Newspapers have been started in the various countries. These are interchanged. That is about the only connection the parties in the different countries have with one another. The International Society, in the first instance, was created to bring the workmen together, and show the advisability of effecting organization among their various nationalities. The interests of each party in the different countries have no similarity. This specter of the Internationalist leaders sitting at London is a mere invention. It is true that we dictated to foreign societies when the Internationalist organization was first accomplished. We were forced to exclude some sections in New York, among them one in which Madam Woodhull was conspicuous.[30] that was in 1871. there are several American politicians – I will not name them – who wish to trade in the movement. They are well known to American socialists.”
“You and your followers, Dr. Marx, have been credited with all sorts of incendiary speeches against religion. Of course you would like to see the whole system destroyed, root and branch.”
“We know,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation, “that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, Religion Will Disappear.
Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part.”
“The Reverend Joseph Cook,[31] of Boston – you know him –”
“We have heard of him, a very badly informed man upon the subject of socialism.”
“In a lecture lately upon the subject, he said, ‘Karl Marx is credited now with saying that, in the United States, and in Great Britain, and perhaps in France, a reform of labor will occur without bloody revolution, but that blood must be shed in Germany, and in Russia, and in Italy, and in Austria.’”
“No socialist,” remarked the Doctor, smiling, “need predict that there will be a bloody revolution in Russia, Germany, Austria, and possibly Italy if the Italians keep on in the policy they are now pursuing. The deeds of the French Revolution may be enacted again in those countries. That is apparent to any political student. But those revolutions will be made by the majority. No revolution can be made by a party, but By a Nation”.
“The reverend gentleman alluded to,” I remarked, “gave an extract from a letter which he said you addressed to the Communists of Paris in 1871. Here it is:
‘We are as yet but 3,000,000 at most. In twenty years we shall be 50,000,000 – 100,000,000 perhaps. Then the world will belong to us, for it will be not only Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, which will rise against odious capital, but Berlin, Munich, Dresden, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Brussels, St. Petersburg, New York – in short, the whole world. And before this new insurrection, such as history has not yet known, the past will disappear like a hideous nightmare; for the popular conflagration, kindled at a hundred points at once, will destroy even its memory!’
Now, Doctor, I suppose you admit the authorship of that extract?”
“I never wrote a word of it. I never write Such Melodramatic Nonsense.
I am very careful what I do write. That was put in Le Figaro, over my signature, about that time. There were hundreds of the same kind of letters flying about them. I wrote to the London Times and declared they were forgeries; but if I denied everything that has been said and written of me, I would require a score of secretaries.”
“But you have written in sympathy with the Paris Communists?”
“Certainly I have, in consideration of what was written of them in leading articles; but the correspondence from Paris in English papers is quite sufficient to refute the blunders propagated in editorials. The Commune killed only about sixty people; Marshal MacMahon and his slaughtering army killed over 60,000. There has never been a movement so slandered as that of the Commune.”
“Well, then, to carry out the principles of socialism do its believers advocate assassination and bloodshed?”
“No great movement,” Karl answered, “has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed.
“The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination,” he went on to say, “it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell. These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.”
I asked Dr. Marx What He Thought of Bismarck.
He replied that “Napoleon was considered a genius until he fell; then he was called a fool. Bismarck will follow in his wake. He began by building up a despotism under the plea of unification. his course has been plain to all. The last move is but an attempted imitation of a coup d’etat; but it will fail. The socialists of Germany, as of France, protested against the war of 1870 as merely dynastic. They issued manifestoes foretelling the German people, if they allowed the pretended war of defense to be turned into a war of conquest, they would be punished by the establishment of military despotism and the ruthless oppression of the productive masses. The Social-Democratic party in Germany, thereupon holding meetings and publishing manifestoes for an honorable peace with France, were at once prosecuted by the Prussian Government, and many of the leaders imprisoned. Still their deputies alone dared to protest, and very vigorously too, in the German Reichstag, against the forcible annexation of French provinces. However, Bismarck carried his policy by force, and people spoke of the genius of a Bismarck. The war was fought, and when he could make no conquests, he was called upon for original ideas, and he has signally failed. The people began to lose faith in him. His popularity was on the wane. He needs money, and the state needs it. Under a sham constitution he has taxed the people for his military and unification plans until he can tax them no longer, and now he seeks to do it with no constitution at all. For the purpose of levying as he chooses, he has raised the ghost of socialism,[32] and has done everything in his power To Create an Emeute.”
“You have continual advice from Berlin?”
“Yes,” he said; “my friends keep me well advised. It is in a perfectly quiet state, and Bismarck is disappointed. He has expelled forty-eight prominent men – among them Deputies Hasselman and Fritsche and Rackow, Bauman, and Adler, of the Freie Presse.[33] These men kept the workmen of Berlin quiet. Bismarck knew this. He also knew that there were 75,000 workmen in that city upon the verge of starvation. Once those leaders were gone, he was confident that the mob would rise, and that would be the cue for a carnival of slaughter. The screws would then be put upon the whole German Empire; his petty theory of blood and iron would then have full sway, and taxation could be levied to any extent. So far no emeute has occurred, and he stands today confounded at the situation and the ridicule of all statesmen.”
H.[34]
Transcribed in 1996 by Zodiac
Html Markup in 1999 by Brian Baggins.
Notes and Introduction added by Ellen Schwartz
The Latest From “The International Marxist Tendency” Website
Click on to the headline to link to the latest from the International Marxist Tendency website.
Markin comment:
More often than not I disagree with the line of the IMT or its analysis(mainly I do not believe their political analysis leads to adequate programmatically-based conclusions, revolutionary conclusions in any case), nevertheless, they provide interesting material, especially from areas, “third world” areas, where it is hard to get any kind of information (for our purposes). Read the material from this site.
Markin comment:
More often than not I disagree with the line of the IMT or its analysis(mainly I do not believe their political analysis leads to adequate programmatically-based conclusions, revolutionary conclusions in any case), nevertheless, they provide interesting material, especially from areas, “third world” areas, where it is hard to get any kind of information (for our purposes). Read the material from this site.
***An Exercise In Historical Materialism- E. P. Thompson’s “The Making Of The English Working Class”- A Book Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the British Marxist historian E.P. Thompson.
Book Review
The Making Of The English Working Class, E.P. Thompson, Vintage Books, New York, 1966
One of the working premises of historical materialism, simply and hopefully not too simply put, is that it is necessary to see historical phenomena not merely in immediate observable isolation but also in reference to the past events that formed the “pre-history” of the event observed, the current strands that make up the phenomena, and some future projections of what those events mean as the next stage begins to unfold. The making, and unmaking of classes, especially of the modern industrial working class where there is enough written material to make some reasonably judgments is particularly suited to an analysis using the methodology of historical materialism. And old-time British Marxist (and former British Communist Party member) did just that feat in bringing the social, political, economic, and, hell, even military strands that helped form the English working class, a class that proved to be the key catalyst and fore-running model for the industrial revolution in the West. Building off the work of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’s co-thinker, and others in the 19th century and early 20th century Thompson has looked to the other, more then current sources (1960s) to fill out a broader interpretation that Engels was able to provide.
Of course no subject as large as the making of a class in modern society is capable of being contained even in the eight hundred pages of Thompson’s work, a work that moreover concentrates on the late 18th century emergence of a genuine radical tradition in England and works it way through to the great Reform Bill of 1832. Nevertheless starting with the democratic plebeian response in England to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 Thompson brings to life the first stirrings of what Marx’s (and later Marxists like Lenin and Trotsky) termed the transformation of a variated, somewhat undifferentiated mass coming from many quarters of earlier rural society (farm hands, artisans, casual city laborers, lumpen elements, religious sects, etc), a class in itself, into a class for itself. A class with some class consciousness of “the other” to put it in neat sociological terms.
The key name to remember here is Thomas Paine who had his fingerprints over all kinds of plebeian political movements in Europe and America. The formation of pro-Jacobin clubs in England (the corresponding societies, of course, led by London’s) , their ups and downs, especially once one got outside of the major cities and at those time when the English government was actively confronting various stages of that French revolution militarily forms the first part of the book. A modern radical plebeian tradition is firmly entrenched, if sometimes of necessity forced underground, from that period.
In the second part of the book Thompson deals with the various social, political, economic and cultural trends from the late 18th century on which form the objective basis for the creation of a distinct working class as a result of the upheavals in the nature of work. What we call the Industrial Revolution with the coming of harnessing of steam power. One key point here is the role of Methodism (Wesleyism) and other fringe religious sects in gaining adherents who would be disciplined enough for the work, and sober enough too.
Naturally Thompson also takes up the intertwined issues of the great increase in capitalist farming for the market in the war years that left many “masterless” men (women and children too) available to form the factory labor pool. And from the other end the demise of small specialty shop-ownership and craft artisanship in the face of mass production, usually cheaper mass production, under the emerging factory system is given full coverage by Thompson. I might add that he also makes a useful corrective about the Luddite movement that raged for a short period in reaction to that factory system. It was not merely a machine-smashing retrograde reaction to downward mobility by those previously respected skilled artisans and displaced farm hands but a fight to maintain quality in the face of “shoddy” as well.
The final part of the book finds Thompson patching together the various post-Napoleonic movements toward working class organization once the “victory” of the factory system was apparent, particularly the struggles for trade union recognition and simple democratic rights like freedom of expression and of the press. The various responses by reformers, and so-called reformers, like the famous socialist-industrialist Robert Owens, also are given full play. The most important aspect addressed by Thompson in the period though was the on-going (and now neglected, or “hidden”) struggle between what we would today describe as “direct action” reformers (hell, revolutionaries) and “gradualists” (hell, reformers), most associated with the name of Corbett, who would leave the capitalist/monarchist system intact. Some things never change.
In any case this review is just a snapshot of all the important scholarship that E.P. Thompson provided under one cover. And since it has been some years since this work was first introduced in the 1960s I am sure that some young communist or other social activist could do some useful work bringing it even further up to date with the material uncovered since Thompson’s time.
Book Review
The Making Of The English Working Class, E.P. Thompson, Vintage Books, New York, 1966
One of the working premises of historical materialism, simply and hopefully not too simply put, is that it is necessary to see historical phenomena not merely in immediate observable isolation but also in reference to the past events that formed the “pre-history” of the event observed, the current strands that make up the phenomena, and some future projections of what those events mean as the next stage begins to unfold. The making, and unmaking of classes, especially of the modern industrial working class where there is enough written material to make some reasonably judgments is particularly suited to an analysis using the methodology of historical materialism. And old-time British Marxist (and former British Communist Party member) did just that feat in bringing the social, political, economic, and, hell, even military strands that helped form the English working class, a class that proved to be the key catalyst and fore-running model for the industrial revolution in the West. Building off the work of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’s co-thinker, and others in the 19th century and early 20th century Thompson has looked to the other, more then current sources (1960s) to fill out a broader interpretation that Engels was able to provide.
Of course no subject as large as the making of a class in modern society is capable of being contained even in the eight hundred pages of Thompson’s work, a work that moreover concentrates on the late 18th century emergence of a genuine radical tradition in England and works it way through to the great Reform Bill of 1832. Nevertheless starting with the democratic plebeian response in England to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 Thompson brings to life the first stirrings of what Marx’s (and later Marxists like Lenin and Trotsky) termed the transformation of a variated, somewhat undifferentiated mass coming from many quarters of earlier rural society (farm hands, artisans, casual city laborers, lumpen elements, religious sects, etc), a class in itself, into a class for itself. A class with some class consciousness of “the other” to put it in neat sociological terms.
The key name to remember here is Thomas Paine who had his fingerprints over all kinds of plebeian political movements in Europe and America. The formation of pro-Jacobin clubs in England (the corresponding societies, of course, led by London’s) , their ups and downs, especially once one got outside of the major cities and at those time when the English government was actively confronting various stages of that French revolution militarily forms the first part of the book. A modern radical plebeian tradition is firmly entrenched, if sometimes of necessity forced underground, from that period.
In the second part of the book Thompson deals with the various social, political, economic and cultural trends from the late 18th century on which form the objective basis for the creation of a distinct working class as a result of the upheavals in the nature of work. What we call the Industrial Revolution with the coming of harnessing of steam power. One key point here is the role of Methodism (Wesleyism) and other fringe religious sects in gaining adherents who would be disciplined enough for the work, and sober enough too.
Naturally Thompson also takes up the intertwined issues of the great increase in capitalist farming for the market in the war years that left many “masterless” men (women and children too) available to form the factory labor pool. And from the other end the demise of small specialty shop-ownership and craft artisanship in the face of mass production, usually cheaper mass production, under the emerging factory system is given full coverage by Thompson. I might add that he also makes a useful corrective about the Luddite movement that raged for a short period in reaction to that factory system. It was not merely a machine-smashing retrograde reaction to downward mobility by those previously respected skilled artisans and displaced farm hands but a fight to maintain quality in the face of “shoddy” as well.
The final part of the book finds Thompson patching together the various post-Napoleonic movements toward working class organization once the “victory” of the factory system was apparent, particularly the struggles for trade union recognition and simple democratic rights like freedom of expression and of the press. The various responses by reformers, and so-called reformers, like the famous socialist-industrialist Robert Owens, also are given full play. The most important aspect addressed by Thompson in the period though was the on-going (and now neglected, or “hidden”) struggle between what we would today describe as “direct action” reformers (hell, revolutionaries) and “gradualists” (hell, reformers), most associated with the name of Corbett, who would leave the capitalist/monarchist system intact. Some things never change.
In any case this review is just a snapshot of all the important scholarship that E.P. Thompson provided under one cover. And since it has been some years since this work was first introduced in the 1960s I am sure that some young communist or other social activist could do some useful work bringing it even further up to date with the material uncovered since Thompson’s time.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
“Yes, Now Is The Time For Your Tears.”-Troy Davis, R.I.P.- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!
Click on the headline to link to The New York Times online account, dated September 22, 2011, of the execution of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia, September 21, 2011.
"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."
last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll- Bob Dylan
, 1963
Markin comment:
Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.
On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.
"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."
last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll- Bob Dylan
, 1963
Markin comment:
Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.
On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)-"On The Greek Question"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts.
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Phil Och's "Hazard,Kentucky"
Click on the title to link to a site to hear Phil Och's Hazard, Kentucky.
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*******
Markin comment:
Of course this one has special meaning as my father was born and raised down in that country, coal country.
Hazard, Kentucky Lyrics
Artist(Band):Phil Ochs
Well, some people think that Unions are too strong,
Union leaders should go back where they belong;
But I wish that they could see a little more of poverty
And they might start to sing a different song.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin' for a Union that will care.
Well, let's look at old Kentucky for a while.
It's hard to find a miner who will smile.
Well, the Constitution's fine, but it's hard reading in the mines,
and when welfare stops, the trouble starts to pile.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin' for a Union that will care.
Well, the Depression was ended with the war,
But nobody told Kentucky, that is sure.
Some are living in a sewer while the jobs are getting fewer
But more coal is mined than ever was before.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin' for a Union that will care.
Well, the badge of Sheriff Combs always shines
And when duty calls he seldom ever whines.
Well, I don't like raisin' thunder, but it sort of makes you wonder
When he runs the law and also runs the mines.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin for a Union that will care.
Well, our standard of living is highest all around,
But our standard of giving is the lowest when you're down,
So give a yell and a whistle when they light that Union missile
And we'll lift our feet up off the ground.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin for a Union that will care.
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*******
Markin comment:
Of course this one has special meaning as my father was born and raised down in that country, coal country.
Hazard, Kentucky Lyrics
Artist(Band):Phil Ochs
Well, some people think that Unions are too strong,
Union leaders should go back where they belong;
But I wish that they could see a little more of poverty
And they might start to sing a different song.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin' for a Union that will care.
Well, let's look at old Kentucky for a while.
It's hard to find a miner who will smile.
Well, the Constitution's fine, but it's hard reading in the mines,
and when welfare stops, the trouble starts to pile.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin' for a Union that will care.
Well, the Depression was ended with the war,
But nobody told Kentucky, that is sure.
Some are living in a sewer while the jobs are getting fewer
But more coal is mined than ever was before.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin' for a Union that will care.
Well, the badge of Sheriff Combs always shines
And when duty calls he seldom ever whines.
Well, I don't like raisin' thunder, but it sort of makes you wonder
When he runs the law and also runs the mines.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin for a Union that will care.
Well, our standard of living is highest all around,
But our standard of giving is the lowest when you're down,
So give a yell and a whistle when they light that Union missile
And we'll lift our feet up off the ground.
Well, minin' is a hazard in Hazard, Kentucky,
And if you ain't minin' there,
Well, my friends, you're awful lucky,
'Cause if you don't get silicosis or pay that's just atrocious
You'll be screamin for a Union that will care.
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau-1875
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History Month
This post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America (algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1875
Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau-1875
Written: London, March 18-28, 1875;
First Published: A. Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, Part 2, Stuttgart, 1911;
Translated: Peter and Betty Ross;
Transcribed: Zodiac;
HTML Markup: S. Ryan and B. Baggins.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
London, March 18-28, 1875
Dear Bebel,
I have received your letter of February 23 and am glad to hear that you are in such good bodily health.
You ask me what we think of the unification affair. We are, unfortunately, in exactly the same boat as yourself. Neither Liebknecht nor anyone else has let us have any kind of information, and hence we too know only what is in the papers — not that there was anything in them until a week or so ago, when the draft programme appeared. That astonished us not a little, I must say.
Our party had so often held out a conciliatory hand to the Lassalleans, or at least proffered co-operation, only to be rebuffed so often and so contemptuously by the Hasenclevers, Hasselmanns and Tolckes as to lead any child to the conclusion that, should these gentlemen now come and themselves proffer conciliation, they must be in a hell of a dilemma. Knowing full well what these people are like, however, it behoves us to make the most of that dilemma and insist on every conceivable guarantee that might prevent these people from restoring, at our party’s expense, their shattered reputation in general working-class opinion. They should be given an exceedingly cool and cautious reception, and union be made dependent on the degree of their readiness to abandon their sectarian slogans and their state aid, [2] and to accept in its essentials the Eisenach Programme of 1869 [3] or an improved edition of it adapted to the present day. Our party has absolutely nothing to learn from the Lassalleans in the theoretical sphere, i.e. the crux of the matter where the programme is concerned, but the Lassalleans doubtless have something to learn from the party; the first prerequisite for union was that they cease to be sectarians, Lassalleans, i.e. that, first and foremost, they should, if not wholly relinquish the universal panacea of state aid, at least admit it to be a secondary provisional measure alongside and amongst many others recognised as possible. The draft programme shows that our people, while infinitely superior to the Lassallean leaders in matters of theory, are far from being a match for them where political guile is concerned; once again the “honest men” [4] have been cruelly done in the eye by the dishonest.
To begin with, they adopt the high-sounding but historically false Lassallean dictum: in relation to the working class all other classes are only one reactionary mass. This proposition is true only in certain exceptional instances, for example in the case of a revolution by the proletariat, e.g. the Commune, or in a country in which not only has the bourgeoisie constructed state and society after its own image but the democratic petty bourgeoisie, in its wake, has already carried that reconstruction to its logical conclusion. If, for instance, in Germany, the democratic petty bourgeoisie were part of this reactionary mass, then how could the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party have gone hand in hand with it, with the People’s Party, [5] for years on end? How could the Volksstaat derive virtually all its political content from the petty-bourgeois democratic Frankfurter Zeitung? And how can one explain the adoption in this same programme of no less than seven demands that coincide exactly and word for word with the programme of the People’s Party and of petty-bourgeois democracy? I mean the seven political demands, 1 to 5 and 1 to 2, of which there is not one that is not bourgeois-democratic. [6]
Secondly, the principle that the workers’ movement is an international one is, to all intents and purposes, utterly denied in respect of the present, and this by men who, for the space of five years and under the most difficult conditions, upheld that principle in the most laudable manner. The German workers’ position in the van of the European movement rests essentially on their genuinely international attitude during the war [7]; no other proletariat would have behaved so well. And now this principle is to be denied by them at a moment when, everywhere abroad, workers are stressing it all the more by reason of the efforts made by governments to suppress every attempt at its practical application in an organisation! And what is left of the internationalism of the workers’ movement? The dim prospect — not even of subsequent co-operation among European workers with a view to their liberation — nay, but of a future “international brotherhood of peoples” — of your Peace League bourgeois “United States of Europe"! [8]
There was, of course, no need whatever to mention the International as such. But at the very least there should have been no going back on the programme of 1869, and some sort of statement to the effect that, though first of all the German workers’ party is acting within the limits set by its political frontiers (it has no right to speak in the name of the European proletariat, especially when what it says is wrong), it is nevertheless conscious of its solidarity with the workers of all other countries and will, as before, always be ready to meet the obligations that solidarity entails. Such obligations, even if one does not definitely proclaim or regard oneself as part of the “International,” consist for example in aid, abstention from blacklegging during strikes, making sure that the party organs keep German workers informed of the movement abroad, agitation against impending or incipient dynastic wars and, during such wars, an attitude such as was exemplarily maintained in 1870 and 1871, etc.
Thirdly, our people have allowed themselves to be saddled with the Lassallean “iron law of wages” which is based on a completely outmoded economic view, namely that on average the workers receive only the minimum wage because, according to the Malthusian theory of population, there are always too many workers (such was Lassalle’s reasoning). Now in Capital Marx has amply demonstrated that the laws governing wages are very complex, that, according to circumstances, now this law, now that, holds sway, that they are therefore by no means iron but are, on the contrary, exceedingly elastic, and that the subject really cannot be dismissed in a few words, as Lassalle imagined. Malthus’ argument, upon which the law Lassalle derived from him and Ricardo (whom he misinterpreted) is based, as that argument appears, for instance, on p. 5 of the Arbeiterlesebuch, where it is quoted from another pamphlet of Lassalle’s, [9] is exhaustively refuted by Marx in the section on “Accumulation of Capital.” Thus, by adopting the Lassallean “iron law” one commits oneself to a false proposition and false reasoning in support of the same.
Fourthly, as its one and only social demand, the programme puts forward — Lassallean state aid in its starkest form, as stolen by Lassalle from Buchez. [10] And this, after Bracke has so ably demonstrated the sheer futility of that demand; after almost all if not all, of our party speakers have, in their struggle against the Lassalleans, been compelled to make a stand against this “state aid"! Our party could hardly demean itself further. Internationalism sunk to the level of Amand Goegg, socialism to that of the bourgeois republican Buchez, who confronted the socialists with this demand in order to supplant them!
But “state aid” in the Lassallean sense of the word is, after all, at most only one measure among many others for the attainment of an end here lamely described as “paving the way for the solution of the social question,” as though in our case there were still a social question that remained unsolved in theory! Thus, if you were to say: The German workers’ party strives to abolish wage labour and hence class distinctions by introducing co-operative production into industry and agriculture, and on a national scale; it is in favour of any measure calculated to attain that end! — then no Lassallean could possibly object.
Fifthly, there is absolutely no mention of the organisation of the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions. And that is a point of the utmost importance, this being the proletariat’s true class organisation in which it fights its daily battles with capital, in which it trains itself and which nowadays can no longer simply be smashed, even with reaction at its worst (as presently in Paris). Considering the importance this organisation is likewise assuming in Germany, it would in our view be indispensable to accord it some mention in the programme and, possibly, to leave some room for it in the organisation of the party.
All these things have been done by our people to oblige the Lassalleans. And what have the others conceded? That a host of somewhat muddled and purely democratic demands should figure in the programme, some of them being of a purely fashionable nature — for instance “legislation by the people” such as exists in Switzerland and does more harm than good, if it can be said to do anything at all. Administration by the people — that would at least be something. Similarly omitted is the first prerequisite of all liberty — that all officials be responsible for all their official actions to every citizen before the ordinary courts and in accordance with common law. That demands such as freedom of science and freedom of conscience figure in every liberal bourgeois programme and seem a trifle out of place here is something I shall not enlarge upon.
The free people’s state is transformed into the free state. Grammatically speaking, a free state is one in which the state is free vis-Ã -vis its citizens, a state, that is, with a despotic government. All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore suggest that Gemeinwesen ["commonalty"] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.”
"The elimination of all social and political inequality,” rather than “the abolition of all class distinctions,” is similarly a most dubious expression. As between one country, one province and even one place and another, living conditions will always evince a certain inequality which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated. The living conditions of Alpine dwellers will always be different from those of the plainsmen. The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French concept deriving from the old “liberty, equality, fraternity,” a concept which was justified in that, in its own time and place, it signified a phase of development, but which, like all the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded, since they produce nothing but mental confusion, and more accurate ways of presenting the matter have been discovered.
I shall desist, although almost every word in this programme, a programme which is, moreover, insipidly written, lays itself open to criticism. It is such that, should it be adopted, Marx and I could never recognise a new party set up on that basis and shall have to consider most seriously what attitude — public as well as private — we should adopt towards it. [11] Remember that abroad we are held responsible for any and every statement and action of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. E.g. by Bakunin in his work Statehood and Anarchy, in which we are made to answer for every injudicious word spoken or written by Liebknecht since the inception of the Demokratisches Wochenblatt. People imagine that we run the whole show from here, whereas you know as well as I do that we have hardly ever interfered in the least with internal party affairs, and then only in an attempt to make good, as far as possible, what we considered to have been blunders — and only theoretical blunders at that. But, as you yourself will realise, this programme marks a turning-point which may very well force us to renounce any kind of responsibility in regard to the party that adopts it.
Generally speaking, less importance attaches to the official programme of a party than to what it does. But a new programme is after all a banner planted in public, and the outside world judges the party by it. Hence, whatever happens there should be no going-back, as there is here, on the Eisenach programme. It should further be considered what the workers of other countries will think of this programme; what impression will be created by this genuflection on the part of the entire German socialist proletariat before Lassalleanism.
I am, moreover, convinced that a union on this basis would not last a year. Are the best minds of our party to descend to repeating, parrot-fashion, Lassallean maxims concerning the iron law of wages and state aid? I’d like to see you, for one, thus employed! And were they to do so, their audiences would hiss them off the stage. And I feel sure that it is precisely on these bits of the programme that the Lassalleans are insisting, like Shylock the Jew on his pound of flesh. The split will come; but we shall have “made honest men” again of Hasselmann, Hasenclever and Tolcke and Co.; we shall emerge from the split weaker and the Lassalleans stronger; our party will have lost its political virginity and will never again be able to come out whole-heartedly against the Lassallean maxims which for a time it inscribed on its own banner; and then, should the Lassalleans again declare themselves to be the sole and most genuine workers’ party and our people to be bourgeois, the programme would be there to prove it. All the socialist measures in it are theirs, and our party has introduced nothing save the demands of that petty-bourgeois democracy which it has itself described in that same programme as part of the “reactionary mass"!
I had held this letter back in view of the fact that you would only be released on April 1, in honour of Bismarck’s birthday, [12] not wanting to expose it to the risk of interception in the course of an attempt to smuggle it in. Well, I have just had a letter from Bracke, who has also felt grave doubts about the programme and asks for our opinion. I shall therefore send this letter to him for forwarding, so that he can read it without my having to write the whole thing over again. I have, by the way, also spoken my mind to Ramm; to Liebknecht I wrote but briefly. I cannot forgive his not having told us a single word about the whole business (whereas Ramm and others believed he had given us exact information) until it was, in a manner of speaking, too late. True, this has always been his wont — hence the large amount of disagreeable correspondence which we, both Marx and myself, have had with him, but this time it really is too bad, and we definitely shan’t act in concert with him.
Do see that you manage to come here in the summer; you would, of course, stay with me and, if the weather is fine, we might spend a day or two taking sea baths, which would really do you good after your long spell in jail.
Ever your friend,
F. E.
Marx has just moved house. He is living at 41 Maitland Park Crescent, NW London.
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Footnotes
1. Engels’ letter to August Bebel written between March 18 and 28, 1875 is closely connected with Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme and is traditionally published together with the latter work. It conveyed the joint opinion of Marx and Engels concerning the fusion of two German workers’ parties, the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans, scheduled for early 1875. The immediate reason for the letter was the publication of the draft programme of the future united Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (Programm der deutschen Arbeiterpartei) in Der Volksstaat (the organ of the Eisenachers) and the Neuer Social-Demokrat (the organ of the Lassalleans) on March 7, 1875. The draft programme was approved with slight changes by the unity congress at Gotha on May 22-27, 1875, and came to be known as the Gotha Programme.
This letter was first published by Bebel, after the lapse of 36 years, in his Aus meinem Leben, Zweiter Teil, Stuttgart, 1911. In the present edition the letter is printed according to this book.
It was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Lawrence, London [1933], pp. 51-62.
2. A reference to one of Lassalle’s programme theses on the establishment of workers’ producer associations with the aid of the state. Lassalle and his followers repeatedly emphasised that what they had in mind was a state in which power would pass into the hands of the working people through universal suffrage.
3. Engels is referring to the Programm und Statuten der sozial-demokratischen Arbeiter-Partei, adopted at the general German workers’ congress in Eisenach in August 1869 and published in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt on August 14, 1869. The congress founded the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany. By and large the programme complied with the principles of the International Working Men’s Association.
4. The "honest men” — nickname of the members of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (the Eisenachers), as distinct from the members of the General Association of German Workers (the Lassalleans), the “dishonest men.”
5. The German People’s Party, established in September 1868, embraced the democratic section of the bourgeoisie, mostly in the South-German states. The party opposed the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany and advocated the idea of a federative German state.
6. A reference to the following articles of the draft Gotha Programme:
"The German workers’ party demands as the free basis of the state:
"1. Universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot for all males who have reached the age of 21, for all elections in the state and in the community. 2. Direct legislation by the people with the right to initiate and to reject bills. 3. Universal military training. A people’s militia in place of the standing army. Decisions regarding war and peace to be taken by a representative assembly of the people. 4. Abolition of all exceptional laws, in particular the laws on the press, associations and assembly. 5. Jurisdiction by the people. Administration of justice without fees.
"The German workers’ party demands as the intellectual and moral basis of the state:
"1. Universal and equal education of the people by the state. Compulsory school attendance. Free instruction. 2. Freedom of science. Freedom of conscience."
7. The reference is to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
8. The League of Peace and Freedom — A pacifist organisation set up in Switzerland in 1867 with the active participation of Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Garibaldi and other democrats. The League asserted that it was possible to prevent wars by creating the “United States of Europe.” Its leaders did not disclose the social sources of wars and often confined anti-militarist activity to mere declarations. At the General Council meeting of August 13, 1867 Marx spoke against the International’s official participation in the League’s Inaugural Congress, since this would have meant solidarity with its bourgeois programme, but recommended that some members of the International should attend the Congress in their personal capacity in order to support revolutionary-democratic decisions (see Marx’s letter to Engels of September 4, 1867).
9. On page 5 of his Arbeiterlesebuch Lassalle quotes a passage about the “iron law of wages” from his pamphlet Offnes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Comite zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitercongresses zu Leipzig, Zurich, 1863, pp. 15-16.
10. Philippe Joseph Buchez, one of the first ideologists of the so-called Christian socialism, advanced a plan for the establishment of workers’ producer associations with the aid of the state.
11. On October 12, 1875 Engels wrote to Bebel concerning this programme that, since both workers and their political opponents “interpreted it communistically,” “it is this circumstance alone which has made it possible for Marx and myself not to disassociate ourselves publicly from a programme such as this. So long as our opponents as well as the workers continue to read our views into that programme, we are justified in saying nothing about it.”
12. In March 1872 August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht were sentenced to two years’ confinement in a fortress for their adhesion to the International Working Men’s Association and their socialist views. In April Bebel was sentenced, in addition, to nine months’ imprisonment and deprived of his mandate as a Reichstag member for “insulting His Majesty.” Liebknecht was released on April 15, 1874, while Bebel was freed on April 1, 1875.
Every Month Is Labor History Month
This post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America (algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
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Marx-Engels Correspondence 1875
Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau-1875
Written: London, March 18-28, 1875;
First Published: A. Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, Part 2, Stuttgart, 1911;
Translated: Peter and Betty Ross;
Transcribed: Zodiac;
HTML Markup: S. Ryan and B. Baggins.
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London, March 18-28, 1875
Dear Bebel,
I have received your letter of February 23 and am glad to hear that you are in such good bodily health.
You ask me what we think of the unification affair. We are, unfortunately, in exactly the same boat as yourself. Neither Liebknecht nor anyone else has let us have any kind of information, and hence we too know only what is in the papers — not that there was anything in them until a week or so ago, when the draft programme appeared. That astonished us not a little, I must say.
Our party had so often held out a conciliatory hand to the Lassalleans, or at least proffered co-operation, only to be rebuffed so often and so contemptuously by the Hasenclevers, Hasselmanns and Tolckes as to lead any child to the conclusion that, should these gentlemen now come and themselves proffer conciliation, they must be in a hell of a dilemma. Knowing full well what these people are like, however, it behoves us to make the most of that dilemma and insist on every conceivable guarantee that might prevent these people from restoring, at our party’s expense, their shattered reputation in general working-class opinion. They should be given an exceedingly cool and cautious reception, and union be made dependent on the degree of their readiness to abandon their sectarian slogans and their state aid, [2] and to accept in its essentials the Eisenach Programme of 1869 [3] or an improved edition of it adapted to the present day. Our party has absolutely nothing to learn from the Lassalleans in the theoretical sphere, i.e. the crux of the matter where the programme is concerned, but the Lassalleans doubtless have something to learn from the party; the first prerequisite for union was that they cease to be sectarians, Lassalleans, i.e. that, first and foremost, they should, if not wholly relinquish the universal panacea of state aid, at least admit it to be a secondary provisional measure alongside and amongst many others recognised as possible. The draft programme shows that our people, while infinitely superior to the Lassallean leaders in matters of theory, are far from being a match for them where political guile is concerned; once again the “honest men” [4] have been cruelly done in the eye by the dishonest.
To begin with, they adopt the high-sounding but historically false Lassallean dictum: in relation to the working class all other classes are only one reactionary mass. This proposition is true only in certain exceptional instances, for example in the case of a revolution by the proletariat, e.g. the Commune, or in a country in which not only has the bourgeoisie constructed state and society after its own image but the democratic petty bourgeoisie, in its wake, has already carried that reconstruction to its logical conclusion. If, for instance, in Germany, the democratic petty bourgeoisie were part of this reactionary mass, then how could the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party have gone hand in hand with it, with the People’s Party, [5] for years on end? How could the Volksstaat derive virtually all its political content from the petty-bourgeois democratic Frankfurter Zeitung? And how can one explain the adoption in this same programme of no less than seven demands that coincide exactly and word for word with the programme of the People’s Party and of petty-bourgeois democracy? I mean the seven political demands, 1 to 5 and 1 to 2, of which there is not one that is not bourgeois-democratic. [6]
Secondly, the principle that the workers’ movement is an international one is, to all intents and purposes, utterly denied in respect of the present, and this by men who, for the space of five years and under the most difficult conditions, upheld that principle in the most laudable manner. The German workers’ position in the van of the European movement rests essentially on their genuinely international attitude during the war [7]; no other proletariat would have behaved so well. And now this principle is to be denied by them at a moment when, everywhere abroad, workers are stressing it all the more by reason of the efforts made by governments to suppress every attempt at its practical application in an organisation! And what is left of the internationalism of the workers’ movement? The dim prospect — not even of subsequent co-operation among European workers with a view to their liberation — nay, but of a future “international brotherhood of peoples” — of your Peace League bourgeois “United States of Europe"! [8]
There was, of course, no need whatever to mention the International as such. But at the very least there should have been no going back on the programme of 1869, and some sort of statement to the effect that, though first of all the German workers’ party is acting within the limits set by its political frontiers (it has no right to speak in the name of the European proletariat, especially when what it says is wrong), it is nevertheless conscious of its solidarity with the workers of all other countries and will, as before, always be ready to meet the obligations that solidarity entails. Such obligations, even if one does not definitely proclaim or regard oneself as part of the “International,” consist for example in aid, abstention from blacklegging during strikes, making sure that the party organs keep German workers informed of the movement abroad, agitation against impending or incipient dynastic wars and, during such wars, an attitude such as was exemplarily maintained in 1870 and 1871, etc.
Thirdly, our people have allowed themselves to be saddled with the Lassallean “iron law of wages” which is based on a completely outmoded economic view, namely that on average the workers receive only the minimum wage because, according to the Malthusian theory of population, there are always too many workers (such was Lassalle’s reasoning). Now in Capital Marx has amply demonstrated that the laws governing wages are very complex, that, according to circumstances, now this law, now that, holds sway, that they are therefore by no means iron but are, on the contrary, exceedingly elastic, and that the subject really cannot be dismissed in a few words, as Lassalle imagined. Malthus’ argument, upon which the law Lassalle derived from him and Ricardo (whom he misinterpreted) is based, as that argument appears, for instance, on p. 5 of the Arbeiterlesebuch, where it is quoted from another pamphlet of Lassalle’s, [9] is exhaustively refuted by Marx in the section on “Accumulation of Capital.” Thus, by adopting the Lassallean “iron law” one commits oneself to a false proposition and false reasoning in support of the same.
Fourthly, as its one and only social demand, the programme puts forward — Lassallean state aid in its starkest form, as stolen by Lassalle from Buchez. [10] And this, after Bracke has so ably demonstrated the sheer futility of that demand; after almost all if not all, of our party speakers have, in their struggle against the Lassalleans, been compelled to make a stand against this “state aid"! Our party could hardly demean itself further. Internationalism sunk to the level of Amand Goegg, socialism to that of the bourgeois republican Buchez, who confronted the socialists with this demand in order to supplant them!
But “state aid” in the Lassallean sense of the word is, after all, at most only one measure among many others for the attainment of an end here lamely described as “paving the way for the solution of the social question,” as though in our case there were still a social question that remained unsolved in theory! Thus, if you were to say: The German workers’ party strives to abolish wage labour and hence class distinctions by introducing co-operative production into industry and agriculture, and on a national scale; it is in favour of any measure calculated to attain that end! — then no Lassallean could possibly object.
Fifthly, there is absolutely no mention of the organisation of the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions. And that is a point of the utmost importance, this being the proletariat’s true class organisation in which it fights its daily battles with capital, in which it trains itself and which nowadays can no longer simply be smashed, even with reaction at its worst (as presently in Paris). Considering the importance this organisation is likewise assuming in Germany, it would in our view be indispensable to accord it some mention in the programme and, possibly, to leave some room for it in the organisation of the party.
All these things have been done by our people to oblige the Lassalleans. And what have the others conceded? That a host of somewhat muddled and purely democratic demands should figure in the programme, some of them being of a purely fashionable nature — for instance “legislation by the people” such as exists in Switzerland and does more harm than good, if it can be said to do anything at all. Administration by the people — that would at least be something. Similarly omitted is the first prerequisite of all liberty — that all officials be responsible for all their official actions to every citizen before the ordinary courts and in accordance with common law. That demands such as freedom of science and freedom of conscience figure in every liberal bourgeois programme and seem a trifle out of place here is something I shall not enlarge upon.
The free people’s state is transformed into the free state. Grammatically speaking, a free state is one in which the state is free vis-Ã -vis its citizens, a state, that is, with a despotic government. All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore suggest that Gemeinwesen ["commonalty"] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.”
"The elimination of all social and political inequality,” rather than “the abolition of all class distinctions,” is similarly a most dubious expression. As between one country, one province and even one place and another, living conditions will always evince a certain inequality which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated. The living conditions of Alpine dwellers will always be different from those of the plainsmen. The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French concept deriving from the old “liberty, equality, fraternity,” a concept which was justified in that, in its own time and place, it signified a phase of development, but which, like all the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded, since they produce nothing but mental confusion, and more accurate ways of presenting the matter have been discovered.
I shall desist, although almost every word in this programme, a programme which is, moreover, insipidly written, lays itself open to criticism. It is such that, should it be adopted, Marx and I could never recognise a new party set up on that basis and shall have to consider most seriously what attitude — public as well as private — we should adopt towards it. [11] Remember that abroad we are held responsible for any and every statement and action of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. E.g. by Bakunin in his work Statehood and Anarchy, in which we are made to answer for every injudicious word spoken or written by Liebknecht since the inception of the Demokratisches Wochenblatt. People imagine that we run the whole show from here, whereas you know as well as I do that we have hardly ever interfered in the least with internal party affairs, and then only in an attempt to make good, as far as possible, what we considered to have been blunders — and only theoretical blunders at that. But, as you yourself will realise, this programme marks a turning-point which may very well force us to renounce any kind of responsibility in regard to the party that adopts it.
Generally speaking, less importance attaches to the official programme of a party than to what it does. But a new programme is after all a banner planted in public, and the outside world judges the party by it. Hence, whatever happens there should be no going-back, as there is here, on the Eisenach programme. It should further be considered what the workers of other countries will think of this programme; what impression will be created by this genuflection on the part of the entire German socialist proletariat before Lassalleanism.
I am, moreover, convinced that a union on this basis would not last a year. Are the best minds of our party to descend to repeating, parrot-fashion, Lassallean maxims concerning the iron law of wages and state aid? I’d like to see you, for one, thus employed! And were they to do so, their audiences would hiss them off the stage. And I feel sure that it is precisely on these bits of the programme that the Lassalleans are insisting, like Shylock the Jew on his pound of flesh. The split will come; but we shall have “made honest men” again of Hasselmann, Hasenclever and Tolcke and Co.; we shall emerge from the split weaker and the Lassalleans stronger; our party will have lost its political virginity and will never again be able to come out whole-heartedly against the Lassallean maxims which for a time it inscribed on its own banner; and then, should the Lassalleans again declare themselves to be the sole and most genuine workers’ party and our people to be bourgeois, the programme would be there to prove it. All the socialist measures in it are theirs, and our party has introduced nothing save the demands of that petty-bourgeois democracy which it has itself described in that same programme as part of the “reactionary mass"!
I had held this letter back in view of the fact that you would only be released on April 1, in honour of Bismarck’s birthday, [12] not wanting to expose it to the risk of interception in the course of an attempt to smuggle it in. Well, I have just had a letter from Bracke, who has also felt grave doubts about the programme and asks for our opinion. I shall therefore send this letter to him for forwarding, so that he can read it without my having to write the whole thing over again. I have, by the way, also spoken my mind to Ramm; to Liebknecht I wrote but briefly. I cannot forgive his not having told us a single word about the whole business (whereas Ramm and others believed he had given us exact information) until it was, in a manner of speaking, too late. True, this has always been his wont — hence the large amount of disagreeable correspondence which we, both Marx and myself, have had with him, but this time it really is too bad, and we definitely shan’t act in concert with him.
Do see that you manage to come here in the summer; you would, of course, stay with me and, if the weather is fine, we might spend a day or two taking sea baths, which would really do you good after your long spell in jail.
Ever your friend,
F. E.
Marx has just moved house. He is living at 41 Maitland Park Crescent, NW London.
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Footnotes
1. Engels’ letter to August Bebel written between March 18 and 28, 1875 is closely connected with Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme and is traditionally published together with the latter work. It conveyed the joint opinion of Marx and Engels concerning the fusion of two German workers’ parties, the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans, scheduled for early 1875. The immediate reason for the letter was the publication of the draft programme of the future united Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (Programm der deutschen Arbeiterpartei) in Der Volksstaat (the organ of the Eisenachers) and the Neuer Social-Demokrat (the organ of the Lassalleans) on March 7, 1875. The draft programme was approved with slight changes by the unity congress at Gotha on May 22-27, 1875, and came to be known as the Gotha Programme.
This letter was first published by Bebel, after the lapse of 36 years, in his Aus meinem Leben, Zweiter Teil, Stuttgart, 1911. In the present edition the letter is printed according to this book.
It was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Lawrence, London [1933], pp. 51-62.
2. A reference to one of Lassalle’s programme theses on the establishment of workers’ producer associations with the aid of the state. Lassalle and his followers repeatedly emphasised that what they had in mind was a state in which power would pass into the hands of the working people through universal suffrage.
3. Engels is referring to the Programm und Statuten der sozial-demokratischen Arbeiter-Partei, adopted at the general German workers’ congress in Eisenach in August 1869 and published in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt on August 14, 1869. The congress founded the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany. By and large the programme complied with the principles of the International Working Men’s Association.
4. The "honest men” — nickname of the members of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (the Eisenachers), as distinct from the members of the General Association of German Workers (the Lassalleans), the “dishonest men.”
5. The German People’s Party, established in September 1868, embraced the democratic section of the bourgeoisie, mostly in the South-German states. The party opposed the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany and advocated the idea of a federative German state.
6. A reference to the following articles of the draft Gotha Programme:
"The German workers’ party demands as the free basis of the state:
"1. Universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot for all males who have reached the age of 21, for all elections in the state and in the community. 2. Direct legislation by the people with the right to initiate and to reject bills. 3. Universal military training. A people’s militia in place of the standing army. Decisions regarding war and peace to be taken by a representative assembly of the people. 4. Abolition of all exceptional laws, in particular the laws on the press, associations and assembly. 5. Jurisdiction by the people. Administration of justice without fees.
"The German workers’ party demands as the intellectual and moral basis of the state:
"1. Universal and equal education of the people by the state. Compulsory school attendance. Free instruction. 2. Freedom of science. Freedom of conscience."
7. The reference is to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
8. The League of Peace and Freedom — A pacifist organisation set up in Switzerland in 1867 with the active participation of Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Garibaldi and other democrats. The League asserted that it was possible to prevent wars by creating the “United States of Europe.” Its leaders did not disclose the social sources of wars and often confined anti-militarist activity to mere declarations. At the General Council meeting of August 13, 1867 Marx spoke against the International’s official participation in the League’s Inaugural Congress, since this would have meant solidarity with its bourgeois programme, but recommended that some members of the International should attend the Congress in their personal capacity in order to support revolutionary-democratic decisions (see Marx’s letter to Engels of September 4, 1867).
9. On page 5 of his Arbeiterlesebuch Lassalle quotes a passage about the “iron law of wages” from his pamphlet Offnes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Comite zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitercongresses zu Leipzig, Zurich, 1863, pp. 15-16.
10. Philippe Joseph Buchez, one of the first ideologists of the so-called Christian socialism, advanced a plan for the establishment of workers’ producer associations with the aid of the state.
11. On October 12, 1875 Engels wrote to Bebel concerning this programme that, since both workers and their political opponents “interpreted it communistically,” “it is this circumstance alone which has made it possible for Marx and myself not to disassociate ourselves publicly from a programme such as this. So long as our opponents as well as the workers continue to read our views into that programme, we are justified in saying nothing about it.”
12. In March 1872 August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht were sentenced to two years’ confinement in a fortress for their adhesion to the International Working Men’s Association and their socialist views. In April Bebel was sentenced, in addition, to nine months’ imprisonment and deprived of his mandate as a Reichstag member for “insulting His Majesty.” Liebknecht was released on April 15, 1874, while Bebel was freed on April 1, 1875.
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