Anti-Scientific Conceptions
One principle is that polemics should bear a scientific character. “Socialism, ever since it became a science, demands that it should be treated as a science,” Marx noted. [59•1 In the opinion of the classics of Marxism polemics will have a scientific character only given an organic combination of well-argumented criticism of erroneous (all the more so, of deliberately distorted) views with a profound, comprehensive and positive elaboration of the basic problems of revolutionary theory. It is not by chance that all their theoretical works are of a polemical nature and that their polemics are characterised by a well-grounded substantiation of important theoretical propositions.
Many non-Marxist conceptions of the role played by the working class lack an historical approach. Yet without employing the historical method it is impossible to ascertain the preconditions for the formation of the proletariat and the main factors and stages of the intensification of its class struggle at the various phases of the evolution of antagonistic social relations.
A scientific, materialist understanding of history rests on the teaching about socio-economic formations and the revolutionary replacement of one formation by another. Alongside consideration for the laws governing the development of human society, which operate throughout world history, and the general laws of the given formation, it is necessary to take into account the distinctive features of each epoch 60 within the formation, i. e., the basic, dominating class contradiction and the motive social forces of that epoch.
As applied to the capitalist system it is a question of the degree of the proletariat’s maturity and trends of development, of the sources which augment its ranks and the dynamics of its inner structure, of its level of class awareness and equally of those concrete social (socio-economic and political) tasks which confronted and continue to confront the proletarian masses and all progressive, democratic forces. Only if all these factors are taken into account will it be possible to discover the real historical calling of the proletariat and its services to humanity.
In order to obtain a clear understanding of the proletariat’s great and difficult road it is necessary to subject the historical preconditions of the rise and formation of this class at different periods to a comprehensive analysis. Pointing out the central themes involved in the study of the concrete processes responsible for the birth and growth of the working class, the development of its revolutionary world outlook and the formulation of the basic principles of the proletarian vanguard, Engels emphasised the importance of elucidating the history of the question. “I begin: What is communism? " he wrote in a letter to Marx in the course of his work on the Manifesto of the Communist Party. “And then straight to the proletariat—history of its origin, difference from workers in earlier periods, development of the antithesis between proletariat and bourgeoisie ... and in conclusion the Party policy of the Communists." [60•1 Lenin attached great importance and often referred to Engels’s considerations assessing this document as an “historical letter". [60•2
Violation of the principle of historism and elaboration of subjectivistic “suprahistorical” conceptions may and do lead to a depreciation of the proletariat’s historical role, to a vulgarisation of the complicated problems of titanic, centurylong struggle of the working people, to a denigration of the aims of the revolutionary working-class movement. Such trends were fostered by Heinrich Cunow, Max Adler and other old reformist, right-opportunist ideologists, on the one hand, and revisionist authors of all hues under the cover of “left” phraseology, on the other. A typical example of the latter sort of publications is the History of the World Communist Movement, which came out in Peking in 1978 and is based on a conception which manifestly contradicts 61 the historical truth. Its editors and authors who comprised a group that was specially set up to study the international working-class movement arbitrarily delete many decades from the early history of the rise, development and struggle of the proletariat.
A thorough scientific study of the history of the class struggle presupposes an examination of the general laws of history and the specific conditions in which they are expressed in one country or another in diverse concrete circumstances. It does not prevent “the same economic basis— the same from the standpoint of its main conditions—due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc., from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances". [61•1 At the same time a national opportunistic tendency to overstate the specific features of the historical development of individual countries or regions is at odds with a class approach to the study of the historical process. Likewise untenable are doctrinaire conceptions that ignore the diversity of objective conditions and forms of the creative activity of the working masses and seek to make the historical process fit the Procrustean Bed of vulgar patterns.
Typical of non-Marxist conceptions of the rise and development of the working class are a one-sided approach to phenomena, disregard for the subtle interconnection of the processes going on at different levels of the social structure, and random selection of examples and facts. Yet it is impossible to ascertain the laws governing the development of the working class without a comprehensive, dialectic analysis of the aggregate of key economic, political, socio-psychological, ideological and other factors that ensured its strengthening and were responsible for the maturing of objective and subjective conditions that invigorated the proletariat’s class struggle, and ensured tangible progress towards the cognition and fulfilment of its historical mission.
The proletariat is a dynamic, developing class. It is society’s leading productive force whose importance is increasing all the time. Since its appearance the proletariat has been not only a suffering class, but a militant, increasingly strengthening, actively fighting and transforming class. Its formation and growth are connected with society’s economic, sociopolitical, cultural and ideological progress. The development of the proletariat depends directly on certain socio-economic, ideological and political factors. An important role is also 62 played by the qualitative changes and the level of capitalist production at different stages: in conditions of simple cooperation, capitalist manufacture, large-scale machine production, etc. In view of the uneven development of capitalism in different countries and even within the confines of one and the same state, the different phases of capitalist production not only succeed one another but sometimes coexist. This circumstance, as well as others, accounts for the complex structure of the working class. In addition to contingents connected with the most sophisticated methods of production, it also includes groups of hired workers whose status reflects the forms of organisation of labour typical of the earlier stages of the development of the productive forces.
It is also important to bear in mind the actual degree of differentiation and polarisation of classes, the distinctive features of the general trend of the socio-political and ideological struggle in one historical epoch or another, and the substance and character of its contradictions.
In order to correctly assess the socio-historical role of the working class it is imperative to take into account its worldwide character (which the classics of Marxism regarded as a historically changing concept). In the first half of the 19th century this concept included, from the point of view of the rise of the working class, a relatively small number of countries, primarily those in Western Europe and North America that had just embarked on the road of capitalist development. In the last third of the same century the concept broadened substantially because the working class began to grow at a rapid pace in Eastern and Southeast Europe, and in some parts of Australia, Asia and Latin America as a result of the spread of capitalist relations. Later, particularly in the 20th century, the concept of the world-wide nature of the working class acquired a new and broader meaning.
Disregard for the dialectic essence of the concept “ world-wide nature" is fraught with the danger of underestimating the historical services of what were the more organised and militant contingents of the working class in their time and, simultaneously, of overestimating the role, the significance and experience of the actions of the pre-proletarian and lumpen-proletarian masses. In some cases such an unscientific understanding of what is meant by “world-wide nature" serves as an “argument” to characterise the Marxist analysis of the process of the rise and development of the working class as “Eurocentric”, and to replace it with an approach that has all the features of “Asiacentrism”. [62•1 63
All this fully applies to the study of the history of the working-class movement. Having arisen together with the proletariat this movement deepened and broadened as the class of hired workers came to occupy an ever bigger place in the social structure, became aware of its world historic mission and acquired a better understanding of its long-term, ultimate objectives and ways of attaining them. At the same time under the impact of general political processes the study of the history of the working class became more searching and comprehensive.
Since the working-class movement is an object of ideological clashes, it, in turn, leaves an imprint on ideological processes. Just as an ideological struggle in society cannot be correctly understood without taking the influence of the working-class movement into consideration, so the workingclass movement cannot be understood if viewed out of context of ideological trends which appeared, interacted and clashed throughout the period of its emergence and development.
The objectively international nature of the working-class movement manifests itself in the course of the historical process. The international struggle of the working class, which is a higher phase of the working-class movement, takes place on the basis of the development, intertwining and interaction of the national movements of the proletariat. As a result of the uneven character of the historical process the “centre of gravity" [63•1 of the international revolutionary movement tends to move. This means that the proletariat of the country which has become such a centre has to assume greater commitments and responsibilities, but in no way belittles the significance of the struggle of the movement’s other national contingents.
From the point of view of studying the trends and prospects of the international working-class movement the experience of all its national contingents is equally important. Communism among the French and Germans, Chartism among the English, wrote Engels about the working-class movement of the 1840s, could no longer appear as something accidental. In the light of the materialistic understanding of history discovered by Marx, these movements presented themselves “as a movement of the modern oppressed class, the proletariat, as the more or less developed forms of its historically necessary struggle against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie; as forms of the class struggle, but distinguished from all earlier class struggles by this one thing, that the present-day oppressed class, the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole". [64•1
Since the history of the international working-class movement is above all the history of its struggle to fulfil its world historic mission, it should be studied in all its key aspects: economic, political and ideological. The relative significance and the role of diverse forms of struggle are not identical in different concrete historical circumstances. The initial phases of the proletariat’s liberation movement were characterised by a predominance of economic clashes against the bourgeoisie, and simultaneous participation in general democratic movements. But as it moved into its higher stages independent political actions of the proletariat came to play a greater role in it. The ideological struggle as a form of activity of proletarian organisations also increases in importance as the proletariat turns from a “class in itself" into a “class for itself”.
One of the most important methodological principles of Marx and Engels is a strictly differentiated approach to ideological opponents depending on their class positions. Consistently adhering to the principle of partisanship the founders of Marxism always exactly determined the scale, the forms and the key of a polemic depending on the class whose interests their ideological opponents defended and on whether they had to deal with outspoken proponents of social relations based on the exploitation of man by man, or with misguided people who nevertheless were not unconcerned with promoting the interests of the working masses.
Marx and Engels had no mercy whatsoever for “diplomaed lackeys" of the bourgeoisie who belonged either to its conservative or liberal faction. Directing their main blow at 65 outright anti-socialist bourgeois-apologetic theories, they also taught how to distinguish socialist teachings of different colours and hues—“socialism conscious and unconscious, socialism prosaic and poetic, socialism of the working class and of the middle class". [65•1 Deriding the fashion among certain bourgeois circles “of affecting a mild dilution of socialism" [65•2 they warned that proletarian socialism was not to be confused with its bourgeois and petty-bourgeois distortions. “The very people,” wrote Engels, “who, from the ‘ impartiality’ of their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a socialism soaring high above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes—these people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or they are the worst enemies of the workers—wolves in sheep’s clothing. " [65•3
At the same time the founders of Marxism always bore in mind that the principles of scientific socialism were and always would be defended in conditions in which the working class, as the vanguard force of social progress, performs its mission of leading all progressive mass general democratic movements, including those which spread non-proletarian ideology.
They maintained that the revolutionary working-class movement had either greater or smaller opportunities of using diverse forms of effecting the transition to socialism depending on certain factors, including the general correlation of class forces, the level of consciousness of the working class and its abilities to ensure the unity of action of the broad masses of the working people. Only correct strategy and tactics, effective work among the masses, and a principled ideological and political struggle of the revolutionary vanguard contribute to the fulfilment of the proletarian movement’s long-term tasks.
Ever since the proletariat entered the scene as a developing, independent social and socio-political force, the attitude to it on the part of reactionary ideologists has been characterised by fear of the new and incomprehensible factor which threatens to overthrow the “established” social order under which an insignificant minority of highborn or wealthy people determines the future of the majority of downtrodden working masses. It was on this basis that the apologists of feudal and bourgeois relations began to act in unison. Both 66 Frangois Rene de Chateaubriand, whose obscurantism surpassed even that of other ideologists of the French aristocracy, and Saint Marc Girardin, editor of the Paris Journal des debats, a mouthpiece of the wealthy French bourgeoisie, with amazing unanimity slandered the French workers who rose against capitalist exploitation, calling them new barbarians who menaced the existing society. [66•1
Conservative German economists, historians and sociologists also negated the proletariat’s revolutionary, creative potentialities, and regarded it as a destructive force deprived of creative abilities and, consequently, as an instrument of “demagogues”. In an article entitled “The Demands of the Working Classes" written in 1837, a leading proponent of vulgar German political economy Carl Rodbertus-Jagetzpw whom Engels called “the real founder of specially Prussian socialism" [66•2 frightened his compatriots by alleging that the fulfilment of the demands of the working classes would be a “grave for the whole of contemporary culture". [66•3 Like the French conservatives he held that the mounting revolutionary movement of the proletariat was a new invasion of “ barbarians”.
This anti-proletarian conception occupied an especially prominent place in the views of the German historian and economist Lprenz von Stein. A precursor of contemporary anti-communism, he claimed that the emancipatory aspirations and the struggle of the proletariat were a threat to the existence of the magnificent and precious benefits which man acquired in the course of heavy labour, and the foundations of civilisation which the proletariat rejected with hatred and doomed to complete destruction. [66•4
These conceptions are echoed in twentieth-century bourgeois conservative literature.
Conservative historians portray the mass popular movement, proletarian in the first place, as a source of the fatal development which has been responsible for just about all the “misfortunes” of modern civilisation (beginning with the crisis of the parliamentary system and ending with the decay of “traditional” morals and culture). Some representatives of 67 this trend insist that human progress (in conditions of the mounting revolutionary actions of the masses and as their result) was not real progress. They claim that it contributed to the collapse of what they call “historical order”, a circumstance which undermined many of the preceding norms and the very concept of the normative function of the intellect. By freeing man of traditions and habits, social development which was promoted by revolutions, they allege, resulted in complete ideological and political disorientation accompanied by universal anarchy and forfeiture of spiritual values. According to them such development leads to extreme forms of Caesarism with all the ensuing tragic consequences. [67•1
In keeping with such an interpretation of historical development, the “blame” for all the upheavals which afflicted capitalist society in the course of the past two centuries, including reactionary coups, and the rise of dictatorial counter-revolutionary regimes—from Bonapartism to fascism [67•2 -4s imputed to the popular masses, the proletariat in the first place. Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, they say, substantiated the idea that civilisation was a result of humanity falling into sin, and who coined a slogan which was caught up by the masses and aimed at emancipating man from the false values of this civilisation and turning him into a healthy animal relying on its instincts, is sometimes portrayed as one of the ideological “culprits” responsible for this sort of development. [67•3
Nazism’s ideological fathers, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich W. Nietzsche and later Rudolf Spengler, who were adepts of the so-called historico-culturological trend, also adopted a negative attitude to progress and, naturally, to the proletariat, the chief social force that personifies it.
Needless to say, not all proponents of this conception adhere to such reactionary political positions. But objectively all of them negate real social progress, and that means that they negate, directly or indirectly, its leading force.
A somewhat different interpretation of the problem will be found in the works of representatives of the bourgeoisliberal school. They concede that society is progressing, but since all of them are idealists they look for its motive force only in the ideological, spiritual field. Their works are characterised by an insistent, if not obtrusive, propagation of the 68 absolute significance of “eternal values" of bourgeois democracy, of the idea of the automatic inevitability of the victory of reason and the conviction that everything which cannot be “rationally” explained is accidental.
When adherents of this trend raise the question about the class that is responsible for social progress, they vigorously deny that this mission is performed by the working class. This approach is manifest in numerous works by American bourgeois historians written on the occasion of the bicentennial of the War of Independence and the proclamation of a republic in the USA. Some authors maintain that it was not the working masses, including workers, and not their struggle for social progress, but the bourgeoisie and bourgeois revolutions that have determined over the past two centuries and will continue to determine the course of world events and the destiny of humanity. [68•1 The basic theses of this conception chiefly designed to exalt the great and everlasting historical services of the capitalist employers were elaborated over a long period by adherents of diverse trends in bourgeois historiography: by the followers of the “social law" school (Rudolf Stammler, Karl Diehl and others) and the“new historical school" of Gustav Schmoller, by the ideologists of “institutionalism” (Thorstein Veblen), by “historians of business”, “neo-liberals”, and the school of “managerialism” (Joseph A. Schumpeter and others).
They never failed to understate the acuteness of class contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and to insist that there was an “identity of the interests of capital and labour" and “universal harmony" as a consequence of free competition. [68•2
In this sense a definite “tradition” was created by bourgeois historians of the first half of the 19th century. For instance, they advanced the “consensus” theory according to which the appearance of the proletarians and the bourgeoisie in the historical arena was attributed to the all but voluntary division of humanity into owners of labour and owners of capital for the sake of accumulating the latter. Such ideas were spread by Edward Wakefield, Gustave de Molinari and 69 other “mild, free-trade vulgar" economists, [69•1 and some other authors who portrayed “energetic capitalists" as the “feeders of all people" and well-nigh the only productive workers in the supreme sense of the word.
Somewhat more subtle were the attempts to smooth over the fundamental contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, without refuting in principle the existence of the class struggle. Such, for instance, was the purpose of the thesis about the “consensus” of the basic interests of the undifferentiable middle class. [69•2 In this connection it is possible to spot a continuity of the views of liberal-bourgeois historians and economists of the first half of the 19th century and those of the latter-day reformists. The first signs of this continuity appeared in the works of Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat and other apologists of the bourgeoisie. [69•3
At the initial stages of the struggle of the working class the most widespread method of belittling its historical role was to misrepresent the motive social forces in the early bourgeois revolutions of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, above all to detract from the role of the nascent proletariat in the revolutionary battles and transformations of the time. [69•4
Just as irrational were the attempts to exaggerate the objective and subjective possibilities of the proletarian masses 70 which in that period were still incapable of conducting independent, well-considered political actions on a national scale. This overestimation is the basic shortcoming of the views of Daniel Guerin and other leftist historians. [70•1 Having lost sight of the historical perspective, they have also forgotten that the antagonism between labour and capital was only in its initial stage at the time; though hired workers could and did speak up for their interests and rights more and more often, they fought side by side with the bourgeoisie against the nobility. This was the main social contradiction of that historical epoch.
In the early bourgeois revolutions, the classics of Marxism emphasised, the struggle was conducted in a “plebeian way" [70•2 inasmuch as the “capitalist mode of production, and with it the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was still very incompletely developed". [70•3 The early proletariat was a force which was still “incapable of independent political action". [70•4 The validity of these assessments is fully confirmed in the works of Soviet and progressive foreign historiographers. [70•5
While scientific socialism has always maintained that the increase in the proportion of the working class in the gainfully employed population is a natural process, its adversaries, including right and “left” revisionists, think otherwise. Paying no attention to facts they claim that the Marxist conclusions that the general law of capitalist accumulation operating in an exploiter society will inevitably deepen and broaden the process of proletarianisation are no longer valid in our day and age. 71
Moreover, this negation also provides the basis for leftist constructs designed to repudiate the teaching about the revolutionary mission of the proletariat and to proclaim the petty bourgeoisie, including the peasantry and the semi– proletarian and lumpen-proletarian strata, the main motive force of social progress.
The opportunists lauded the role played by the lumpenproletariat in the historical development of some European countries and accused Marx and Engels of allegedly “speaking with the utmost contempt" about the “poverty-ridden proletariat”, which, as the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin averred, alone embodied the entire mind and the entire strength of the future social revolution. At the same time, in contrast to revolutionary Marxism, the anarchists were mainly hoping for a mutiny of the peasantry. [71•1
Opportunists of all hues, including anarchists, in subsequent historical epochs, too, failed to identify the leading social force of the revolutionary transformation of society. Proponents of the petty-bourgeois point of view likewise often make the same mistake. In countries with a medium level of development of capitalist relations, asserts a 20 thcentury petty-bourgeois theoretician, the main political conflicts “will not derive from the opposition between the interests of the owners of the means of production and the proletariat, rather the main sources of political conflict would be the conflicting interests of the growing middle class and the growing unemployed and underemployed sectors of the working class". [71•2
Aggravating the error of the leading anarchists, some of their disciples did not confine themselves to merely dissolving the proletariat in the masses of the indigent, and advanced the thesis about groups “which replaced the proletariat" as a revolutionary force.
Michael Harrington, for example, insisted that as history followed its course it became more and more difficult for 72 true revolutionaries to act in the name of the working class. He wrote that the role which Marx in his time had assigned to organised workers was being performed by peasants, the urban lumpen-proletariat, the military and the intellectual elite. The elevation of these sections which replaced the proletariat, according to him, was a matter of the most profound significance, for the hopes of the Marxists that the proletariat of the West would in the long run fulfil its revolutionary mission did not materialise. [72•1 Special attention is attached to the new lumpen-proletariat whose status in society lends it striking resemblance to the early lumpen– proletariat, for it belongs to the lowest layers of the urban society, to those which have fallen into reckless despair, and not to the working class. The behaviour of this declassed section of society forms the basis on which theoreticians of petty-bourgeois radicalism build their strategic conceptions, and who, according to Harrington, act as adepts of Bakuninism in our epoch. [72•2
The attempts to substitute the lumpen-proletariat for the proletariat are fraught with grave political consequences. In effect it is a question of quite different social groups. The working class, which occupies a key position in the system of production, creates the basic social wealth. Furthermore, it is connected with the development of the most advanced forms of production. In contrast to the proletariat, the lumpen-proletariat is a “passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society". [72•3 The existence of the lumpen-proletariat is indication of the ruthless nature of capitalism which continually recreates a mass layer of social “outcasts”. In view of its place in society the lumpen– proletariat is invariably hostile to the system of exploitation and the oppressor classes. But it also exhibits a negative attitude to society as a whole. It rejects the achievements of world culture, and its ideals do not go beyond the primitive redistribution and vulgar, egalitarian pseudo-communism.
Unlike the proletariat which by virtue of its place in the system of social production is a disciplined and organised class, the lumpen-proletariat is disorganised and easily succumbs to the social demagogy of the reactionary forces. The status of the lumpen-proletariat often prompts it to stage desperate mutinies. But these actions cannot be genuinely revolutionary and historically promising. Emphasising that 73 “the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class”, Marx and Engels wrote that the lumpen-proletariat “may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue". [73•1 History has confirmed this conclusion more than once.
Reliance on the lumpen-proletariat can easily discredit revolutionary proletarian ideals and, consequently, isolate the social forces working for thorough-going social transformations. Such reliance may result in abuse of progressive slogans and their employment by social groups whose aims are hostile to the cause of social progress.
Just as harmful for the cause of social progress is the incorrect view of the role played by petty-bourgeois masses. The urban and rural petty bourgeoisie is a victim of the capitalist social system. That explains its opposition to various aspects of capitalist development, which, in turn, creates conditions for its joint actions with the working class. But to attribute an independent revolutionary role to this social group is tantamount to sabotaging the process of the radical social transformation of society.
The desire to minimise the world historic mission of the working class and to “elevate” the role of the petty– bourgeoisie is manifest in the conception upheld by Harvard University Professor Barrington Moore. In an attempt to repudiate the Marxist teaching about the historical mission of the proletariat (and about socio-economic formations) he expounds the idea of three main routes (or types) of the development of the human society. The first is the route of bourgeois revolutions which leads to capitalist democracy. The central role here is played by relations between the peasantry and the landowners, and the principal object of investigation is the modern history of Britain, France and the USA. The second route is premature and reactionary capitalist revolutions “from above”. Here bourgeois-democratic impulses are much weaker and the outcome is fascism, as was the case in Germany or Japan. The third route is peasant revolutions which lead to communism. The vast peasant mass is the main destructive force which overthrows the old order, [73•2 and the central object of study are the countries of the world socialist community. It is easy to see that this conception ignores the impact of the proletariat’s struggle on socio-historical development in modern and contemporary 74 times, and pass over in silence the leading role of the working class in the victorious socialist revolutions, in particular.
Outwardly the reformist Fritz Sternberg, who examines the problems of the working-class movement, does not share Moore’s views. He even employs Marxist terminology and lays claim to continuing the traditions of materialistic and dialectic study of history. But as soon as the question of the transforming mission of the working class turns up, his views draw closer to those of an outspoken bourgeois researcher. By attacking Marx, Sternberg pursues the same aim as Moore, i.e., to prove that Marx allegedly overestimated the role of the proletariat and cbnsequently erred in what is the main thing. [74•1 His attacks, however, are just as futile as all other similar ones.
The opponents of scientific conmmunism attack its stand on yet another major issue—the role of the ideological struggle in the working-class movement. In this case the main aim of the falsifiers is, on the one hand, to misrepresent the views of Marx and Engles on this role and, on the other, to depreciate the vital importance of their struggle for the triumph of the revolutionary proletarian scientific theory and world outlook.
Falsifiers of the first type reduced the entire complicated history of the struggle of ideas in the working-class movement to the “intolerance” of Marx and his associates. A particularly active role in this respect was played by Bakunin and his followers, whose ranks in the past decades were replenished by neo-anarchists, neo-Trotskyites and Maoists. Some of them, in the hope of whitewashing the subversive activity which the CPC leadership conduct in the international arena, endeavour to portray splits as a “law” of the development of the proletarian movement. They assert that Marx and Engels regarded splits as the sole means for surmounting differences in the ranks of the working class. On this basis, they ignore the great traditions and lessons of the struggle for the unity of the revolutionary working-class movement, for rallying the broadest masses of working people, of all progressive forces round the working class. Naturally, such falsifications are resolutely exposed by the Communists.
Notes
[59•1] Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. 18, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1969, p. 517.
[60•1] Marx, Engels, Selected Correspondence, 40.
[60•2] V. I. Lenin, “The Marx-Engels Correspondence”, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 558.
[61•1] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, p. 792.
[62•1] The New World History published in China in the 1970s provides a good example of this. Its authors tried to interpret the historical process in such a way as would make it fit their spurious geopolitical conceptions which misrepresent the concept “working class" (they substitute semi-proletarian and lumpen-proletarian strata for the working class). On the one hand, they manage to discover “proletarian revolutions" in the period preceding the 17th-century bourgeois revolution in England and, on the other, they endeavour to play up the importance of the spontaneous actions of non-proletarian and preproletarian social groups in Asia and Africa (including those that followed in the wake of semi-feudal movements) and simultaneously play down the importance of the rise and development of Marxism, the activity of the First International and the role played by organised militant actions of the working class (Shijie jindai shi, Shang ce, Shanghai, 1973).
[63•1] The General Council ofrthe First International 1870–1871, Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 475.
[64•1] Frederick Engels, “On the History of the Communist League”. In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 179.
[65•1] Frederick Engels, “Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in England”. In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 450.
[65•2] Ibid.,.p. 451.
[65•3] Ibid., p. 444.
[66•1] Fernand Rude, L ’insurrection lyonnaise de novembre 1831. Le mouvement ouvrier a Lyon de 1827–1832, Editions Anthropos, Paris, 1969, pp. 664, 670–71.
[66•2] Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 11.
[66•3] Carl Rodbertus-Jagetzow, Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage, Vol. 2., Puttkammer & Muhlbrecht, Berlin, 1885, p. 195.
[66•4] See: Lorenz von Stein, Der Sozialismus und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreichs. Bin Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte, Verlag fon Otto Wigand, Leipzig, 1848, pp. 10,11.
[67•1] See: Hermann Rauschning, Die Zeit des Deliriums, Verlag Amstutz, Herdeg & Co., Zurich, 1947, pp. 135–36.
[67•2] Gerhard Ritter, Die Damonie der Macht. Leibniz Verlag, Munich, 1948.
[67•3] Hermann Rauschning, Masken und Metamorphosen des NihiKsmus. Der Nihilismus des XX. Jahrhunderts, Humboldt-Verlag, Frankfort on the Main and Vienna, 1954, p. 174.
[68•1] See: Henry Steele Commager, “America and the Enlightenment”. In: The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality, Library of Congress, Washington, 1972, pp. 7-29; Jack P. Greene, “The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution 1763–1789”, Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1968; Idem, “The Preconditions for American Republicanism: A Comment”. In: The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality, pp. 119–23.
[68•2] Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 36.
[69•1] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 721.
[69•2] Attempts to substitute the “middle class" category for the scientific, Marxist concept of proletariat were made at the turn of the century by Bernstein, Lederer, Sombart and others. The thesis about the absence of a fundamental antagonism between workers and capitalists underlies the conceptions of some liberal-bourgeois and reformist historians of the imperialist epoch. Similar though modified views are propagated by contemporary bourgeois ideologists who negate the revolutionary potentialities of the proletariat and belittle the importance of Marxism (Werner Conze, Theodor Schieder and others).
[69•3] Say rejected any thought about the exploitation of the workers by capitalists (Jean-Baptiste Say, Traite d ’economic politique..., Vols. 1-2, Deterville, Paris, 1803); Bastiat wrote about a “harmony of the interests of workers and those who hired them" (Fr. Bastiat, Harmonies tconomiques, Meline, Cans et Compagnie, Brussels, 1850, p. 16).
[69•4] Bernstein, for instance, regarded the movement of “true Levellers”, ideologists of the rural poor in England, as an insignificant episode of the 17-century English bourgeois revolution, which had little or no connection with the latter’s basic tasks (E. Bernstein, Sozialismus und Demokratie in der Grossen Englischen Revolution, J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, Stuttgart, 1922). Falsifying the social ideals of “true Levellerism" many contemporary bourgeois researchers maintain that they were not connected with the development of the latter-day ideology of socialism. They say that the fighters for social justice in England in the 1640s “looked back and not ahead”, not to Marx, but to the Holy Writ and the Fathers of the Church.
[70•1] In his book about the struggle of the classes in the French bourgeois revolution at the end of the 18th century, Guerin characterised that epoch as “coexistence” of the bourgeois revolution with the “embryo” of the proletarian revolution and the “enrages” (they comprised the extreme left faction of the democratic camp during the French bourgeois revolution of the 18th century and upheld the interests of the plebeian-pre-proletarian strata) as precursors of the proletarian revolution who appeared much too early on the scene (Daniel Guerin, La lutte des classes sous la Premiere Republique. Bourgeoisie et “brasnus”(1793–1797),Vol. l.Gallimard,Paris, 1946,pp. 5, 8,253).
[70•2] Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 8, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 160.
[70•3] Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 304.
[70•4] Ibid., p. 305.
[70•5] See, for instance: Albert Soboul, Les sans-culottes parisiens en Van II. Mouvement populaire et gouvemement revolutionnaire 2 juin 1793-9 thermidor an II, Librairie Clavreuil, Paris, 1958; Albert Mathiez, La vie chere et le mouvement social sous la terreur, Payot, Paris, 1927; Georges Lefebvre, Questions agraires au temps de la terreur, Publ. par le ministre de 1’instruction publique, Strasbourg, 1932; Herbert Aptheker, The American Revolution. A History of the American People: An Interpretation (1763–1783), International Publishers, New York, 1960; A. Bimba, The History of the American Working Class, International Publishers, New York, 1927; Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. From the Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor, International Publishers, New York, 1947, pp. 32–47.
[71•1] Karl Marx, “Konspekt von Bakunins Buch ’Staatlichkeit und Anarchic’~”. In: Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. 18, pp. 599, 627–28.
[71•2] Glaucio Ary Dillon Scares, “The New Industrialisation and the Brazilian Political System”. In: Latin America. Reform or Revolution? A Reader, ed. by James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich (Conn.), 1968, p. 196.
[72•1] Michael Harrington, Socialism, Saturday Review Press, New York, 1972, pp. 264–65.
[72•2] Ibid., p. 286.
[72•3] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 494.
[73•1] Ibid.
[73•2] See: Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Beacon Press, Boston, 1966, pp. XV-XVI.
[74•1] See, for instance: Fritz Sternberg, Anmerkungen zu Marx— heute, Europaische Verlaganstalt, Frankfort on the Main, 1965.
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