-Caveat Lector-
(Folks, When you read this, keep in mind the klintoonalgore agenda.)
A Manifesto for the 21st Century
150 years of the Communist Manifesto
by Alan Woods
At first sight it may seem that the republication of the Communist Manifesto
requires an explanation. How can one justify a new edition of a book written
almost 1950 years ago? Yet in reality the Manifesto is the most modern of
books. The truth of this affirmation can be easily demonstrated. If we
examine any bourgeois book written one and a half century ago about the same
subjects, it will rapidly become clear that such a work will be merely of
historical interest, with no the slightest practical application. However,
the present work provides us with a profound analysis which, in an amazingly
small amount of words, provides a brilliant explanation of the most
fundamental phenomena which occupy our attention on a world scale at the
present time.
In point of fact, the Communist Manifesto is even more true today than when
it first appeared in 1848. Let us consider one example. At the time when
Marx and Engels were writing, the world of the big multinational companies
was still the music of a very distant future. Despite this, they explained
how "free enterprise" and competition would inevitably lead to the
concentration of capital and the monopolisation of the productive forces. It
is frankly comical to read the statements made by the defenders of
capitalism concerning Marx's alleged mistake on this question, when in
reality it was precisely one of his most brilliant and unquestionable
predictions.
During the 1980s it became fashionable to claim that "small is beautiful".
This is not the place to enter into a discussion concerning the relative
aesthetics of big, small or medium size, about which everyone is entitled to
hold an opinion. But it is an absolutely indisputable fact that the process
of concentration of capital foreseen by Marx has occurred, is occurring, and
indeed has reached unprecedented levels in the course of the last ten years.
In the United States, where the process may be seen in a particularly clear
form, 500 giant monopolies accounted for 92 per cent of all income in 1994.
On a world scale, the 1000 biggest companies had an income amounting to
eight billion dollars, which is the equivalent of one third of total world
profits. In the USA, 0.5 per cent of the richest families are in possession
of half of financial assets held by individuals. The richest one per cent of
the US population increased its share of the national income from 17.6 per
cent in 1978 to an astonishing 36.3 per cent in 1989.
The process of centralisation and concentration of capital has reached
proportions hitherto undreamed of. The number of take-overs has acquired the
character of an epidemic in all the advance industrialised nations. In 1995
the number of take-overs beat all records. The Mitsubishi Bank and the Bank
of Tokyo fused to form the biggest bank in the world. The union of Chase
Manhattan and the Chemical Bank created the biggest banking group in the USA
with combined reserves of 297 billion dollars. The world's biggest
entertainment company emerged when Walt Disney bought Capital Cities/ABC.
Westinghouse bought CBS and Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting Systems.
In the pharmaceutical sector, Glaxo bought Wellcome. The take-over of Scott
Paper by Kimberly-Clark created the biggest producer of paper tissues in the
world. The take-over mania has spread to Europe with record figures being
made even in the last few weeks. Even Switzerland has experienced its first
hostile take-over concerning the paper group Holvis. In Britain we saw a
spate of hostile take-overs, as when Forte, Britain's biggest hotel chain
took over its rival, the leisure and restaurant empire, Granada, for 3.2
billion pounds. In many cases, such take-overs are intimately connected with
all kinds of shady practices - insider dealing, falsification of share
prices, and other types of fraud, larceny and swindling, as the Guinness
scandal has revealed.
It would not be difficult to provide many more figures which would prove
beyond reasonable doubt that Marx and Engels were right in their analysis of
the process of concentration of capital. This concentration of capital does
not signify a growth in production, but quite the contrary. In every case,
the intention is not to invest in new plant and machinery but to close
existing factories and offices and sack large numbers of workers in order to
increase profit margins without increasing production.
The scourge of unemployment
"And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be
the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon
society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent
to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot
help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of
being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie."
(Communist Manifesto)
Contrary to the illusions of the labour leaders in the past, mass
unemployment has returned and has spread all over the world like a cancer
gnawing at the bowels of modern society. According to the United Nations,
world unemployment amounts to 120 million. However, this figure, like all
the official statistics of unemployment represents a serious understatement
of the real situation. If we include the huge number of men and women who
are compelled to work in all kinds of marginal "jobs", the real figure of
world unemployment and underemployment would not be less than 1000 million.
According to the official figures there are 18 million unemployed in Western
Europe alone - 10.6 per cent of the active population. The figure for Spain
is an incredible 20 per cent. But even in Germany, the "strong man" of
Europe, unemployment has reached 4.5 million for the first time since
Hitler. In Japan too for the first time since the 1930 unemployment has shot
up. The image of Japan as a paradise of full employment is now past history.
According to official figures, Japanese unemployment has reached 3 per cent,
but this is false. If they used the same criteria for unemployment as other
advance capitalist countries the real figure would not be less than 8 per
cent or even 10 per cent.
This unemployment is not the kind of cyclical unemployment which workers are
well acquainted with from the past and which would rise in a recession only
to disappear when the economy picked up again. But this is not longer the
case. At this moment of writing, the boom in the USA has lasted for over six
years, but world unemployment shows no sign of significant decline. Every
day the news papers report new factory closures and sackings ("downsizing"
to use the current jargon), frequently linked to the kind of take-overs
described above. This is not cyclical unemployment, or even what Marx called
the "reserve army of labour", which, from a capitalist point of view played
a useful role in the past. No. This is an entirely new phenomena -
permanent, structural, organic unemployment, which does not noticeably
diminish even when there is a "boom".
Moreover, this unemployment affects sections of society which were never
affected in the past: teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants, bank
employees, scientists and even managers. The mood of insecurity has become
generalised to practically the whole of society. The words of Marx and
Engels quoted above have become literally true. In every country the
bourgeoisie raises the same war cry: "We must cut public expenditure!" That
was the slogan of Thatcher and Major. Now Tony Blair and the right wing
labour leaders are going down the same road. This is not accident. Every
government in the capitalist world, whether right or "left" is in reality
pursuing the same policy. This is not the result of the whims of individual
politicians, of ignorance or bad faith (although there is plenty of this
also) but a graphic expression of the blind alley in which the capitalist
system finds itself.
In the period of capitalist upswing from 1948 to 1973, the bourgeoisie
managed - partially and for a temporary period - to overcome the two
fundamental contradictions which act as a colossal brake on progress:
private ownership of the means of production and the nation state. The
colossal power of the means of production called into existence by
capitalism has long ago outgrown these narrows limits. That is the real
explanation for the present crisis. Following the second world war, the
bourgeoisie attempted to get round this, on the one hand, by the application
of Keynesian methods of deficit financing, on the other, by an enormous
intensification of the international division of labour, and an
unprecedented expansion of world trade. Now, however, both these processes
have reached their limits. The application of Keynesian methods, still
incredibly advocated by the left reformists, eventually lead to an explosion
of inflation and unsustainable deficits everywhere, as predicted in advance
by the Marxists. Marx already explained in the pages of Capital, how
capitalism can go beyond its limits through the use of credit. However, this
has its limits, as Mr Micawber knew only too well! As a result, they are now
compelled to put the whole process into reverse, slashing public expenditure
in a desperate attempt to restore "sound finance". In other words, to return
to the situation that existed in the 1920s and 1930s, or even in the days of
Marx. This is a finished recipe for an outburst of the class struggle
everywhere. But not only that.
By slashing state expenditure, they are simultaneously reducing demand and
cutting the whole market, just at a time when even the bourgeois economists
admit that there is a serious problem of overproduction ("overcapacity") on
a world scale. In this way, they are preparing for a massive slump in the
coming period. This is the inevitable result of the fact that in the
previous period the capitalist system went beyond its limits. As Marx
explains, the capitalists can only solve their crises "by paving the way for
more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means
whereby crises are prevented."
Socialism and internationalism
In the last few years the economists have talked a lot about
"globalisation", imagining that this was the panacea which would permit them
to abolish the cycle of booms and slumps altogether. These dreams were
shattered by the stock market crash of October 1997 and the crises of the
so-called Asian Tigers. As I write these lines, the news has just come
through of the collapse of the important Japanese finance company Yamaichi
Securities Co. This has profound implications for the rest of the world,
since a financial collapse in Japan could push the United States into a
slump. The crisis in Asia affects Japan with particular severity since 44
per cent of its exports are sold there. As a result of the stock market
crash, the underlying weakness of the Japanese banking system has came to
the fore, and Japan is the world's biggest lender. It is estimated that the
five biggest banks in Japan are now technically insolvent. According to
Japan's top financial daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, bad debts to Japanese
banks now amounts to a staggering 1.5 trillion yen. The danger of a
financial collapse is admitted even by a senior Bank of Japan official who
told The Economist (22/11/97) that "a clear case of systemic risk existed."
If such a crisis led to a massive withdrawal of Japanese funds from the USA,
the result would be catastrophic.
All this shows the reverse side of "globalisation". To the degree that the
capitalist system develops the world economy, it also prepares the
conditions for a devastating world slump at a certain stage. A crisis in one
sector of the world economy (in this case Asia) rapidly extends to all the
others. Far from abolishing the boom-slump cycle, globalisation gives it and
even more convulsive and universal character.
Anyone who reads the Manifesto can see that it was precisely Marx and Engels
who anticipated this situation 150 years ago. They explain that capitalism
must develop as a world system. Today this analysis has been brilliantly
confirmed by events. At the present time nobody can deny the crashing
domination of the world market. It is in fact the most decisive phenomenon
of the age in which we live. This is the epoch of world economy, world
politics, world culture, world diplomacy and, let us not forget, world war.
In the course of the 20th century we have already experienced two of these
as the result of capitalist crisis. The second one caused 55 million deaths
and almost led to the destruction of human civilisation.
Socialism is international or is nothing. But socialist internationalism is
not the product of sentimentalism. It is not just a "good idea". It flows
from the scientific analysis of Marx and Engels which explains that the
creation of the nation state, one of the historically progressive conquest
of the bourgeois, leads inevitable to a system of world trade. The
tremendous development of the means of production under capitalism cannot be
contained within the narrow limits of the nation state and therefore all the
capitalist powers, even the biggest, are obliged to participate to an ever
greater extend on the world market.
The contradiction between the enormous potential of the productive forces
and the suffocating straitjacket of the nation state was dramatically
exposed in 1914 and 1939. These bloody convulsions demonstrated the fact
that from an historical point of view the capitalist system had already
exhausted its progressive mission. However, there is not such thing as a
final crisis of capitalism in the sense of an automatic collapse. In order
to carry out the transformation of society, it is not sufficient that the
old system is in crisis. No matter how severe the crisis, there exist
powerful interests which depend upon the preservation of the status quo for
the income, privileges and prestige, and fiercely resists all attempts to
change society. Precisely for that reason, Marx and Engels wrote the
Manifesto, not as an abstract document but as a call to action, not a text
book but a program for the launching of the revolutionary party and not a
discussion club.
In order to overthrow capitalism it is necessary that the working class
organise itself as a class in defence of its interests. For many decades the
workers of all countries, above all the advance capitalist countries have
created powerful organisations - parties and trade unions. But these
organisations do not exist in the vacuum. They are subject to the pressures
of capitalism which weigh heavily especially upon the top layer.
The bankruptcy of nationalism in general, and of that monstrous aberration
called "socialism in one country" in particular, was shown by the collapse
of Stalinism, and even before it in the participation of the Chinese and
Russian bureaucracies in world markets. All those countries of Africa, Asia
and Latin America which fought for, and won their independence from direct
imperialist rule, now find themselves once again chained to the old masters
through the mechanism of world trade.
Every intelligent person realises that the free development of the
productive forces demand the unification of the economies of all countries
through a common plan which would permit the harmonious exploitation of the
resources of our planet for the benefit of all. This is so evident that it
is recognised by scientists and experts who have nothing to do with
socialism, but are filled with indignation at the nightmare conditions in
which two thirds of the human race live, and are worried by the effects of
the destruction of the environment. Unfortunately their well-intentioned
recommendation fall on deaf ears, since they conflict with the vested
interests of the big multinationals that dominate the world economy and
whose calculations are not based on the welfare of humanity or the future of
the planet, but exclusively on greed and the search for profit above all
other considerations.
In the last decade of the 20th century, despite all the talk about
globalisation, national contradictions are more intense than ever. Ten years
ago the USA exported the equivalent of 6 per cent of its GDP. Now the figure
is 13 per cent, and Washington plans to increase it to 20 per cent by the
year 2000. This represents a declaration of war against the rest of the
world, beginning with Japan - not a military war, but a trade war in the
making. True, in any other period in the past, the tensions between the USA
and Japan would have already provoked a war. But the existence of nuclear
weapons means that a war between the major capitalist powers is now ruled
out. Thus, the present crisis cannot be solved as it was in 1914 and 1949.
In the absence of a military conflict, the internal contradictions within
each capitalist country will became ever more intense. The ruling class sees
no other option but to place the entire weight of the crisis on the
shoulders of the working class.
With incredible foresight, the authors of the Manifesto anticipated the
conditions which are now being experienced by the working class in all
countries. When they wrote:
"Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work
of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently,
all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is
only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that
is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is
restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires
for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a
commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production.
In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the
wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division
of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also
increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the
work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc."
Today the USA occupies the same position that Britain held in Marx's day -
that of the most developed capitalist country. Thus, the general tendencies
of capitalism are expressed there in their clearest form. During the last 20
years there has been a fall of 20 per cent in the real wages of the American
workers, accompanied by an increase of 10 per cent in the working day. In
this way, the present boom has been largely at the expense of the working
class. At the present time, an American worker works an average of 168 hours
of overtime every year - the equivalent of almost one month of extra work.
This is particularly truth in the automobile industry where a nine hour, six
day week is the norm. According to the American trade unions, if the working
week were limited to 40 hours in this sector alone, 59,000 jobs would be
created.
According to an article in Time magazine (24/10/94): "Workers complaint
that, for them, economic expansion means exhaustion. Throughout American
industry, companies are using overtime to squeeze the maximum labour out of
the workers in the USA: the average working week is now approaching a record
42 hours, including 4.6 hours of overtime." The same article quotes the case
of Joseph Kelterborn, a worker in Fibre Optics, who as a result of a
reduction in personnel, works on average four hours overtime a day and one
weekend in every three: 'When I get home', he complains, 'all I have time
for is to take a shower, eat and sleep a little; after a while it is time to
get up and start all over again'."
The terrible pressures caused by overwork, the fall in real wages, the
increased rhythm of production, etc. have had serious effects on the quality
of life of working class families. In the USA as in other countries the
birth rate has fallen from an average of 2.5 children per family at the
beginning of the 1960s to 1.8 at the end of the 1980s. The number of
divorces doubled during the 1970s to the point where it represents 60 per
cent of the marriages in the 1980s. Even life expectancy which had risen up
to 1980 has stagnated.
The same situation exists in Britain, where under the Thatcher government
2.5 million jobs were destroyed in industry, and yet the same level of
production has been maintained as in 1979. This has been achieved, not
through the introduction of new machinery but through the over-exploitation
of British workers. In 1995, Kenneth Calman, director general of health,
warned that "the lost of life time employment has unleashed an epidemic of
stress related illnesses."
In 1994 a 175 million working days were lost through illness in Britain -
nearly eight working days per worker. The number of medical prescriptions
increased by 11.7 million in one year (1995). "Stress, traffic jams and
pollution are killing professional drivers in Britain", declares Record, the
paper of the TGWU. According to a study carried out by the union, 30 per
cent of the drivers admitted to having fallen asleep at the wheel, and
almost 45 per cent had had accidents as a result. Similar examples can be
given from any other capitalist country.
Marx's method
The astonishing accuracy of the predictions made in the Manifesto is not an
accident. It flows from the scientific method of Marxism - dialectical
materialism, which, in its application to history, is known as historical
materialism. The basis of the Marxist theory of history were already
established in earlier writings such as The Holy Family and The German
Ideology.
We must bear in mind that socialism and communism did not begin with Marx
and Engels. There were great thinkers before them who defended the idea of a
society without classes based on common property: Robert Owen, Fourier,
Saint Simon and others. As early as the 16th century, Thomas More wrote his
celebrated book Utopia, which describes a communist society. Even before
that, the early Christians organised themselves in communities from which
private property was rigorously excluded, as anyone can read in The Acts of
the Apostles.
Marx and Engels characterised all these tendencies as utopian socialism,
while what they were advocating was something quite different - scientific
socialism. Wherein lies the difference? For the utopians, socialism was just
a good idea, something morally desirable of which people had to be convinced
through preaching. From this standpoint, if they were right, such a new
society could have been brought into being two thousand years ago - which
would certainly have spared the human race a lot of trouble!
However, Marx and Engels explained that socialism has a material base, which
consists in the level of development of the productive forces - industry,
agriculture, science and technology. Historical materialism explains that
historical development in the final analysis is based upon the development
of these things. This affirmation - the truth of which is clearly
demonstrated by the whole course of human history - has been singled out by
the detractors of Marxism for the most biting attacks. But what is attacked
is not the ideas of Marx and Engels but a crude caricature, the absurd
notion that in Marxism "everything is reduced to economics." The authors of
the Manifesto answered this absurdity many times, as we can see very easily
from Engels' letter to Bloch:
"According to the materialist conception of history the determining element
in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More
than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore somebody
twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only
determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd
phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the
superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its consequences,
constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle,
etc. - forms of law - and then even the reflexes of all these actual
struggles in the brains of the combatants: political, legal, philosophical
theories, religious ideas and their further developments into systems of
dogma - also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical
struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form."
It is self-evident that religion, politics, morality, philosophy, etc. play
a role in the historical process. Nevertheless, in the last analysis the
success of a given social-economic system depends upon its ability to
satisfy the basic needs of human beings. Before developing religious,
political or philosophical ideas, men and women need to eat, wear cloths and
have a roof over their head. From the earliest times, human beings have had
to struggle to satisfy these necessities, and even now for the overwhelming
majority of humanity this still remains the case.
At a given moment in history, the division of labour arises, which coincides
historically with the beginnings of the division of society into classes.
This represented a great leap forward, permitting the creation for the first
time of a surplus product which was appropriated by a class which was freed
from the necessity to labour, a ruling class that lived of the labour of
others: in Antiquity these "others" were the slaves; later under Feudalism,
the serfs; and finally under Capitalism, the working class.
In spite of all the horrors, injustices and suffering associated with class
society, the latter from a Marxist point of view, that is to say a
scientific and not a moralistic point of view, class society was
nevertheless historically justified and played a progressive role in pushing
society forward. The most brilliant achievement of science, art and
philosophy in Greece and Rome were, let us not forget, based on the labour
of slaves whom the Romans called "instrumentum vocale" - "a tool with a
voice" (from the stand point of the bosses the real situation of the modern
worker is not a lot different). The surplus produced by the labour of the
exploited classes was sufficient to emancipate a minority of exploiters, but
not to achieve the emancipation of the majority whose slavery was the prior
condition for the rise of civilisation, which was made possible by the
development of the means of production.
Marx and Engels discovered a most important law of social development which
alone is capable of explaining the development of human history. They
explain that a give form of society can only survive to the degree that it
develops the productive forces, and that no society ever disappears unless
and until it has exhausted the potential for development contained within
it. In this sense, one might compare a socio-economic system to a living
organism. It is not something static and fixed for all time, as the
defenders of capitalism would have us believe when they make frankly
ridiculous claims about the genetic basis of the market economy. Like any
other social system capitalism was born, developed, entered into full
maturity, but subsequently has reached its limits and has now entered into a
fatal decline.
Once we base ourselves on this scientific stand point, it becomes possible
for the first time to understand history not as a senseless and incoherent
chain of events, determined exclusively by chance, or as the exclusive
result of the activity of "great individuals" (although of course the
subjective factor in history can and does play a decisive role in given
circumstances), but as a process governed by laws which can be understood,
like any other area of nature.
Just as Charles Darwin explains that the species are not immutable, and that
they posses a past, a present and a future, changing and evolving, so Marx
and Engels explain that a given social system is not something eternally
fixed. That is the illusion of every epoch. Every social system believes
that it represents the only possible form of existence for human beings.
That its institutions, its religion, its morality are the last word that can
be spoken. That is what the cannibals, the Egyptian priests, Marie
Antoinette and Tsar Nicolas all fervently believed. And that is what the
bourgeoisie and its apologists today wish to demonstrate when they assure
us, without the slightest bases, that the so-called system of "free
enterprise" is the only possible system - just when it is beginning to sink.
Reform and revolution
Nowadays the idea of "evolution" has being generally accepted at least by
educated persons. The ideas of Darwin, so revolutionary in his day, are
accepted almost as a truism. However, evolution is generally understood as a
slow and gradual process without interruptions or violent upheavals. In
politics, this kind of argument is frequently used as a justification of
reformism. Unfortunately, it is based on a misunderstanding. The real
mechanism of evolution even today remains a book sealed by sever seals. This
is hardly surprising since Darwin himself did not understand it. Only in the
last decade or so with the new discoveries in palaeontology made by Stephen
J. Gould, who discovered the theory of punctuated equilibria, has it been
demonstrated that evolution is not a gradual process. There are long periods
in which no big changes are observed, but at a given moment, the line of
evolution is broken by an explosion, a veritable biological revolution
characterised by the mass extinction of some species and the rapid ascent of
others.
The analogy between society and nature is, of course, only approximate. But
even the most superficial examination of history shows that the gradualist
interpretation is baseless. Society, like nature, knows long periods of slow
and gradual change, but also here the line is interrupted by explosive
developments - wars and revolutions, in which the process of change is
enormously accelerated. In fact, it is these events that act as the main
motor force of historical development. And the root cause of revolution is
the fact that a particular socio-economic system has reached its limits and
is unable to develop the productive forces as before.
"The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class
struggle," says the Manifesto in one of its most celebrated phrases. But
what is the class struggle? Neither more nor less than the struggles for the
division of the surplus produced by the working class. And this struggle
will always be inevitable until the productive forces have reached a
sufficient level of development to permit the abolition of poverty and the
scarcity of products not only for a privileged minority but for everybody.
Socialism, therefore, is not just a "good idea" which can be brought into
being in any situation as long as people wanted. Socialism as a material
base which is based upon the level of development of industry, agriculture,
science and technology.
Already in the German Ideology, written in 1845 to 1846, Marx and Engels
explained that "�this development of productive forces (which itself implies
the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of
local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without
it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for
necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be
reproduced�"
By the phrase "all the old filthy business", Marx and Engels had in mind
inequality, exploitation, oppression, corruption, bureaucracy, the state and
all the other evils endemic in class society. Today, after the fall of
Stalinism in Russia, the enemies of socialism try to show that the ideas of
Marxism cannot be put into practice. They overlook the little detail that
Russia before 1917 was far more backward than India at the present time.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who were quite well acquainted with the writings
of Marx, were well aware that the material conditions for socialism were
absent in Russia. But Lenin and Trotsky never had the idea of a national
revolution or "socialism in one country", and least of all in a backward
country like Russia.
The Bolsheviks took power in 1917 with the perspective of a world
revolution. The October Revolution was a powerful impetus for the rest of
Europe, beginning with Germany were the revolution could have succeeded had
it not been for the cowardly betrayal of the social democratic leaders who
saved capitalism. The world paid a terrible price for this crime, with the
economic and social convulsions of the two decades between the wars, the
triumph of Hitler in Germany, the civil war in Spain and finally the horrors
of a new world war.
This is not the place to analyse the whole process that occurred after 1945.
Suffice it to say that capitalism succeeded for a time, by the means
previously mentioned, to re-establish a relative stability, at least in the
advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe, Japan and USA. But even in
this period the basic contradictions did not disappear. For two thirds of
the human race these were years of hunger and misery, of wars, revolution
and counter-revolution. However, at least in the industrialised countries
there was full employment, the welfare state and a general increase in
living standards.
All this gave credence to the idea of the labour leaders (both left and
right) that capitalism had solved its problems, that mass unemployment was a
thing of the past, that the class struggle had finished and that (of course)
Marxism was antiquated. How ironic these ideas sound today! With more than
30 million unemployed in the OECD countries and a salvage attack everywhere
on the living standard of the workers, the contradictions between the
classes are becoming ever more intense. In Europe there has been strike
after strike in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium. In the USA the
magnificent strike of the UPS workers ended in victory and was a warning
that the American workers were not prepared to continue accepting low wages
and bad conditions in the interest of higher profits. In Britain too the
election of the Labour government after 18 years of Tory rule was an
indication of a fundamental change in the mood of society.
"Social being determines consciousness." This is another profound idea which
form the basis of historical materialism. Sooner or later, social conditions
will produce a change in people's consciousness. However, the relation
between the processes which take place in society and the way in which this
is reflected in the minds of men and women is not automatic. If this was so
we would have been living under socialism a long time ago! Contrary to the
believe of the idealists, human thought in general is not progressive but
deeply conservative. In "normal" periods, people tend to cling to familiar
things. They prefer to believe in the ideas, morality, institutions, parties
and leaders to which they have become accustomed.
Engels once said that there are periods in history in which 20 years pass as
a single day, but others in which the history of 20 years can be summed up
in 24 hours. For a long time it seems that nothing changes. Nevertheless,
beneath the surface of seeming tranquillity, there is an enormous build-up
of discontent, indignation, frustration and rage. At a given moment, this
will provoke a social explosion. In moments of crisis people begin to think
for themselves, to act like free men and women, as protagonists not passive
victims. They seek an organised means of expression, get active in their
trade unions and mass parties in an attempt to change society.
There is an important section of the Manifesto, which has not been
sufficiently understood, where we can read the following:
"In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class
parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the
proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their
own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
"The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by
this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different
countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interest of the
entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various
stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the
bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the
interests of the movement as a whole.
"The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most
advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country,
that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand,
theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the
advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and
the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."
These lines are enormously important because they show the method of Marx
and Engels who always set out from the real movement of the working class as
it is and not as we would like it to be. This method is a thousand light
years removed from the sterile sectarianism of those "revolutionary" sects
which eke out an existence on the fringes of the labour movement which are
organically incapable of establishing links with the real workers movement.
For Marxists, a party is in the first place programme, ideas, methods and
traditions, and only afterwards an organisation to carry these ideas into
the working class. In the course of its history, the working class creates
mass organisations to defend its interests and change society. Beginning
with the trade unions, the basic organisations of the class at a certain
moment the workers come to understand that the struggle for partial economic
demands in and of itself is insufficient. In present day conditions, this
conclusion is absolutely inescapable. Without the day-to-day struggle for
advance under capitalism the socialist revolution would be impossible.
Through the experience of strikes and demonstrations the working class
learns and acquires a sense of its own power. But, in itself, this is
insufficient. Even the most solid and successful strike cannot solve the
fundamental problems facing the working class. Moreover, for every
successful strike there are a greater number of defeats. Even when the
struggle ends in victory, wage increases are eventually cancelled out by
inflation. What the capitalists give with the left hand, they take back with
the right. In the period of capitalist crisis, reforms are replaced with
counter-reforms, as we see now with the Blair government. This has a logic
of its own. If one accepts the capitalist system, one must accept the laws
of capitalism. If you say "A" you must also say "B", "C" and "D".
Unemployment, privatisations, cuts in social spending all flow from the
general crisis of capitalism. This is a political question which cannot be
solved by industrial action alone, important though that is. It is necessary
to go beyond the limits of trade union activity and pass onto the plane of
political struggle.
The unions and mass workers' parties were created by the working class
through generations of struggle and sacrifice. All history shows that the he
workers will not abandon their traditional mass organisations before testing
them in practice again and again. Almost one hundred years ago, the trade
unions created the Labour Party in order to represent the working class in
Parliament. The Labour Party was formed as the political expression of the
unions. But the mass organisations do not exist in a vacuum. They are
constantly under the pressure of the ruling class which holds in its hands
powerful means of persuasion - the press, the television, the Church, and a
thousand and one ways of pressurising, influencing and corrupting the
representatives of Labour. The recent scandal over the donation of a million
pounds to the Labour Party by a businessman is only the tip of a very large
iceberg. Businessmen do not give such sums for nothing! Even if we discount
actual corruption, the pressures of big business on the Labour leaders is
immense. The right wing leaders have no problem accommodating themselves to
these influences because they themselves wholeheartedly embrace the
capitalist system. It is really ironical that they sing the praises of the
"market" precisely at the moment when it is beginning to break down.
Labour's right wing leaders are blindly trying to base themselves on a
capitalism that no longer exists. They represent the past not the future.
Though they regard themselves as great realists, in fact they are the worst
kind of utopians. Their hold on Labour will be shattered on the basis of
events in the next period.
However, the position of the left reformists is not much better. Although
they rightly oppose the policy of counter-reforms pursued by the right, in
practice they offer no real alternative. While accepting the capitalist
system, they would like it to work in a kinder, gentler fashion. This is
like asking a tiger to eat grass instead of meat! If all governments in the
world are pursuing the same policy of cuts, that is not out of choice, but
is an expression of the fact that capitalism is in a profound crisis. An
attempt to return to the Keynesian policies of deficit-financing would
provoke an explosion of inflation. And for the working class, the choice
between inflation and deflation is the choice between death by hanging and
being slowly roasted over a fire. We want neither one thing or the other,
but the only real solution, which is the socialist transformation of
society.
The only road
When Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto, they were two young men, 29 and 27
years old respectively. They were writing in a period of black reaction. The
working class was apparently immobile. The Manifesto itself was written in
Brussels, where its authors had been forced to flee as political refugees.
And yet at the very moment when the Communist Manifesto first saw the light
of day in February 1848, revolution had already erupted onto the streets of
Paris, and over the following months had spread like wildfire through
virtually the whole of Europe.
If subsequent history has anything to teach us it is this: that nothing and
nobody can break the unconscious will of the working class to change
society. True, there have been many tragic defeats, like the defeat of the
1848 revolution, the Paris Commune, and now the final liquidation of the
last remaining gains of the October Revolution in Russia. And yet, in each
of these cases, the workers have always recovered from the effects of every
setback and returned to the road of struggle, and for a very good reason,
namely, that they have no alternative. In retrospect, even the most severe
defeat seems to be just another episode in the long fight of the working
class to achieve its ultimate emancipation.
However, history also teaches us something else. In order to succeed, it is
not enough to be willing to fight. It is necessary to fight consciously,
armed with a scientific programme and a perspective. Without this, victory
will always elude us. But such things do not fall from the sky. It is not
possible to improvise programme, tactics and strategy when the masses have
already begun to move to challenge the existing order. These things must be
prepared in advance. It is necessary win the ones and twos, to educate and
train Marxist cadres, integrated in every factory, mine, office, school and
university, active in every union and Labour Party branch, in every shop
stewards committee and trades council. It is necessary to conduct patient
preparatory work of propaganda and agitation, linking the day-to-day
struggles of the workers and youth to the overall perspective of the
socialist transformation of society. In this way we can prepare the ground
for the dramatic events which impend, not only in Britain, but in Europe and
throughout the world.
Despite all the efforts of its detractors, Marxism today retains its full
validity, both as an accurate analysis of present-day society and as a
fighting programme to change it. There can be this or that detail that has
changed, but in all the fundamentals, the ideas of the Communist Manifesto
are as relevant and true today as when they were first written. Indeed, in
some respects, they are even more true. The revolution of 1848 swept across
Europe, but had only a small echo outside. The great wave of revolutions
that emanated from the October Revolution in 1917 affected not only Europe
but China, India, Persia and Turkey. But now, the knitting together of the
entire globe by world capitalism is preparing for a much more dramatic
development. Such is the degree of interrelation that we can predict with
confidence that the victory of the working class in any significant country
will rapidly lead to the overthrow of capitalism in one country after
another, laying the basis for the establishment of a socialist Britain, a
Socialist United States of Europe, and a Socialist Federation of the entire
world.
London, 26th November 1997
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/150years/woodsintro.html
Bard
Visit me at:
The Center for Exposing Corruption in the Federal Government
http://www.xld.com/public/center/center.htm
Federal Government defined:
....a benefit/subsidy protection racket!
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