This is a book which was first published by Engels, in 1880. It is most important, as it traces the development of Scientific Socialism, as opposed to utopian socialism.
A proper understanding of this article, pre supposes an awareness of Western European history. With that in mind, perhaps a brief history lesson is in order, as well as an explanation of a few terms.
The German Reformation of 1525, was a religious reformation movement, that arose out of local dissatisfaction with the performance of the Catholic Church.
The English Civil War, otherwise known as the War of the Three Kingdoms, was fought between 1642 – 1651.
The Rousseau ”contrat social” was a social contract, in which the collective grouping of all citizens, was to be considered as an individual.
Pro tempore means for the time being
Fraternity is a reference to people sharing a common profession or interest.
A Guild is a medieval association of craftsmen or merchants.
A burgher is a reference to a citizen of a town.
Commodities are basic goods that make up everyday life
Napoleonic despotism is a reference to a method of rule by a wise leader.
Antitheses is a contrast between two things.
Feudal is a reference to a time when landholders rented out their land to tenants, in exchange for their loyalty and service.
The Great French Revolution is a reference to the years of 1789-1799, in which the nobility was overthrown.
The industrial revolution first took place in Great Britain, between 1760 and 1840. This made possible mass production, in that machines were used to produce goods, for the first time in history. Yet it also gave birth to two new classes, both revolutionary, at least at first. The merchants of town, referred to as burghers, took advantage of this new technology, bought the factories, mills, mines and other ”means of production”, as well as the banks and other ”financial institutions”. As well, they bought the railroads and shipping lines, the ”means of transportation”, to use the correct scientific terms. These are the terms which Engles uses in his article.
In the process, these town merchants became transformed into ”capitalists”. From the word ”burgher”, they became known as the ”bourgeois”. Yet as no class can live in isolation, these newly created capitalists had to hire people to run their machines. These people, who work by the hour, are referred to as ”proletarians”.
Almost immediately, these two newly created classes came into conflict with the established class, that of the nobility. In particular, the capitalists, or bourgeois, became ever more wealthy. The nobility saw this as a threat to their authority, as indeed it was.
Yet the origins of socialism date to a time before the industrial revolution. With that in mind, Engels refers to the German Peasants War, of 1525, the English Revolution of 1642, and the Great French Revolution of 1789.
As well, at least in France, at that time, the First Estate was a reference to the clergy, a very powerful force. The Second Estate was a reference to the nobility of France. The Third Estate was a reference to everyone else, from the poorest peasant farmer, to the richest capitalist. None of these people, those who composed the vast majority of the population, had any rights. The first two Estates were referred to as the ”privileged classes”, or the ”idle classes”, as opposed to the vast majority of people, those who worked in production and trade.
In fact, the landlords provided land to the peasants, in exchange for their ”loyalty and service”. In return, the landlords claimed the ”right of first night”, in that they had the right to have sex with any female subject, at any time, even on the night of her wedding.
The Great French Revolution gave birth to that which is referred to as the ”Reign of Terror”. This is to say that all those referred to as the ”Third Estate”, which included peasants, workers and capitalists, rose up and overthrew the nobility. These members of the Third Estate, ”commoners”, expressed their hatred of the nobility in no uncertain terms. The nobility was separated from their heads.
Now to the subject. Engels got right to the heart of the matter, with his first paragraph:
”Modern socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non proprietors, between capitalists and wage workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production. But in its theoretical form, modern socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the eighteenth century. Like every new theory, modern socialism had at first to connect itself with the intellectual stock in trade ready at hand, however deeply its roots lay in material economic facts.
”The great men who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. They recognized no external authority of any kind whatsoever. Religion, natural science, society, political institutions- everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism: everything must justify its existence before the judgement seat of reason or give up existence. Reason became the sole measure of everything….everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, the kingdom of reason; henceforth, superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal right, equality based on nature and the inalienable rights of man.
”We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal right found its realization in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the contrat social of Roussseau, came into being, and could only come into being, as a democratic bourgeois government. The great thinkers of the eighteenth century could no more than their predecessors go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch.”
From this, it is clear that the bourgeoisie have a very high opinion of themselves. Those who have even a passing acquaintance with those same people, can testify to the accuracy of that statement. As well, Engles made the point that all ”great thinkers” of their time, were restricted by ”their epoch”.
The fact is that people of ancient times, were every bit as intelligent as people of today. It is also a fact that the ancient Greeks were aware of steam power. They noticed that when water boiled, in a kettle, the top of the kettle would rise. Yet they never took advantage of steam power.
Even though there was no shortage of Greek intellectuals, ”great thinkers”, none of them could go beyond ”their epoch”. This includes such people as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. The conditions of life, of the Greeks, at that time, did not allow for this.
Now to return to Engels:
”But side by side with the antagonisms of the feudal nobility and the burghers, who claimed to represent all the rest of society, was the general antagonism of exploiters and exploited, of rich idlers and poor workers. It was this very circumstance that made it possible for the representatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves forward as representing not one special class, but the whole of suffering humanity. Still further. From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage workers, and in the same proportion as the medieval burgher of the guild developed into the modern bourgeois, the guild journeyman and the day labourer outside the guild developed into the proletarian. And although, upon the whole, the bourgeoisie, in their struggle with the nobility, could claim to represent at the same time the interests of the different working classes of that period, yet in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class that was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of the German Reformation and the Peasants’ War, the Anabaptists and Thomas Munzer; in the great English revolution, the Levellers; in the Great French Revolution, Babeuf.
”There were theoretical enunciations corresponding with these revolutionary uprisings of a class not yet developed; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, utopian pictures of ideal social conditions; in the eighteenth, actual communist theories (Morelly and Mably). The demand for equality was no longer limited to political rights; it was extended also to the social conditions of individuals. It was not simply class privileges that were to be abolished, but class distinctions themselves. A communism, ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan, was the form of the new teaching. Then came the three great utopians: Saint Simon, to whom the middle class movement, side by side with the proletarian, still had a certain significance; Fourier; and Owen, who in the country where capitalist production was most developed, and under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked out his proposals for the removal of class distinction systematically and in direct relation to French materialism.
”One thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of the proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced. Like the French philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once. Like them, they wish to bring in the kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as they see it, is as far as heaven from earth, from that of the French philosophers.
”For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeois world, based upon the principles of these philosophers, is quite as irrational and unjust, and therefore finds its way to the dust hole quite as readily as feudalism and all the earlier stages of society. If pure reason and justice have not hitherto ruled the world, this has been the case only because men have not rightly understood them. What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chain of historical development, but a mere happy accident. He might just as well have been born five hundred years earlier, and might have spared humanity five hundred years of error, strife and suffering.
”We saw how the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, the forerunners of the revolution, appealed to reason as the sole judge of all that is. A rational government, rational society, were to be founded; everything that ran counter to eternal reason was to be remorselessly done away with. We saw that this eternal reason was in reality nothing but the idealized understanding of the eighteenth century citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois. The French revolution had realized this rational society and government.
”But the new order of things, rational enough as compared with earlier conditions, turned out to be by no means absolutely rational. The state based upon reason completely collapsed. Russseau’s contrat social had found its realization in the Reign of Terror, from which the bourgeoisie, who had lost confidence in their own political capacity, had taken refuge first in the corruption of the Directorate, and finally under the wing of the Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peace was turned into an endless war of conquest. The society based upon reason had fared no better. The antagonism between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into general prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of the guild and other privileges, which had to some extent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitable institutions of the Church. The ‘freedom of property’ from feudal fetters, now veritably accomplished, turned out to be, for the small time capitalists and small proprietors, the freedom to sell their property- crushed under the overmastering competition of the large capitalists and landlords- to these great lords, and thus, as far as the small capitalists and peasant proprietors were concerned, became ‘freedom from property’. The development of industry upon a capitalistic basis made poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society. Cash payment become more and more, in Carlyle’s phrase, the sole nexus between man and man. The number of crimes increased from year to year. Formerly, the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad daylight; though not eradicated, they were now at any rate thrust into the background. In their stead, the bourgeois vices, hitherto practiced in secret, began to blossom all the more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater and greater extent cheating. The ‘fraternity’ of the revolutionary motto was realized in the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition. Oppression by force was replaced by corruption; the sword as the first social lever, by gold. The right of the first night was transferred from the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturer. Prostitution increased to an extent never heard of. Marriage itself remained, as before, the legally recognized form, the official cloak of prostitution, and, moreover, was supplemented by rich crops of adultery.
”In a word, compared with the splendid promises of the philosophers, the social and political institutions born of the ‘triumph of reason’ were bitterly disappointing caricatures. All that was wanting was the men to formulate this disappointment, and they came with the turn of the century. In 1802 Saint Simon’s Geneva letters appeared; in 1808 appeared Fourier’s first work, although the groundwork of his theory dated from 1799; on January 1, 1800, Robert Owen undertook the direction of New Lenark.
”At this time, however, the capitalist mode of production, and with it the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was still very incompletely developed. Modern industry, which had just arisen in England, was still unknown in France. But modern industry develops, on the one hand, the conflicts which make absolutely necessary a revolution in the mode of production, and the doing away with its capitalistic character- conflicts not only between the classes begotten of it, but also between the very productive forces and the forms of exchange created by it. And, on the other hand, it develops, in these very gigantic productive forces, the means of ending these conflicts. If, therefore, about the year 1800, the conflicts arising from the new social order were only just beginning to take shape, this holds still more firmly as to the means of ending them. The ‘have nothing’ masses of Paris during the Reign of Terror were able for a moment to gain the mastery, and thus to lead the bourgeois revolution to victory, in spite of the bourgeoisie themselves. But in doing so they only proved how impossible it was for their domination to last under the conditions then obtaining. The proletariat- which then for the first time evolved itself from these ‘have nothing’ masses as the nucleus of a new class, as yet quite incapable of independent political action- appeared as an oppressed, suffering order, to whom, in its incapacity to help itself, help could, at best, be brought in from without or down from above.
”This historical situation also dominated the founders of socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalist production and the crude class conditions corresponded crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order, and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure fantasies.
”These facts once established, we need not dwell a moment longer upon this side of the question, now wholly belonging to the past. We can leave it to the literary small fry to solemnly quibble over these fantasies, which today only make us smile, and to crow over the superiority of their own bald reasoning, as compared with such ‘insanity’. For ourselves, we delight in the stupendously grand thoughts and germs of thought that everywhere break out through their fantastic covering, and to which these philistines are blind”.
Engels then documents the fact that three great utopian socialists appeared. The first was Saint-Simon, a ”son of the Great French Revolution”. He noticed that the Revolution was a victory of the Third Estate, the working people, over the ”privileged idle classes”, the nobility and clergy. As far as he was concerned, this meant that ”the idlers had lost the capacity for intellectual leadership and political supremacy”. He was further of the opinion that the role of leadership should fall to ”science and industry”, in that ”science” was the scholars, while ”industry” was the ”working bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants, bankers”.
Engels went on to point out that, ”This conception was in exact keeping with a time in which modern industry in France, and with it the chasm between bourgeoisie and proletariat, was only just coming into existence.” Yet that which most concerned Saint-Simon was the ”class that is most numerous and poor”, the proletariat.
As Engles went on to state, ”To recognize the French Revolution as a class war, and not simply one between nobility and bourgeoisie, and the nonpossessors, was in the year 1802, a most pregnant discovery. In 1816, he declares that politics is the science of production and foretells the complete absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that economic conditions are the basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo. Yet what is here already very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production- that is to say, the ‘abolition of the state’, about which recently there has been so much noise.
”Saint-Simon shows the same superiority over his contemporaries when in 1814, immediately after the entry of the allies into Paris, and again in 1815, during the Hundred Days’ War, he proclaims the alliance of France with England, and then of both these countries with Germany, as the only guarantee for the prosperous development and peace of Europe. To preach to the French in 1815 an alliance with the victors of Waterloo required as much courage as historical foresight”.
A second great utopian socialist of his day was Fourier. As Engles stated, ”We find in Fourier a criticism of the existing conditions of society genuinely French and witty, but not upon that account any the less thorough. Fourier takes the bourgeoisie, their inspired prophets before the revolution, and their interested eulogists after it, at their own word. He lays bare the material and moral misery of the bourgeois world. He confronts it with the earlier philosophers’ dazzling promises of a society in which reason alone should reign, of a civilization in which happiness should be universal, of an illimitable human perfectibility, and with the rose coloured phraseology of the bourgeois ideologists of his time. He points out how everywhere the most pitiful reality corresponds with the most high sounding phrases, and he overwhelms this hopeless fiasco of phrases with his mordant sarcasm.
”But Fourier is at his greatest in his conception of the history of science. He divides its whole course thus far into four stages of evolution- savagery, barbarism, the patriarchate, civilization. This last is identical with the so called civil, or bourgeois, society of today- i.e., with the social order that came in with the sixteenth century. He proves that ‘the civilized stage raises every vice practiced by barbarism in a simple fashion into a form of existence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal, hypocritical’- that civilization moves in ‘a vicious circle’, in contradictions which it constantly reproduces without being able to solve; hence it constantly arrives at the very opposite to that which it wants to attain, or pretends to want to attain, so that e.g., ‘under civilization poverty is born of superabundance itself’.
”Fourier, as we see, uses the dialectical method in the same masterly way as his contemporary, Hagel. Using these same dialectics, he argues against the talk about illimitable human perfectibility, that every historical phase has its period of ascent and also its period of descent, and he applies this observation to the future of the whole human race”.
As for those who are skeptical, concerning the last point made, that ”every historical phase has its period of ascent and also its period of descent”, may I point out that all previous civilizations rose to a peak, and then fell into decline. In the western world, the most famous of these is that of the Roman Empire. Regardless of how great it was, it could not save itself.
Our civilization too, has passed its peak, and is now in decline. This is not to say that our civilization is ”doomed”, because it is not! Our civilization differs from all previous civilizations, in the fact that the Industrial Revolution has given birth to two new revolutionary classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. More accurately, the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, was at first revolutionary, at the time of its appearance. At the point that capitalism reached the stage of monopoly, otherwise known as imperialism, around the beginning of the twentieth century, the capitalist class became completely reactionary.
That leaves the other class, created by the Industrial Revolution, the working class, the proletariat, as the only completely revolutionary class. It is the proletariat that is destined to prevent the collapse of our civilization. This can be done- and will be done!- by overthrowing the ruling class of monopoly capitalists, the billionaires, the bourgeoisie. The existing state apparatus will be smashed, and replaced by a new state apparatus, in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In this way, the collapse of our civilization will be forestalled. There is no other way!
Engels then proceeded to document the attempts of another great utopian socialist, to establish a socialist world, under capitalism:
”While in France the hurricane of the revolution swept over the land, in England a quieter, but not on that account less tremendous, revolution was going on. Steam and the new toolmaking industry were transforming manufacture into modern industry, and thus revolutionizing the whole foundation of bourgeois society. The sluggish march of development of the manufacturing period changed into a veritable storm and stress period of development. With constantly increasing swiftness, the splitting up of society into large capitalists and non possessing proletarians went on. Between these, instead of the former stable middle class, and unstable mass of artisans and small shop keepers- the most fluctuating portion of the population- now led a precarious existence.
”The new mode of production was, as yet, only at the beginning of its period of ascent; as yet it was the normal, regular method of production- the only one possible under existing conditions. Nevertheless, even then it was producing crying social abuses- the herding together of a homeless population in the worst quarters of the large towns; the loosening of all traditional moral bonds, of patriarchal subordination, of family relations, overwork, especially of women and children, to a frightful extent; complete demoralization of the working class, suddenly flung into altogether new conditions, from the country into the town, from agriculture into modern industry, from stable conditions of existence into insecure ones that changed from day to day.
”At this juncture there came forward as a reformer a manufacturer twenty nine years old- a man of almost sublime, childlike simplicity of character, and at the same time one of the few born leaders of men. Robert Owen had adopted the teaching of the materialistic philosophers: that man’s character is a product, on the one hand, of heredity; on the other, of the environment of the individual during his lifetime and especially during his period of development. In the industrial revolution, most of his class saw only chaos and confusion, and the opportunity of fishing in these troubled waters and making a large fortune quickly. He saw in it the opportunity of putting into practice his favourite theory, and so bringing order out of chaos. He had already tried it with success, as superintendent of more than five hundred men in a Manchester factory. From 1800 to 1829 he directed the great cotton mill at New Lenark, in Scotland, as managing partner, along the same lines, but with greater freedom of action and with a success that made him a European reputation. A population, originally consisting of the most diverse and, for the most part, very demoralized elements, a population that gradually grew to 2,500, he turned into a model colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were unknown. And all this simply by placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings, and especially by carefully bringing up the rising generation. He was the founder of infant schools and introduced them first at New Lenark. At the age of two, the children came to school, where they enjoyed themselves so much that they could scarcely be got home again. While his competitors worked their people thirteen or fourteen hours a day, in New Lenark the working day was only ten and a half hours. When a crisis in cotton stopped work for four months, his workers received their full wages all the time. And with all this the business more than doubled in value, and to the last yielded large profits to its proprietors.
”In spite of all this, Owen was not content. The existence which he secured for his workers was, in his eyes, still far from being worthy of human beings. ‘The people were slaves at my mercy’. The relatively favourable conditions in which he had placed them were still far from allowing a rational development of the character and of the intellect in all directions, much less of the free exercise of all their faculties. ‘And yet, the working part of this population of 2,500 persons was daily producing as much real wealth for society as, less than half a century before, it would have required the working part of a population of 600,000 to create. I asked myself, what became of the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and that which would have been consumed by 600,000?’
”The answer was clear. It had been used to pay the proprietors of the establishment 5 percent on the capital they had laid out, in addition to over 300,000 pounds clear profit. And that which held for New Lenark held to a still greater extent for all the factories in England. ‘If this new wealth had not been created by machinery, imperfectly as it had been applied, the wars of Europe, in opposition to Napoleon, and to support the aristocratic principles of society, could not have been maintained. And yet this new power was the creation of the working classes.’ To them, therefore, the fruits of this new power belonged. The newly created gigantic productive forces, hitherto used only to enrich individuals and to enslave the masses, offered to Owen the foundations for a reconstruction of society; they were destined, as the common property of all, to be worked for the common good of all.
”Owen’s communism was based upon this purely business foundation, the outcome, so to speak, of commercial calculation. Throughout, it maintained this practical character. Thus in 1823 Owen proposed the relief of the distress in Ireland by communist colonies and drew up complete estimates of costs of funding them, yearly expenditures, and probable revenue. And in his definite plan for the future, the technical working out of details is managed with such practical knowledge- ground plan, front and side and bird’s eye views all included- that the Owen method of social reform once accepted, there is, from the practical point of view, little to be said against the actual arrangement of details.
”His advance in the direction of communism was the turning point in Owen’s life. As long as he was simply a philanthropist, he was rewarded with nothing but wealth, applause, honour, and glory. He was the most popular man in Europe. Not only men of his own class, but statesmen and princes listened to him approvingly. But when he came out with his communist theories, that was quite another thing. Three great obstacles seemed to him especially to block the path to social reform: private property, religion, the present form of marriage. He knew what confronted him if he attacked these- outlawry, ex communication from official society, the loss of his whole social position. But nothing of this prevented him from attacking them without fear of consequences, and what he had foreseen happened. Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful communist experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to the working class and continued working in their midst for thirty years. Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers, links itself onto the name of Robert Owen. He forced through in 1819, after five years fighting, the first law limiting the hours of labour of women and children in factories. He was president of the first congress at which all the trade unions of England united in a single great trade association. He introduced as transitional measures to the complete communist organization of society, on the one hand, cooperative societies for retail goods and production. These have since that time, at least, given practical proof that the merchant and the manufacturer are socially quite unnecessary. On the other hand, he introduced labour bazaars for the exchange of the products of labour through the medium of labour notes, whose unit was a single hour of work; institutions necessarily doomed to failure, but completely anticipating Proudhon’s bank of exchange of a much later period, and differing entirely from this in that it did not claim to be the panacea for all social ills, but only a first step towards a much more radical revolution of society”.
Engles just provided us with a detailed description of an honest man, a member of the middle class, a man of principle, by the name of Robert Owen. Possibly the finest of the utopian socialists.
It is people of this calibre that we need now, to be sent to the various capitals. Such an individual- male or female, it makes no difference- can serve the working class, as well as all common people, in ways they cannot imagine! Of course, when I say capitals, I am referring to not just Washington, but also Ottawa, as well as the state and provincial capitals.
As mentioned in a previous article, this is not as difficult as it may at first appear. In America, all adult citizens are eligible to become card carrying members of the two mainstream political parties, Republican and Democratic. As such, they get to decide the individuals to run for any and all political offices. As soon as tens, or better yet, hundreds of thousands of Americans, join those two parties, then they can nominate Leftist people to run for all offices, preferably as both Democrats and Republicans. The advantage of running for office on behalf of both parties is two fold. On the one hand, victory is almost guaranteed, as the person has no competition. On the other hand, campaign expenses are kept to a minimum. There is no point in investing in expensive ads, because it makes no difference which candidate wins. It is the same individual. It matters not if they go to Washington as a Democrat or as a Republican.
It is in this way that honest, hard working, law abiding, tax paying, patriotic citizens can be elected to office. These people must be nominated by their own kind. They can then be counted upon to go to the capitals, and attempt to pass laws that will benefit all working people.
Just imagine: Washington flooded with Leftist politicians. The Squad now a majority. These Leftist politicians proposing laws that allow free medical for all, as it is a human right. Free education for all, as it is another human right, with all student loans annulled. An increase to the pensions of seniors, tax free, as they are living on a fixed income. An increase to the minimum wage. All vacant buildings to be seized by the government and repaired, to be given to the homeless. Soup kitchens and free food for the hungry. The statute of limitations to be abolished, with those accused of various crimes, to be held accountable. Those convicted of serious crimes, to be sent to work camps, forced to perform useful, productive labour. The electoral college to be abolished, as it is a remnant of slavery, and replaced by a popular vote. All officials to work at the wages of working people, subject to recall at any time. This is to be paid for, by raising the tax rates of the wealthy. The millionaires can pay at a rate of ninety percent, rising to ninety nine percent for the billionaires.
In short, we can only make every effort of taking the capitalists at their word, of attempting to ”change the system from within”. And fail miserably!
That last statement, in italics, was meant to be a bit of a joke. Mind you, not everyone appreciates my sense of humour. So if you do not think it is funny, you are not alone.
Seriously, such Leftist individuals, those who are elected to political office, to perhaps go to Washington, with the best on intentions, that of passing laws to assist the working people, are about to receive a rude awakening. This is precisely what we need!
Such people, those who are admired and trusted by the working people, can be counted upon to make every effort to pass laws, that can only be of benefit to those same working people. They can ”follow in the footsteps” of Robert Owen. They can join the members of The Squad, a small minority of Congress. If sufficient people are sent to Washington, they will cease to be a minority. They will become the majority. Then they will ”put to the test” this fairy tale of democracy being ”majority rule”.
Without doubt, these Leftist politicians will then report to their constituency, those who voted them into office, the true situation in Washington. Both parties serve the same class. That class is the monopoly capitalist class of billionaires, the bourgeoisie. Regardless of the number of Leftist politicians sent to Washington, the billionaires are in charge, and fully intend to remain in charge. If sufficient pressure is placed, then they are bound to respond by changing their method of rule. They will then be more exposed.
It is in this way, and only in this way, that the vast majority of working people will come to realize that the Communists are correct. After all, we can expect them to listen to one of their own.
As well, just as Owen continued to serve the working class, as an elected official, passing through various reforms, so too, Leftist politicians in Washington can also serve the American working class. Then at the time of the revolution, we can expect them to assist in the abolishment of Congress, to be replaced by Soviet (Council) Power, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Engles went on to state: ”The utopians’ mode of thought has for a long time governed the socialist ideas of the nineteenth century and still governs some of them. Until very recently, all French and German socialists paid homage to it. The earlier German communism, including that of Weitling, was of the same school. To all these, socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason, and justice and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is developed. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they should be mutually exclusive, one of the other. Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mishmash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion; a mishmash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mishmash which is the more easily brewed the more the definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.
”To make a science of socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.”
This was written in the late nineteenth century. Remarkably enough, it is also an accurate description of our current situation, in this, the twenty first century. To this day, we still have a ”mishmash” of various ideas of socialism, all of them utopian, ”like rounded pebbles in a brook”.
Yet as Engles stated, socialism must be made a science, ”placed upon a real basis”. That was the subject of the second part of his book. In this section, he first documents the fact that changing conditions, advances in science, gave birth to advances in the field of philosophy. This is important, but beyond the scope of this article. For that reason, I have chosen to ”skip over it”, and proceed to that which most concerns us.
Engles: ”The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange- in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions, as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. Hagel had freed history from metaphysics- he had made it dialectical; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a method found of explaining man’s ‘knowing’ by his ‘being’, instead of, as heretofore, his ‘being’ by his ‘knowing”’. (italics by Engels)
The preceding paragraph is of the utmost importance. In particular, Engels statement, to the effect that ”these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and exchange- in a word, of the economic conditions of their time…the real basis…from which we can alone work out …the superstructure”.
The economic basis of our current society is socialized production! It is the ”real basis”! It follows that our superstructure should also be socialized! Scientific Socialism!
It is to be hoped that numerous self proclaimed socialists, those who consider socialism to be a good idea, but simply not practical, consider that statement. In a nutshell, it sums up the difference between utopian socialism, and Scientific Socialism. Scientific Socialists start from the ”real basis”, that of ”socialized production”. That is the ”economic conditions” of our time. That is also the ”real basis” of Scientific Socialism.
Without doubt, a great many utopian socialists, but by no means all, are of a middle class background, have been to University, and ”learned” that the revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin, are merely ”radical”, not to mention ”anti democratic”. The experience of the Soviet Union and China may be presented, as examples of the ”failure of Communism”.
To such misguided people, I can only respond that the Universities are in the service of the ruling class of monopoly capitalists, the billionaires, the bourgeoisie. For that reason, they teach only the distortion of the revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin. They neglect to mention that democracy is nothing more than a method of class rule, and that we live under the rule of the monopoly capitalists. The one and only alternative to that rule, is that of Scientific Socialism, in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
It is also a fact that both the Soviet Union and China were, at one time, socialist countries. It is further a fact that both Stalin and Mao were fine Marxists, Scientific Socialists. Yet both made some serious mistakes, which enabled the capitalists to return to power, after their deaths. As I have covered that in previous articles, there is no need to repeat it here. Suffice it to say that as Scientific Socialists, we learn from the experience of previous revolutions, and revolutionary leaders. That includes learning from their mistakes. But then, that is what separates us from the utopian socialists.
Engels goes on to state: ”From that time forward, socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico – economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created, the means of ending the conflict. But the socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialistic conception, as the conception of nature of the French materialist was with dialectics and modern natural science. The socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production, and its consequences. But it could not explain them and therefore could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier socialism denounced the exploitation of the working class, inevitable under capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted, and how it arose.
”But for this it was necessary, 1), to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical connection, and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and 2), to lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus value. It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist mode of production, and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of the labourer at its full value, as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and the production of capital were both explained.
”These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries, socialism became a science. The next thing was to work out all its details and relations.” (italics by Engels)
This is to stress the fact that Karl Marx placed socialism on a scientific basis, through his materialist conception of history, and his discovery of surplus value. Which is precisely the reason we now refer to it as Scientific Socialism.
This brings us to the third section. Engels: ”The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders, is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought not in their philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange, changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production and exchange themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production”. (italics by Engels)
Without doubt, numerous ”intellectual giants”, mainly of the middle class, will dispute that previous statement. They are all too fond of telling us- frequently, at great length and high volume!- that socialism may be a good idea, but simply does not work! This is something they have learned in university, and accept as fact. They are also determined that everybody else should agree with this.
These misguided souls, poor unfortunates, one and all, are best left to their own devices. It is really not their fault that they are not capable of facing reality. It is entirely possible that they were born this way. Perhaps in due time, as the revolution unfolds, as working people rise up and overthrow the ruling class of billionaires, the heretical thought may cross the minds of these people, that they may not be the smartest people in the world. Or perhaps I am being wildly optimistic. Only time will tell.
For the rest of us, mere mortals, one and all, we can take some consolation in the fact that Marx has given birth to Scientific Socialism. The ”stubborn facts of the existing mode of production”, reveal to us the solution to our problem.
Engles: ”What is then, the position of modern socialism in this connection?
”The present structure of society- this is now pretty generally conceded- is the creation of the ruling class of today, the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks, and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organization. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality before the law of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces that evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalist mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalist mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions, even of the men that have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first of the class directly suffering under it, the working class.”
There we have it. Scientific Socialism, that which Engels refers to as ”modern socialism”, is nothing other than the ”reflection” of the conflict, between the ”productive forces” and the ”modes of production”, within the minds of the working class.
This is followed by a summary of the method of production of the Middle Ages, along with its effect on the various classes, then in existence. This changed dramatically at the time of the industrial revolution, as that revolution gave birth to two new classes, the capitalist class, the bourgeois, and the working class, the proletariat. As Engels stated: ”Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufacturies, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before, i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labour had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now the owner of the instruments of labour always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product, but exclusively the product of the labour of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.
”This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalist character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation….The contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.” (italics by Engels)
Production is socialized, yet the product of socialized production is appropriated by the capitalists. This ”contradiction” gives rise to the ”antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie”. It can hardly be otherwise, as the interests of the two classes are diametrically opposed.
Engels then proceeds to document the completely unexpected effects, which take place, as a result of the sale of commodities:
”We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social interactions. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production, or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.
”But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has its peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social interrelations, i.e., in exchange, and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producer.”
Under the capitalist system, we have the ”reign of anarchy”. No capitalist knows for sure whether or not his product will meet a demand, whether he can sell it for a profit, or if the market is about to be ”flooded” by numerous other capitalists, producing the same item. Yet at the same time, within the ”anarchy of production”, there are ”inherent laws”. These laws are gradually revealed to the capitalists, as a ”result of experience”. Surprise!
This is followed by a comparison to an earlier, ”simpler time”, in medieval society. As most people were hard pressed to satisfy their immediate wants, there was generally a severe shortage of excess, to be sold as a ”cash crop”, as ”commodities”. That is not a problem that we currently face, under capitalism.
Engels: ”But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through; the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. It became apparent that the production of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means through which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialized production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organization of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things was ended. Wherever this organization of production was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by its side. The field of labour became a battle ground. The great geographical discoveries, and the colonization following upon them, multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities. The local struggles begat in their turn national conflicts, the commercial wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
”Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence, transferred from nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradictions between socialized production and the capitalist appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.”
At the time that Engles wrote this, the world was in the process of becoming completely divided up, between the ”Great Powers”. This is to say that the most highly industrialized countries of the world had ”staked out” their very own ”spheres of influence”. These consisted of countries that were little more than colonies, to be exploited by the ruling class of capitalists, within those same industrialized countries.
Engels went on to state: ”The capitalist mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that ‘vicious circle’, which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time, is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large, that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin.”
There are countless people, former members of the middle class, who can testify to the accuracy of that statement. A great many others, owners of small businesses, are ”fighting a losing battle”, each month going ever deeper into debt. It is simply not possible to compete with the monopolies.
Welcome to the proletariat, my Brothers and Sisters, my Comrades! Now is not the time to get mad! Now is the time to get even! Working together, we can destroy the class of people who destroyed you! At least, they destroyed your comfortable middle class lifestyle. Despair not! Under Scientific Socialism, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, your training and skills will be in demand. You will be rewarded accordingly. Even now, those same skills can prove to be useful. Do yourself a favour. Join the revolutionary movement.
Engels goes on to say: ”But the perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wageworkers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time, and that of his family, at the disposal of the capitalist, for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market. ‘The law which always holds the relative surplus population or industrial reserve army in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, mental degradation at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.’ And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalistic mode of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.”(In that last paragraph, Engels quoted a passage from the book of Marx, titled Capital)
Next he proceeded: ”We have seen that the ever increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to improve its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similar compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gasses is mere child’s play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws, that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another ‘vicious circle”’. (italics by Engels)
This ”collision”, that of the ”extension of markets”, with the ”extension of production”, this cycle of ”boom to bust”, this periodic ”market crash”, is now referred to as a ”recession”, or as a ”depression”, or even as a ”crisis in capitalism”.
Engels then went on to explain that when this happens, ”Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unstable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into a headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began- in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again….In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange.” (italics by Engels)
Strangely enough, this cycle of ”boom to bust”, this ”law of supply and demand”, is one that the capitalists embrace! At the time of the bust, they may be able to ”write off” those losses, and thus recover their money, at tax payer expense, of course. The workers who are out of work have no such recourse. But of course, that is of no concern to the capitalists.
Engels goes on to state: ”The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creation. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available labourers- all the elements of production and of general wealth- are present in abundance. But ‘abundance becomes the source of distress and want’ (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society the means of production can function only when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labour power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social productive forces.
”This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tend to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint stock companies. Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of industry in a particular country unite in a ‘trust’, a union for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of the particular industry is turned into one gigantic joint stock company; internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company…
”In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite- into monopoly; and the production without definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialist society. Certainly this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But in this case the exploitation is so palpable that it must break down. No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend mongers.
”In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society- the state- will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into state property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication- the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.”
In modern society, at least in America, a handful of banks and businesses have been declared to be ”Too Big To Fail”. By implication, all of the rest of the thousands of banks, and tens of thousands of businesses, are ”Too Small To Succeed”. Even General Motors is Too Small To Succeed!
The ”state”, in this case the American government, props up those banks and corporations, which it considers to be ”Too Big To Fail”, with massive ”cash infusions”, whenever necessary. This is a polite reference to ”corporate welfare”, in that the American tax payer donates countless billions to these monopolies.
Incidentally, recently the Secretary of the Treasury donated forty billion dollars to a bank, which was failing, in an attempt to ”prop it up”. The bank failed anyway, so she donated a further seventy billion dollars to an even bigger bank, which was also failing. Of course, that bank also failed.
Numerous people have speculated that she merely took that money from the FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That money was earmarked to cover the deposits of all those who place their money in the banks, so that if the bank goes broke, the deposits are insured, up to a limit of $250,000, for each individual. Or at least, that used to be the case. We will know for sure, at the time of the next bank failure.
Engles goes on to state: ”If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint stock companies, trusts, and state property show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the stock exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.”
The same capitalists who worked so tirelessly to ”mechanize”, as they phrase it, as a means ‘of increasing production, by laying off workers, are now also unemployed. The word ”ironic” comes to mind. The reason they are first ”reduced to the ranks of the surplus population”, but not ”immediately into the industrial reserve army”, is because they bring with them a considerable amount of wealth, in the form of personal belongings, such as vehicles, artwork, jewelry, cash and perhaps gold and silver, possibly hidden away in safe deposit boxes.
Engels: ”But the transformation, either into joint stock companies and trusts, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint stock companies and trusts this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments of the workers as well as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wageworkers- proletariats. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But brought to a head it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
”This solution can consist only in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonizing of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces, which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilized by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodic collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.”
That which Engles rather politely refers to here as, ”taking over by society of the productive forces”, is nothing other than revolution. The only way that the capitalists are about to allow ”society” to ”take over the productive forces”, is with the use of brute force. This is to say that the government, the state apparatus which has been set up, by the capitalists, to crush the working class, must be smashed, and replaced by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. At that point, ”society”, in the form of the working class, the proletariat, can ”take over the productive forces”.
Engels: ”Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand and reckon with them. But once we understand them, once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. So long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action- and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders- so long do these forces work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long do they master us, as we have shown above in detail.
”But once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of their producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive forces of electricity in the lightning of the storm and electricity under command in the telegraph and voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, a means to the maintenance and extension of production- on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.
”While the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. While it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property. (italics by Engels)
”But in doing this it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as a state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was pro tempore the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without, with the existing conditions of production, and therefore especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the conditions of oppression, corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage labour). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses rising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society- the taking of possession of the means of production in the name of society- this is at the same time its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished’. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase ‘a free state’, both as to its justifiable use at times for agitational purposes and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand.” (italics by Engels)
After the revolution, after the monopoly capitalist class of billionaires are overthrown, their hatred and fury will increase tenfold, as they make every effort to ”regain their paradise lost”. They will resort to every subterfuge, every lie, every deception, in order to return to power. For that reason, a state apparatus is required to crush them. Not the old state apparatus, which was set up by the capitalists, in order to crush the working class. That state apparatus must be destroyed, at the time of the revolution. The new state apparatus is that of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Then, in due time, as classes are gradually abolished, as all people learn to live in peace, to work together, there will no longer be any need for a state apparatus, because there will no longer exist a class to be subjugated. Engles refers to this as the ”withering away of the state”.
Engels: ”Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation of society of all the means of production, has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals as well as sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realization were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men of understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of classes into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labour yields only a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labour engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society- so long, of necessity, is this society divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, who are no more than bond slaves to labour, which looks after the general affairs of society; the direction of labour, state business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.
”But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all- and therefore, the existence of class distinction itself- has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and with this of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous, but economically, politically, intellectually a hindrance to development.
”This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every cycle, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialized appropriation of the means of production does away not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of the productive forces and products that are, at the present time, the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height, in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties- this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.
”With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and simultaneously the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence, into real human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the domination and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become the master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history- only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity, to the kingdom of freedom.
”Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution.
”I. Medieval society- lndividual production on a small scale. Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either of the producer himself or of his feudal lord. Only where an excess of production over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, only in its infancy. But already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production of society at large.
”II. Capitalist revolution- transformation of industry, at first by means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence, their transformation from individual to social means of production- a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.
”A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage labour for life. Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
”B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction between socialized organization in the individual factory and the social anarchy in production as a whole.
”C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of labourers. Industrial reserve army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, overproduction, glutting of the markets, crises every ten years, the vicious cycle: excess here, of means of production and products- excess there, of labourers, without employment and without means of existence. But these two levers of production and of social well being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital- which their very super abundance prevents. The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange. The bourgeoisie are convicted of incapacity to further manage their own social productive forces.
”D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint stock companies, later on by trusts, then by the state. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.
”III. Proletarian revolution- Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes public power; and by means of this, transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their social character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the state dies out. Man, at last the master of his own forms of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over nature, his own master- free.
”To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, Scientific Socialism.”
In the interest of ”accomplishing the act of universal emancipation of the modern proletariat”, it is necessary to face the fact that those same ”modern proletarians”, need leaders. The conditions of life, of the proletariat, do not lead to the awareness of themselves, as a class. This class awareness must come from an outside source. The ”full knowledge of the conditions” must be explained to them, in terms they can understand. The ”momentous act it is called to accomplish”, is nothing short of a revolution. The completely reactionary class of monopoly capitalists, the billionaires, the bourgeoisie, must be overthrown. The existing state apparatus, which is used to crush the proletariat, must be smashed, and replaced with a different state apparatus, in order to crush those parasites, under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This can best be accomplished with the use of Councils- Soviets.
In other words, the working people need leaders. The only true leaders, of the working people, are those who have embraced the revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin, and are determined to bring that awareness to those same working people. Such Scientific Socialists must come together and form a true Communist Party, one which calls for Council Power and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That is the subject of our next chapter.
Gerald McIsaac Science Project 