Selected Essays Part 9

It is well known that, shortly after the July Revolution, the victorious bourgeoisie, in its September laws, made "the incitement of cla.s.s against cla.s.s," probably also out of 'humanity,' a criminal offence, to which imprisonment and fines were attached. It is further well known that the English bourgeois newspapers could not denounce the Chartist leaders and Chartist writers more effectively than by reproaching them with setting cla.s.s against cla.s.s. It is even notorious that, in consequence of inciting cla.s.s against cla.s.s, German writers are incarcerated in fortresses. Is not Mr Heinzen this time talking the language of the French September laws, the English bourgeois newspapers, and the German penal code?

But no. The well-meaning Mr Heinzen only fears that the communists "are seeking to a.s.sure the princes a revolutionary Fontanelle." Thus the Belgian liberals a.s.sure us that the radicals are in secret alliance with the catholics; the French liberals a.s.sure us that the democrats have an understanding with the legitimists. And the liberal Mr Heinzen a.s.sures us that the communists have an understanding with the princes.

As I once pointed out in the Franco-German Annuals, Germany has her own Christian-Germanic plague. Her bourgeoisie was so r.e.t.a.r.ded in its development that it is beginning its struggle with absolute monarchy and seeking to establish its political power at the moment when in all developed countries the bourgeoisie is already engaged in the most violent struggles with the working cla.s.s, and when its political illusions are already obsolete so far as the intellect of Europe is concerned.

In this country, where the political poverty of absolute monarchy still exists with a whole appendage of decayed semi-feudal orders and conditions, there exist on the other hand, partly in consequence of the industrial development and Germany's dependence on the world market, the antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the working cla.s.s, and the struggle arising therefrom, an instance of which are the workers' revolts in Silesia and Bohemia. The German bourgeoisie therefore finds itself in a relation of antagonism to the proletariat before it has yet const.i.tuted itself politically as a cla.s.s. The struggle among the subjects has broken out before ever princes and n.o.bles have been got rid of, in spite of all Hambach songs.

Mr Heinzen does not know how to explain these contradictory relations, which of course are also reflected in German literature, except by putting them on to his opponents' conscience and interpreting them as the consequence of the counter-revolutionary activities of the communists.

Meanwhile the German workers are quite aware that the absolute monarchy does not and cannot hesitate one moment to greet them with a whiff of grapeshot in the service of the bourgeoisie. Why then should they prefer the direct rule of the bourgeoisie to the brutal oppression of absolute government, with its semi-feudal retinue? The workers know that the bourgeoisie must not only make them wider concessions than absolute monarchy, but that in the interests of its commerce and industry, the bourgeoisie must create against its will the conditions for the unity of the workers, and the unity of the workers is the first requisite for their victory. The workers know that the abolition of bourgeois property relations is not brought about by the maintenance of feudal property relations. They know their own revolutionary movement can only be accelerated through the revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie against the feudal orders and the absolute monarchy. They know that their own struggle with the bourgeoisie can only break out on the day the bourgeoisie triumphs. In spite of all, they do not share Mr Heinzen's middle-cla.s.s illusions.

They can and must take part in the middle-cla.s.s revolution as a condition preliminary to the Labour revolution. But they cannot for a moment regard it as their objective.

That the att.i.tude of the workers is as above described, of this the English Chartists have furnished us with a brilliant example in the recent Anti-Corn Law League movement. Not for a moment did they believe the lies and delusions of the middle-cla.s.s radicals, not for a moment did they abandon their struggle against the latter, but fully conscious of what they were doing, the Chartists a.s.sisted their enemies to triumph over the Tories, and the day after the abolition of the Corn Laws, it was no longer Tories and Free Traders who faced each other at the hustings, but Free Traders and Chartists. And they captured seats in Parliament from these middle-cla.s.s radicals.

Mr Heinzen understands the middle-cla.s.s liberals just as little as he understands the workers, however unconsciously he labours in their service. He believes it necessary to repeat to them the old plat.i.tudes anent German "laziness" and humility. But the honest man takes quite seriously what are only servile phrases in the mouth of a Camphausen or a Hansemann. The bourgeois gentry will laugh at this simplicity.

They know that the mob is bold and aggressive in revolutions.

Consequently, the bourgeois gentry try as far as possible to transform the absolute monarchy into a middle-cla.s.s monarchy by amicable means.

But absolute monarchy in Prussia, as formerly in England and France, does not lend itself to peaceful transformation into a middle-cla.s.s monarchy. It does not gracefully abdicate. In addition to personal prejudices, the princes are bound hand and foot by a whole civil, military, and parsonic bureaucracy--const.i.tuent parts of absolute monarchy which do not by any means desire to exchange their ruling position for a serving position under the bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, the feudal orders hold aloof, as what is at stake is their existence or non-existence, that is, property or expropriation. It is clear that absolute monarchy, in spite of all the servile homage of the bourgeoisie, perceives its true interest to lie on the side of these orders.

As little, therefore, as the sweet persuasions of a Lally Tollendal, a Mounier, a Malouet, or a Mirabeau could induce a Louis XVI. to cast in his lot with the bourgeoisie, in opposition to the feudalists and the remnants of absolute monarchy, just as little will the siren songs of a Camphausen or a Hansemann convince Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

But Mr Heinzen has no concern either with the bourgeoisie or with the proletariat in Germany. His party is the "party of humanity," that is the honest and warmhearted enthusiasts who champion middle-cla.s.s interests under the disguise of "human" objects, without being clear as to the connection of the idealistic phrase with its realistic content.

To his party, the party of man, or the crowd of humanity in Germany, the State builder Karl Heinzen offers the "best republic," the best republic devised by him, "the federal republic with social inst.i.tutions." Rousseau once sketched the best political world for the Poles and Mably for the Corsicans. The great Genevese citizen has found a still greater successor.

"I submit that just as a flower can only be made out of petals, so a republic can only be composed of republican elements." A man who knows how to make flowers out of petals, even if it is only a daisy, cannot fail to devise the best republic, whatever an ill-natured world might say.

In spite of all slanderous tongues, the brave state builder takes the example of the Charter of Republican North America. What seems offensive to him, he brushes aside with his common sense. Thus he accomplishes a revised edition--in _usum delphini_, that is for the use and edification of "German humanity." The colossal picture of the world devised by him he has in fact hung up with his own hand on the highest summit of the Swiss Alps.

_Cacatum non est pictum_, hisses the voice of the "small" impenitent snake. And the republican Ajax angrily lets the communistic Thersites fall to the ground, and blurts out in a deep-throated voice the fearful words: "You carry the ridiculous too far, Mr Engels!"

And really, Mr Engels? Do you not believe that the American federal system is the best political form which statecraft has so far devised?

You shake your head? What? You deny that the American federal system has ever been devised by statecraft at all? And that there are "best political social forms" _in abstracto_? But that is the last straw.

You are shameless enough to point out to us that the honest German who would benefit his true fatherland by conferring on it the North American const.i.tution, beautified and improved, resembles the idiotic merchant who copied the ledgers of his rich rival, and imagined that being in possession of this copy, he had also come into possession of the coveted wealth.

Barbaroux, and other persons who had made much noise in the world, were made shorter by a whole head because they happened to claim the "American federal system" to be the "best political form." And thus it will befall all other Goliaths to whom it may occur, in the midst of any democratic revolution in Europe, and especially in still quite feudal and dismembered Germany, to put the "American federal system"

in place of the one and indivisible republic and its levelling centralization.

The state-founding Hercules indeed does not copy slavishly the North American federal republic. He decorates it with "social inst.i.tutions"; he would regulate the property relations "according to rational principles," and the seven great measures wherewith he would abolish the old bourgeois society are by no means wretched flimsy recipes collected from modern, objectionable communist and socialist cookshops.

To the "Incas" and "Campe's books for children" the great Karl Heinzen is indebted for his recipe for the "humanizing of society," just as he is indebted for the latter pompous phrase not to the philosopher and Pomeranian Ruge, but rather to a "Peruvian" grown grey in wisdom. And Mr Engels calls all this arbitrarily-contrived, commonplace enthusiasm for world improvement.

Take for instance any well-meaning citizen and ask him on his conscience: What is the difficulty under which the existing property relations labour? And the worthy man will place his index finger at the tip of his nose, draw two deep breaths of thought, and then give it out as his opinion, that it is a shame for many to possess "nothing," not even the most absolute necessities, while others roll in shameless millions, not only to the detriment of the propertyless ma.s.ses, but also to that of honest citizens. _Aurea mediocritas._ Golden mediocrity, the worthy member of the middle cla.s.s will exclaim.

It is only extremes that should be avoided. What rational state const.i.tution would be compatible with these extremes, these highly objectionable extremes?

And now take a look at the Heinzen "federal republic," with "social inst.i.tutions" and seven measures for the "humanizing of society."

There a minimum of property is a.s.sured to every citizen, below which he cannot fall, and a maximum of property is prescribed which he must not exceed. Has Mr Heinzen then not solved all difficulties inasmuch as he has repeated in the form of State decrees and thereby realized the pious desire of all worthy citizens, that none should have too little and none too much?

And in the same equally simple and generous fashion Mr Heinzen solves all the economic problems. He has regulated property according to reasonable principles corresponding to honest cheapness.

And do not raise the objection that the "rational rules" of property are just those "economic laws" on whose cold-blooded necessity all cheap "measures," whether or not recommended by Incas and Campe's books for children and held in great esteem by the most st.u.r.dy patriots, must come to grief.

How unkind it is to raise economic objections against a man who, unlike others, does not boast of his "studies of political economy,"

but has rather out of modesty managed to give the impression in all his works, that he has still to make his first studies in political economy.

Whereas private property is not a simple relation, or even an abstract concept, a principle, but consists in the totality of middle-cla.s.s production relations--we are concerned here not with subordinate and decaying, but with existing, middle-cla.s.s private property--whereas all these middle-cla.s.s productive relations are cla.s.s relations, a connection which is obvious to every pupil of Adam Smith or Ricardo--an alteration in these conditions can only be brought about by an alteration of these cla.s.ses in their reciprocal connection, and an alteration in the position of cla.s.ses is--a historical change, a product of the total social activity, the product of a specific "historical movement."

For example, in order to explain the abolition of middle-cla.s.s property relations, modern historians would have to describe the movement in which the bourgeoisie progressed to the point where it had developed its conditions of life far enough to be able to abolish the whole of the feudal orders and the feudal mode of existence, and consequently the feudal relations of production within which these feudal orders had been producing. The abolition of feudal property relations and the foundation of modern middle-cla.s.s society was therefore not the result of a certain action which proceeded from a particular theoretical principle pressed to its logical conclusion.

The principles and theories which the writers of the bourgeoisie put forward during the latter's struggle with feudalism were rather nothing but the theoretical expression of the practical movement. How this expression was more or less Utopian, dogmatic, or doctrinaire, according as it related to a more or less developed phase of the real movement can be clearly traced.

PROUDHON

Just as the first critical moves in every science are necessarily entangled in the a.s.sumptions of the science which they are intending to combat, so Proudhon's work _Qu'est ce que la propriete?_ is a criticism of political economy from the standpoint of political economy. Since the criticism of political economy forms the chief subject of interest, we need not here examine the legal section of the book, which criticizes law from the standpoint of law. Proudhon's book is therefore scientifically surpa.s.sed by the critical school of political economy, even of political economy as conceived by Proudhon.

This work of criticism was only rendered possible by Proudhon himself, just as Proudhon's criticism had as its antecedents the criticism of the mercantile system by the physiocrats, that of the physiocrats by Adam Smith, that of Adam Smith by Ricardo, as well as the labours of Fourier and Saint-Simon.

All the developments of political economy have private property as their major premise. This fundamental a.s.sumption is regarded by it as an una.s.sailable fact, which needs no demonstration, and about which it only chances to speak casually, as M. Say navely confesses.

Now Proudhon subjects private property, the basis of political economy, to a critical examination, which is in fact the first decisive, ruthless, and at the same time scientific a.n.a.lysis. This const.i.tutes the great scientific progress which he made, a progress which revolutionized political economy, and first rendered possible a real science of political economy.

Proudhon's work _Qu'est ce que la propriete?_ has the same significance for modern political economy as Sieyes' pamphlet: _Qu'est ce que le tiers etat?_ has for modern politics.

If Proudhon did not conceive the various forms of private property, as, for example, wages, trade, value, price, money, etc., as such, but used these forms of political economy as weapons against political economy, this was quite in accordance with his whole standpoint, as above described and historically justified.

Political economy, which accepts the relationships of private property as human and reasonable relationships, moves in a perpetual contradiction to its fundamental a.s.sumption, which is private property, a contradiction a.n.a.logous to that of theology, which constantly gives a human interpretation to religious ideas, and thereby constantly violates its fundamental a.s.sumption, which is the supramundane character of religion. Thus in political economy wages appear at the outset as labour's proportionate share in the product.

Wages and the profit of capital exist in the most friendly and apparently human relations, alternately a.s.sisting each other.

Subsequently it transpired that they stand in the most hostile, in an inverted, relationship towards each other. In the beginning value is apparently determined on rational principles, by the costs of production of an article and by its social utility. Subsequently it transpires that value is a purely accidental determination, which does not need to have any connection at all either with the costs of production or with social utility. The magnitude of wages is in the beginning determined by a free contract between the free worker and the free capitalist. Subsequently it transpires that the worker is compelled to let it be determined, just as the capitalist is compelled to fix it as low as possible. Coercion takes the place of the freedom of the contracting parties. The same observation applies to trade and all the other relations of political economy. Political economists occasionally have an intimation of these contradictions, the development of which forms the princ.i.p.al content of their mutual wrangling. When, however, they become fully aware of them, they proceed to attack private property in one of its partial manifestations, as the falsifier of wages which are rational in themselves, that is, in the ideas they have formed about wages; or of value that is rational in itself, or of commerce that is rational in itself. Thus Adam Smith occasionally attacks the capitalists, Destutt de Tracy attacks the money-changers, Simonde de Sismondi attacks the factory system, Ricardo attacks landed property, and thus almost all political economists attack the non-industrial capitalists who regard property merely as consumable goods.

Sometimes, therefore, the political economists invest economic conditions with a human semblance, that is, when they are attacking a particular abuse, but at other times, which is mostly the case, they interpret these conditions in their strict economic meaning, as distinguished from human conditions. They reel unconsciously in this contradiction.

Now Proudhon has made an end once for all of this unconsciousness. He took seriously the human semblance given to economic conditions and sharply confronted it with their inhuman reality. In all seriousness he accepted the human gloss which the political economists had put upon economic conditions, and sharply compared it with their inhuman reality. He demanded that these conditions should be in reality what they are in fancy. In other words, the ideas which have been formed of them should be abandoned and their veritable inhumanity should be acknowledged. He was therefore consistent in plainly representing private property in its most universal aspect to be the falsifier of economic relationships, and not this or that kind of private property, to a partial degree, as did most of the other political economists. He achieved everything that could be achieved by the criticism of political economy from the standpoint of political economy.

All political economy hitherto has taken as its starting-point the wealth which the movement of private property ostensibly creates for the nations, in order to reach its conclusions in support of private property.

Proudhon starts out from the reverse side, which is sophistically covered up in political economy, that is, from the poverty created by the movement of private property, in order to reach his conclusions, which are unfavourable to private poverty. The first criticism of private property was naturally prompted by the phenomenon which embodies its essence in the most striking and clamorous form, a form which directly violates human feeling--by the phenomenon of poverty.

The critics of Proudhon cannot deny that Proudhon also perceives an inner connection between the facts of poverty and of property, as he proposes to abolish property on account of this connection, in order to abolish poverty. Proudhon has done even more. He has demonstrated in detail how the movement of capital creates poverty. The critics of Proudhon, on the other hand, will not enter into such trivialities.

They perceive only that poverty and private property are opposites: which is fairly obvious.

Proletariat and wealth are ant.i.theses. As such they const.i.tute a whole; both are manifestations of the world of private property. The question to be considered is the specific position which both occupy in the ant.i.thesis. To describe them as two sides of a whole is not a sufficient explanation. Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to preserve its own existence, and along with it that of its ant.i.thesis, the proletariat. Private property satisfied in itself is the positive side of the ant.i.thesis. The proletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as proletariat, to abolish itself, and along with it private property, its conditioned ant.i.thesis, which makes it the proletariat.