This is from Marx's speech to the CC of the LoC: > "Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers > must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to > gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and > party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the > empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ > candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of > reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final > analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled."
I wrote this on March 17, 2005: "I urge everyone to read carefully the whole speech Marx delivered to the CC of the League of the Communists. (And, for a broader perspective, I urge people to also read Engels' 1895 Introduction to "The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850," where he summarizes the evolution of the class struggle in Germany for half a century.) "Marx's speech was delivered in 1850 and it refers to Germany. During the 1848 and 1849, a revolutionary upsurge (led by workers) had been staged. In 1950, it wasn't entirely clear that the 1848-1849 events wouldn't repeat themselves at a larger scale. In fact, the German revolutionary attempt had been one in many that shook continental Europe in that period. During the revolutions, as Marx recounts in that speech, the German proletarians had *already* proved fully capable of organized, independent political and military action as a class -- they had led in the battles, they had been a united force in action, they had gained confidence in their unity as a class, and they were suffering the reactionary backlash. That's why Marx says that the dispute with the "democratic party" of Germany in 1850 is about "recovering" their political independence. You can't recover anything if you hadn't had it in the first place. It wasn't about gaining their independence for the first time." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
