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Understanding of Karl Marx

Sidney Hook

Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx

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Chapter XVIII: The Theory of Revolution

I: ‘The Revolutionary Situation’ and ‘The Revolution’: If Marx’s analysis of the state is valid, then it follows that no fundamental change in the control of the instruments of social production is possible without the overthrow of the state. The overthrow of the state means revolution. Since the acceptance of the class theory of the state is the sine qua non of Marxism, to be a Marxist means to be a revolutionist. The strategy and tactics of Marxists everywhere must be guided by an evaluation of the consequences of any proposed course of action upon the conquest of political power. When conditions are different, methods of procedure will be different, but the use of one method rather than another is determined by a revolutionary purpose which is constant in all situations. This does not mean that such a purpose can be translated into action at any time. That was the error of the Blanquists who, for almost half a century in France, conceived of revolution as a conspiratorial coup d’état on the part of a band of determined men, whose first task was to seize the state offices and, independently of the condition of productive forces and the political maturity of the proletariat, introduce socialism. Such a policy necessarily leads to a mad adventurism which, for all its heroic qualities, has disastrous effects upon existing organisations of the working class.

Many socialists who survived the abortive revolutions of 1848 were peculiarly subject to the belief that the sole and exclusive condition of a successful revolution at any time was the will and power of a political organisation. They did not stop to inquire whether the complex of objective conditions, economic, political and psychological, which had once been favourable for an uprising, had remained so. In the desperation of their defeat, they impatiently urged resort to direct action before the state had an opportunity to take protective measures on its own behalf and annihilate the revolutionists. Many of these men worked with Marx in common organisations. But in the interests of the true revolutionary objective for which these organisations were founded, Marx was compelled to dissociate himself from the revolutionary Utopians – sometimes to the point of splitting with them. It was not their sincerity which he attacked but what was, in its objective consequences, even more important, their lack of intelligence. ‘In moments of crisis’, he once wrote, ‘stupidity becomes a crime.’

One of the earliest struggles which Marx waged against this tendency in the international revolutionary movement, took place in London in 1850. On this occasion he split the Communist League by his attack on the Willich-Schapper fraction of direct actionists. In the course of the discussion, he said:

In place of a critical attitude, you [the minority] substitute a dogmatic one; in place of a materialistic conception, an idealistic one. For you, pure will instead of objective conditions is the driving force of revolution.

While we say to the workers: ‘You have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil war and national struggles, not only to change conditions but to change yourselves and to acquire the capacity for political mastery’, you say on the contrary: ‘We must seize power at once or else we may as well lie down and go to sleep.’ While we particularly call to the attention of the German workers, the undeveloped character of the German proletariat, you flatter (in the crudest way) their national feeling and the professional prejudices of the German craftsmen. Certainly, the more popular thing to do. Just as the democrats convert the word ‘people’ into a holy fetish, so do you the word ‘proletariat’. And like the democrats you palm off the revolutionary phrase for revolutionary development ... [1]

This note is struck again and again in the history of the European working-class movement. In a different context it appears in the writings of Engels, of Lenin, of Rosa Luxemburg. Sometimes, these passages from their writings will be found quoted in the works of those who call themselves Marxists but for whom revolutionary activity at any time is anathema. Such citations may be dismissed as dishonest distortions. For Marx condemns ‘revolutionists of the phrase’ not because he is an advocate of ‘moral force’, but because he is interested in discovering the conditions under which a successful revolution is possible.

A political party can prepare itself and large sections of the working class for a revolutionary situation in which its action may be the decisive factor. But it cannot of itself produce the revolutionary situation. That depends, first, upon the breakdown of the forces of production and distribution as measured by the disparity between what the workers receive and what they have produced, by the growing unemployment, by the jamming of the mechanism of credit, by all the familiar phenomena attendant upon an actual or incipient economic crisis. Second, a revolutionary situation is evidenced in the lack of immediate political homogeneity on the part of the ruling classes. This may be the result of an exceptionally prolonged economic crisis or of a lost war or of some natural calamity which demoralises production. The lack of political homogeneity is reflected in dissensions between different groups over policy. Its objective effects are loss of prestige of the ruling group in the eyes of the mass of the population, a growing sense that ‘anything might happen’, increasing restlessness and unreliability of administrative agencies. To all this must be added, thirdly, spontaneous manifestations of class consciousness and struggle; strikes, riots and mass demonstrations; the disintegration of the habit-patterns of blind response and obedience on the part of the oppressed elements. The revolutionary situation is experienced by all classes as one of seething chaos. [2]

It is only in relation to the objective revolutionary situation that the revolutionary act and the role of the revolutionary party can be grasped. Psychologically, the seizure of power is felt as an attempt to bring a new order out of the existing confusion. Revolutionary slogans and programmes are put forward as ways of saving society. To the mass of the population, without whose support the revolution would fail, the ensuing civil war and destruction appear as the costs of social salvation. Where the revolutionary situation is not conceived of as the condition precedent to the revolution, the latter is regarded as an abstract affair – a putsch or coup d’état. It is doomed to failure; and if it succeeds, it is only as a superficial, political phenomenon which leaves the essential class relationships unaltered. The proletarian revolution, which is the greatest social upheaval in history, must strike deeper roots. For it marks the transition not from one class society to another, but from class society to classless society.

The revolutionary party does not make ‘the revolutionary situation’. Nor does it, by itself, make ‘the revolution’. It organises and leads it. This is a task heavy with responsibility; a task whose execution is influenced more directly by such ‘subjective’ factors as previous education, theory, personality of leaders than by any one ‘objective’ aspect of the revolutionary situation. A revolutionary situation does not automatically come to fruition. Unless a revolutionary party exists, free from the twin faults of sectarianism and opportunism, and therefore capable of properly exploiting every lead towards the seizure of power, the situation may lose its potentialities for revolutionary change. But it is not only at such moments that the political party is of central importance. Long before the revolutionary situation develops, it must be active on every front on which there is social discontent. It seeks to broaden the base of mass struggles, to organise and educate the working class politically, and to build up its own ranks in preparation for the coming revolutionary situation.

For Marx, questions of revolutionary organisation and strategy were of the highest political significance. They were not treated as details incidental to larger problems of theory but as integrally connected with them. This is clearly revealed in that classic statement of tactical first principles, The Address to the Communist League (1850). Some illustrations: In the processes of capitalist production, the wage-workers and agricultural labourers are those who have most to gain by a revolution. Their political party must therefore lead the revolution. It must never surrender its independent revolutionary policy and organisational autonomy no matter how closely it works in united action with the political parties of the discontented petty bourgeoisie. Even more important: The international character of capitalist production necessitates an international organisation to overthrow it. The social revolution is not complete until it is international. A social revolution in one country creates a breach in the international system of capitalist production which must either become wider or be closed up. As Marx proclaimed in his Address:

... it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, to keep it going until all the ruling and possessing classes are deprived of power, the governmental machinery occupied by the proletariat, and the organisation of the working classes of all lands so far advanced that all rivalry and competition among themselves has ceased. [3]

It goes without saying that the uneven character of capitalist development and the varying concomitant political consciousness demand a flexible, concrete application of fundamental principles to specific problems of each nation. But by virtue of the character of the state and of the existence of special bodies of armed men, it is imperative, however, that revolutionary organisations everywhere be prepared, when the revolutionary situation arises, for the ultimate overthrow of the state.

II: Force and Non-Violence: The emphasis on readiness for the ultimate overthrow of the state indicates the kind of revolution Marx is talking about. It raises the most fundamental of all questions concerning revolution, viz., the place and justification of force and violence in social change.

Marx and Engels never discussed the use of force in the abstract. For what could one say of it? Taken by itself, in independence of a concrete historical context and a specific purpose, it is a neutral event devoid of moral quality. It is only in relation to the socio-historical conditions and consequences of its use that it can be intelligently discussed. For example, before one passes moral judgement upon the ancient practice of enslaving prisoners of war, it would be well to ask what the alternative historical methods of treating them were – in this case decimation, and sometimes cannibalism – and why the practice of enslaving prisoners prevailed over others. Where the subdivision of labour has reached a point at which it becomes possible, by the forced labour of prisoners, to provide enough for their wants and a surplus to liberate others for cultural activity, slavery constitutes a distinct moral advance. To condemn slavery as essentially wrong wherever and whenever it is found on the ground that the alternative of freedom always existed as an abstract possibility, is to pass moral judgement not upon slavery but upon the natural and social conditions out of which ancient life developed and over which one had but limited control. Abstract moral considerations of this kind have no relevance when it is a question of evaluating between institutions all of which fall short of ideal perfection. Engels properly retorts to Dühring who approached the problem in this abstract fashion: ‘When Dühring, then, turns up his nose at Greek civilisation because it was based on slavery, he might just as reasonably reproach the Greeks for not having steam engines and electric telegraphs.’ [4]

In contradistinction to economists like Bastiat, who sought to explain social institutions in term of ‘natural law’ concepts of force, Marx denied that the use of force alone – as a naked assertion of power – can ever explain the course of social development. At most it accounts for the destruction of a culture or its retardation. The use of force can achieve higher social and moral ends only when it liberates the productive capacities of the social order from the repressive property relations within which they are bound. That is not merely the condition of its historic justification but of its historic efficacy: ‘Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with the new. It is itself an economic power.’ [5]

All this indicates that Marx did not make a fetishism of force. His theory that political force must derive its ethical sanction from some positive social function serves as a guide to its revolutionary use. He had made a close study of the role of force in the great English and French revolutions, and knew from first-hand experience what it had won and lost in the revolution of 1848. For Marx, the use of force in a revolutionary situation was no more a moral problem than the use of fire in ordinary life; it was only the intelligent use of force which constituted a problem. In this position he had to defend himself against two types of anti-revolutionary, theoretical intransigence. One was the official point of view of the bourgeoisie. Having already made its revolution by force, it now taught that the use of force in political matters was in principle a crime against civilisation. And this in the face of the facts that the bourgeois state and law functioned by the use of force; and that the struggle between capital and labour, upon which bourgeois civilisation rested, took the form of open civil war whenever workers were driven to defend themselves as a result of intolerable oppression. The second point of view was more sincere, and because it sometimes called itself revolutionary, too – more dangerous. This was the position of the ‘moral force’ men, Christian Socialists, philosophical anarchists, legalists at any price, and of the perennial Utopians of whom Marx had already written in the Communist Manifesto that ‘they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means and endeavour’. [6]

Contemporary political thought and practice has witnessed a resurgence of this social philosophy in the doctrines of pacifism and non-resistance. A statement of the Marxist criticism of this view should be timely.

First of all, it should be clear that non-resistance in politics – if it does not betoken the attitude of complete acceptance – is a species of resistance. Strictly speaking, it means passive resistance. It is a technique of resistance. On what grounds can it be asserted, then, that the technique of passive resistance is superior to the technique of active resistance? Obviously only in terms of the consequences which follow from their respective use, only in the light of their efficacy in realising the ends to which they are the technique. In the case in question, the end is the introduction of socialism which will eliminate the remediable horrors and degradation of bourgeois society – war, unemployment, starvation and the manifold forms of spiritual prostitution that flow from the dominance of the profit motive. To say, then, that passive resistance is more effective than active resistance is to say that by its use socialism may be achieved in the shortest space of time and at the lowest price in human life and suffering. What is the evidence for believing this to be always true? Must not this be redetermined for every situation? If the theoretical possibility is admitted, that this may sometimes not be the case, does not the absolutistic foundation of pacifism collapse? And with it the fetishism of the technique of passive resistance?

Whoever denies that passive resistance is a technique to achieve certain ends, is constrained to affirm that it is a religion, since it hypostasises an attitude which may be valid in some situations into an unconditional postulate of all situations. As a religion it is beyond argument. But its effects are not beyond argument, especially for those who do not share the faith. These effects may be such as to perpetuate and intensify existing evils and disorganise active techniques which aim at their rapid elimination. In such situations the objective implications of the attitude of passive resistance convert it into a religion of acceptance and make its adherents more immediately dangerous to those who urge revolutionary action than the sworn defenders of existing evils. For example, Mr Gandhi has publicly proclaimed in an address on the future of India:

I would consider it nothing if we had to pay a million lives for our liberty, but one thing I hope the Congress has set its heart on is the campaign of non-violence. So, whether it is one life or a million we have to pay, I am praying it will be possible for the future historian to say that India fought and won her liberty without shedding human blood. [7]

It must be remembered that the imperialistic penetration of India has taken place to the continuous accompaniment of bloodshed; the Amritsar massacre was only a dramatic illustration of the process of ‘pacification’. In the light of this, the implications of Mr Gandhi’s position are very interesting. He does not say, as do some Indian revolutionists, that since the probable cost of attaining national independence by other techniques would come to much more than a million lives, passive resistance is preferable. This is an arguable position. No, Mr Gandhi declares that he rejects active resistance even if it could bring national independence at much less than a million lives. It is Mr Gandhi, then, who is prepared to justify the shedding of human blood, if only it does not flow as a result of a violent revolution. For what end? The independence of India? Hardly, since he refuses to consider any other methods of attaining it. Out of compassion for those who must suffer? Obviously not, since a humanitarian is one who seeks the least costly road no matter what it is, and who justifies human suffering only when it is either a way of avoiding still greater suffering or the indispensable condition of some greater good. Mr Gandhi’s end or good can be only the abstract principle of non-violence itself. But in that case why stop at a million lives? If it is immaterial to the principle whether it is ‘one life or a million’, it cannot be material whether it is one million lives or ten million. In strict consistency Mr Gandhi must be prepared to say that if India could win her freedom by a campaign of non-violence, he would ‘consider it nothing’ if no Indians were alive to enjoy it. Pereat mundus fiat principia!

Let us leave India. A sober analysis of the effects of passive resistance and non-cooperation in social life will reveal that at certain times more privation for the community may follow upon their use than through some forms of militant action. A general walk-out in a key industry may cause more suffering and yet be less effective than a violent demonstration. At other times, a violent revolution may stave off international carnage. If the Second International had been true to its pledged faith in 1914 and had been organised for social revolution, it is unlikely that the costs would have come as high – to mention only the most conspicuous item – as twenty-five million of dead and wounded. The punishment for the excessive legalism and pacifism of the Italian socialists in 1920 was Mussolini and Fascism.

The logic of personal relations applies in social affairs, too. An abject humbleness is not always more effective in redressing grievances than a spirited defence. We cannot always get rid of our enemies by loving them. It may make them more furious. And as for the much-heralded effects of passive resistance in spiritually disarming the enemy, they cannot be very reliable under conditions where it is not necessary to see men in order to kill them; where bomb, gas and germs do their work in distant anonymity. But under any conditions the technique of passive resistance has its moral limits. For although we may meet force against ourselves with charitable forgiveness, we call a man a coward, and not a saint, who forgives the use of brute force against others and does not try to stop it – by force if necessary!

It is often declared that application of force demoralises those who use it and that a new society won by force of arms would be insensitive to truly ethical values. So Dühring. So Tolstoy. So Bertrand Russell. But again it must be emphasised that it is not the use of force but the purpose for which it is used which makes it degrading. Otherwise every engineer, surgeon and soldier in any cause would be a degraded creature. There are many things ethically worse than the use of force: for example, cowardly sufferance or lazy tolerance of degrading social evils and political tyrannies which a resolute use of force might eliminate. Nor is it true that a victory won by arms leads to demoralisation. Marx and Engels often point to the moral and intellectual advance which followed the French Revolution. The release of creative collective energy by the Russian Revolution is unparalleled in the history of mankind. In principle, then, the use of force – although always dangerous – cannot be always condemned. It eventuates in brutality no more often than humility leads to hypocrisy and servility.

But that does not yet establish Marx’s contention that when the revolutionary situation is ripe the final conquest of power must be won by force of arms. Here we must pick up the thread of our earlier exposition. The existence of the state presupposes the existence of special bodies of armed men obedient to the will of those who control the state. These come into play directly or indirectly even in the ordinary struggles which arise in the course of the class war – a fact which is overlooked by those who profess not to believe in the use of any force and yet pay their state taxes which support the soldiery and the police. In a revolutionary crisis, although these forces cannot escape the general ferment and disaffection, the very uncertainties of the situation lead to their wider use on the part of those who are trying to save the old order. The application of force against rising discontent becomes more ruthless and irresponsible. It sometimes appears as if the defenders of the existing state were trying to provoke a violent rather than a peaceful revolution. Even if the parties of social revolution were to be carried to power ‘legally’, their victory would be nugatory unless the armed forces of the state, as well as the defence corps which would be rallied by the leaders of the bourgeoisie, were won over, disarmed or defeated. In such a situation, the ‘readiness is all’. Force must be met by force – by a stronger and more intelligent force. The determining consideration is not one of ‘legality’ but of ‘revolutionary expediency’. In revolutionary situations ‘legality’ is the outworn shibboleth of a system of social repression now in dissolution whose very guarantees of civil rights, such as they were, have long since been abrogated by the bourgeoisie itself. One false step – even hesitation – may be fatal to the revolution. To insure victory strategic places must be seized, points of military vantage occupied, insurrectionary tactics deployed wherever resistance manifests itself.

Marx lived in an age in which the traditions of violent revolution were common to all classes. This was especially true on the Continent. The extension of the suffrage to the entire population did not alter matters, for the crucial question was not the forms by which the strength of the revolutionary ideal was measured but the efficacy of the methods by which the ideas were achieved. Marx never asserted that the social revolution could take place without the support – active or passive – of a majority of the population. Without the assurance of such support, the revolution must not be undertaken. But although this support is necessary, it is not sufficient unless it is translated into power. Ultimately, whether fifty per cent or ninety per cent of the population support the revolution, state power will be won not by pencil and ballot-paper but by workers with rifles. As late as 1872 in speaking of the continental countries (we shall consider the exceptions below) Marx wrote: ‘It is to force that in due time the workers will have to appeal if the dominion of labour is at long last to be established.’ [8]

But it may be asked: Why cannot the revolution be made peacefully? Why may not the ruling class voluntarily surrender its power rather than risk defeat or the destruction of the whole of society in civil war? These questions may be answered by asking others. When has this ever been the case? When has any ruling class permitted itself to be bowed out of power without putting up the most desperate kind of resistance? Again it must be emphasised that the socialist revolution involves not merely the substitution of the power of one class for that of another in the ownership of private property, but of the very existence of private property itself. In past revolutions it was possible for members of one class to save their property by shifting their class allegiance. And still they fought tooth and nail against the rising class who were often more than ready to compromise! How much more fiercely must they fight against the socialist revolution which makes forever impossible the exercise of power over human beings through the possession of property, and which cannot compromise this principle without suffering disaster? It should also be borne in mind that by virtue of their past training, ideology and class status, the ruling class necessarily regards the defence of its property interests as the defence of civilisation against barbarism, the preservation of the refinements of its culture as the preservation of all culture against the vandalism of the rabble. Out of this subjective sincerity there often arises – at least on the part of a sufficient number to constitute a danger – a desire to go down fighting for what they consider honour and the good life.

That the workers will have to resort to force to achieve the socialist revolution, is for Marx, then, as likely as anything can be in history. To disregard the evidence of historical experience, and not to prepare on the basis of it, is to betray the revolution in advance. To be sure, there is always the abstract possibility that power may be won peacefully. But history is not determined by abstract possibilities. If peaceful demonstrations on the part of workers for minor concessions of relief and insurance in ordinary times are broken up by savage force and violence, how can it be assumed that the milk of kindness will flow when the demand is made for the abolition of the entire profit system? The socialists captured a legal majority of the Finnish parliament in 1918. Before they could put through their programme, they were drowned in rivers of blood by an armed counter-revolution.

III: Some ‘Exceptions’: We must now consider the exceptions which Marx makes to this general rule. In the very same speech from which we have quoted his remarks about the necessity of a resort to force, he says:

Some day the workers must conquer political supremacy, in order to establish the new organisation of labour; they must overthrow the old political system whereby the old institutions are sustained. If they fail to do this, they will suffer the fate of the early Christians, who neglected to overthrow the old system, and who, for that reason, never had a kingdom in this world. Of course, I must not be supposed to imply that the means to this end will be everywhere the same. We know that special regard must be paid to the institutions, customs and traditions of various lands; and we do not deny that there are certain countries, such as the United States and England in which the workers may hope to secure their ends by peaceful means. [9]

Although the possibility of a peaceful revolution in England and America is stated conditionally, the sense of the passage is clear. In 1886, Engels, in his preface to the first English translation of Capital, echoes the same sentiment. He calls upon England to hearken to the voice of a man:

... whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social evolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. [10]

And then immediately after, with an unconsciousness which almost borders on simplicity, he introduces the joker:

He [Marx] certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling class to submit, without a ‘pro-slavery rebellion’, to this peaceful and legal revolution. [11]

As if it were not precisely the danger of a ‘pro-slavery rebellion’ – a counter-revolution – which demanded that the revolution everywhere assure its victory by a resort to force! As if the mandate for its legality were derived from the existing order, which always has a ‘legal provision’ for changing the rules whenever they are working against it, and not from the power of the masses!

Lenin, who, to my knowledge, never challenged a single word in Marx or Engels, instead of calling an error by its right name, attempts to show that Marx and Engels were perfectly justified in holding that a revolution in Anglo-American countries was possible, at that time, ‘without the preliminary condition of the destruction “of the available ready machinery of the state”’. He hastens to add, however, that at the present time, this is no longer true by virtue of the development of bureaucratic institutions.

He writes:

... he [Marx] confines his conclusions [about violent revolution] to the continent. This was natural in 1871, when England was still the pattern of a purely capitalist country, without a military machine and, in large measure, without a bureaucracy.

Hence Marx excluded England where a revolution, even a people’s revolution, could be imagined, and was then possible, without the preliminary condition of the destruction ‘of the available ready machinery of the state’ ...

Today in 1917, in the epoch of the first great imperialist war, this distinction of Marx’s becomes unreal, and England and America, the greatest and last representative of Anglo-Saxon ‘liberty’ in the sense of the absence of militarism and bureaucracy, have today completely rolled down into the dirty, bloody morass of military-bureaucratic institutions common in all Europe, subordinating all else to themselves, crushing all else under themselves. Today both in England and in America, ‘the preliminary condition of any real people’s revolution’ is the break-up, the shattering of the available ready machinery of the state (perfected in those countries between 1914 and 1917, up to the ‘European’ general imperialist standard). [12]

Lenin was a political genius but his explanation here is obviously forced and unconvincing. England and America were no different from continental countries in any respect relevant to the conquest of power by a revolutionary movement than they were in 1917. If anything, it would have been more difficult to achieve the social revolution peacefully in these countries than elsewhere.

Let us look at England. It was Marx who showed in Capital that capitalism had developed in England through the most merciless dictatorship. After the peasants had been forced off their land, they were physically punished if they would not work, and driven to the poorhouse when they could not work as a result of unemployment. By the eighteenth century Cromwell had become a national hero. Hastings, Clive and others had carried out England’s colonial policy in India, Egypt and elsewhere with the same ruthlessness that Cromwell had used in subduing Ireland. A year after Marx’s birth, English workers in peaceful assemblage had been shot down at Peterloo. Marx himself had witnessed the suppression of the peaceful Chartist movement and knew many of its leaders who had languished in jail. At the very time when Marx was making his exception in favour of England, she had the largest navy in the world, standing armies in India, Egypt and Ireland, a highly developed bureaucracy, and as Marx’s letters testify, the most astute and class-conscious ruling class in the world. In 1869, at a mass meeting in Hyde Park, Marx introduced a resolution which demanded political amnesty for imprisoned Irish patriots and denounced Britain’s ‘policy of conquest’ – a policy which could not be broken without the active cooperation of the English working class. In the same year he wrote to Kugelmann, ‘England has never ruled Ireland in any other way and cannot rule it in any other way... except by the most hideous reign of terror and the most revolting corruption’ [13] – a sentiment which Engels expressed again and again in his letters to Marx from Ireland a decade earlier. Is this a country in which the social revolution could have taken place peacefully? [14]

Nor is the reference to the United States any more fortunate. A few years before Marx’s Amsterdam address, America had gone through her second revolution to break up the semi-feudal slavocracy which barred the expansion of industrial capitalism. At the very moment Marx was speaking, the North was exercising a virtual dictatorship over the South. A few years later profound industrial disturbances, which almost took on an insurrectionary character, shook the country. Was it likely that in a country in which feeble and ‘constitutional’ attempts to abolish chattel slavery had called forth the most violent civil war of the nineteenth century, the abolition of wage-slavery could be effected by moral suasion? Marx was right when he said that ‘special attention must be paid to the institutions, customs and traditions of various lands’, [15] but he did not know nor did Lenin, that already in 1872 the traditions of violence and legislative corruption were stronger in America than in any major European country with the exception of Russia.

It may be argued in defence of Marx, that he merely maintained that in England and America their institutions made it possible, through the ‘formal processes’ of election, to register the will of the people for a social revolution; but that this did not obviate the necessity of using the reconstituted state power to destroy counter-revolutionary elements and consolidate the victory. If this was Marx’s meaning, then, first, there was no justification at the very outset for the distinction between Anglo-American and European countries, since the same ‘formal’ procedure was possible in France and Germany; and second, Marx’s own historical studies of the transition from one form of state power to another indicate that the weight of probability was against this mode of procedure proving successful.

It remains to be asked, then, what led Marx and Engels into the error of qualifying their general position as they did – an error which could easily be dismissed as unimportant had it not led to intense controversy among Marxist and pseudo-Marxist groups in England and America. After toying with several hypotheses, the author frankly confesses that he does not know.

IV: One Or the Other: Marx’s realistic conception of social revolution has so often been rejected as offensive to the enlightened conscience of well-intentioned men that it is necessary in closing to stress again – at the risk of repetition – its thoroughly human motivation. It is asked: ‘Do not the costs of social revolution come too high?’ This is a question heard more often from those on the sidelines of the class struggle than from those who actually bear the brunt of its struggles. But it is a question which deserves an answer. The Marxist replies that he is willing to judge any project by its cost. But to judge anything only by its cost is to condemn everything ever undertaken and carried to completion in this imperfect world. Hardly a major good has come down from the past, from the discovery of fire and speech to the latest developments of scientific technique, for which human beings have not paid a price in blood and tears. Both logic and morality demand, however, that before we reject a proposal because of its cost, we consider the cost of rejecting it for any of the available alternatives. The Marxist contention is that the costs of social revolution are far less than the costs of chronic evils of poverty, unemployment, moral degradation and war, which are immanent in capitalism; that the ultimate issue and choice is between imperialistic war which promises nothing but the destruction of all culture, yes, of the human race itself, and an international revolution which promises a new era in world history.

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Notes

1. Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenprozess, von Karl Marx, mit Einleitung von Friedrich Engels und Dokumenten (Mehring edition, Berlin 1914), p. 52. [citing minutes of the last session of the London Central Authority of the Communist League, 15 September 1850. – MIA]

2. Lenin states this as follows: ‘The fundamental law of revolution, confirmed by all revolutions and particularly by the three Russian ones of the twentieth century, is as follows: It is not sufficient for the revolution that the exploited and oppressed masses understand the impossibility of living in the old way and demand changes; for the revolution it is necessary that the exploiters should not be able to rule as of old. Only when the masses do not want the old regime, and when the rulers are unable to govern as of old, then only can the revolution succeed. This truth may be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without an all-national crisis, affecting both the exploited and the exploiters.’ (V.I. Lenin, Infantile Sickness of ‘Leftism’ in Communism (Contemporary Publishing, New York, 1920), pp. 76–77. [“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder/a>, Collected Works, Volume 31. – MIA]

3. Karl Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. – MIA

4. Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, p 191 [available here. – MIA]