Violence and the Labor Movement Part 5

"Another police preacher and organizer of violent plots was that well-known Friedeman who was driven out of Berlin, and, at the gatherings of comrades in Zurich, appealed to them, in prose and poetry, to commit acts of violence. A certain Weiss, a journeyman tinsmith, was arrested in the vicinity of Basel for having put up posters in which the deeds of Kammerer and Stellmacher were glorified. He, too, was in the employ of the German police, as was afterward established during the court proceedings.

"A certain Schmidt, who had to disappear from Dresden on account of his crooked conduct, came to Zurich and urged the establishment of a _special fund for a.s.sa.s.sinations_, contributing twenty francs to start the fund. Correspondence which he had carried on with Chief of Police Weller, of Dresden, and which later fell into our hands, proved that he was in the employ of the police, whom he kept informed of his actions.

And then the unmasked secret police agent Ihring-Mahlow, here in Berlin, who announced that he was prepared to teach the manufacture of explosives, for 'the parliamentary way is too slow.'"[25]

Here certainly is a great source of violence and crime, and, in view of such revelations, no one can be sure that any anarchist outrage is wholly voluntary and altogether free from the manipulation of the secret police. With _agents provocateurs_ swarming over the movement and working upon the minds of the weak, the susceptible, and the criminal, there is reason to believe that their influence in the tragedies of terrorism is far greater than will ever be known. To discredit starving men on strike, to defeat socialists in an election, to promote a political intrigue, to throw the entire legislature into the hands of the reaction, to conceal corruption, or to take the public mind from too intently watching the nefarious schemes of a political-financial conspiracy--for all these and a mult.i.tude of other purposes thousands of secret police agents are at work. The sordid facts of this infamous commerce are no longer in doubt, and one wonders how the anarchists can delude themselves into the belief that they are serving the weak and lowly when they commit exactly the same crimes that professional a.s.sa.s.sins are hired to commit. This certainly _is_ madness. To be thus used by their bitterest enemies, the police and the State, to serve thus voluntarily the forces of intrigue, of reaction, and of tyranny--surely nothing can be so near to unreason as this. When Bismarck's personal organ declared again and again, "There is nothing left to be done but to provoke the social democrats to commit acts of despair, to draw them out into the open street, and there to shoot them down,"[26] a reasoning opponent would have seen that this was just what he would not allow himself to be drawn into. Yet Bismarck hardly says this and sets his police to work before the anarchist freely, voluntarily, and with tremendous exaltation of spirit attempts to carry it out.

Strange to say, the desire of the powerful to promote anarchy seems to be well enough understood by the anarchists themselves. Kropotkin, in his "Memoirs," tells of two cases where police agents were sent to him with money to help establish anarchist papers, and there was hardly a moment of his revolutionary career when there were not police agents about him. Emma Goldman also appreciates the fact that the police are always ready to lend a hand in anarchist outrages. "For a number of years," she says, "acts of violence had been committed in Spain, for which the anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wild beasts, and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that the perpetrators of these acts were not anarchists, but members of the police department.

The scandal became so widespread that the conservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishment of the gang leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned to death and executed. The sensational evidence, brought to light during the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to exonerate completely the anarchists from any connection with the acts committed during a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of a number of police officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in revenge, disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb-throwers were others of far higher position, who provided them with funds and protected them. This is one of the many striking examples of how anarchist conspiracies are manufactured."[27] With knowledge such as this, is it possible that a sane mind can encourage the despairing to undertake riots and insurrections? Yet when we turn to the anarchists for our answer, they tell us "that the acc.u.mulated forces in our social and economic life, culminating in a political act of violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning. To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that acc.u.mulates in a human soul, the burning, surging pa.s.sion that makes the storm inevitable."[28] Such explosions of rage one would expect from the unreasonable and the childlike. They are bursts of pa.s.sion that end in the knocking of one's head against a stone wall. This may in truth be the psychology of the violent, yet it cannot be the psychology of a reasoning mind. This may explain the action of those who have lost all control over themselves or even the action of a cla.s.s that has not advanced beyond the stages of futile outbursts of pa.s.sion, of aimless and suicidal violence, and of self-destructive rage. But it is incredible that it should be considered by anyone as reasonable or intelligent, or, least of all, revolutionary.

Probably still other causes of terrorism exist, but certainly the chief are those above mentioned. The writings of Bakounin, Nechayeff, Kropotkin, and Most; the miserable conditions which surround the life of a mult.i.tude of impoverished people; the often savage repression of any attempts on the part of the workers to improve their conditions; corrupt courts and parliaments and unjust laws; a false conception of ethics; a high-wrought nervous tension combined with compa.s.sion; the egocentric philosophy which deifies the individual and would press its claims even to the destruction of all else in the world; these are no doubt the chief underlying causes of the terrorism of the last forty years. Yet, as I have said, there is one force making for terrorism that throws a confusing light on the whole series of tragedies. Why should the governments of Europe subsidize anarchy? Why should their secret police encourage outrages, plant dynamite, and incite the criminal elements to become anarchists, and in that guise to burn, pillage, and commit murder? Why should that which a.s.sumes to stand for law and order work to the destruction of law and order? What is it that leads the corrupt, vicious, and reactionary elements in the official world to turn thus to its use even anarchy and terrorism? What end do the governments of Europe seek?

I have already suggested the answers to the above questions, but they will not be understood by the reader unless he realizes that throughout all of last century the democratic movement has been to the privileged cla.s.ses the most menacing spectacle imaginable. Again and again it arose to challenge existing society. In some form, however vague, it lay back of every popular movement. At moments the powerful seemed actually to fear that it was on the point of taking possession of the world, and repeatedly it has been pushed back, crushed, subdued, almost obliterated by their repressive measures. Yet again and again it arose responsive to the actual needs of the time, and became toward the end of the century one of the most impressive movements the world has ever known. Filled with idealism for a new social order, and determined to change fundamentally existing conditions, the working cla.s.s has fought onward and upward toward a world State and a socialized industrial life. There can be no doubt that the amazing growth of the modern socialist movement has terrified the powers of industrial and political tyranny. To them it is an incomparable menace, and superhuman efforts have been made to turn it from its path. They have endeavored to divide it, to misinterpret it, to divert it, to corrupt it, and the greatest of all their efforts has been made toward forcing it to become a movement of terrorists, in order ultimately to discredit and destroy it. "We have always been of the opinion," declared an unknown opponent of socialism, "that it takes the devil to drive out Beelzebub and that socialism must be fought with anarchy. As a corn louse and similar insects are driven out by the help of other insects that devour them and their eggs, so the Government should cultivate and rear anarchists in the princ.i.p.al nests of socialism, leaving it to the anarchists to destroy socialism. The anarchists will do that work more effectively than either police or district attorneys."[29] Has this been the chief motive in helping to keep terrorism alive?

FOOTNOTES:

[J] Kropotkin, in "The Conquest of Bread," p. 73, suggests that in the Revolution the socialists will probably hang the anarchists.

[K] Pini declared that he had committed robberies amounting to over three hundred thousand francs from the bourgeoisie in order to avenge the oppressed. Cf. Lombroso, "_Les Anarchistes_," p. 52.

[L] "The work of Mariana was afterward approved by Sola (_Tractus de legibus_), by Gretzer (_Opera omnia_), by Becano (_Opuscula theologica Summa Theologicae scholasticae_).

"Pere Emanuel (_Aphorismi confessariorum_), Gregoire de Valence (_Comment. Theolog._), Keller (_Tyrannicidium_), and Suarez (_Defentio fidei cathol._) hold similar ideas, while Azor (_Inst.i.tut. moral._), Lorin (_Comm. in librum psalmorum_), Comitolo (_Responsa morala_), etc., recognized the right of every individual to kill the prince for his own defense."--_Les Anarchistes_, p. 207.

[M] Bakounin, when endeavoring to save Nechayeff from being arrested by the Swiss authorities and sent back to Russia, defends him on precisely these grounds, claiming that Nechayeff had taken the fable of William Tell seriously. Cf. _OEuvres_, Vol. II, p. 29.

[N] Booth wrote, a day or so after killing Lincoln: "After being hunted like a dog through swamps and woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return, wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for--what made William Tell a hero; and yet I, for striking down an even greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat." Cf. "The Death of Lincoln," Laughlin, p.

135.

[O] Kropotkin tells of the effort made by the agents of Andrieux to persuade him and Elisee Reclus to collaborate in the publication of this so-called anarchist paper. He also says it was a paper of "unheard-of violence; burning, a.s.sa.s.sination, dynamite bombs--there was nothing but that in it."--"Memoirs of a Revolutionist," pp. 478-480.

[P] In "The Terror in Russia" Kropotkin tells of bands of criminals who, under pretense of being revolutionists and wanting money for revolutionary purposes, forced wealthy people to contribute under menace of death. The headquarters of the bands were at the office of the secret police.

PART II

STRUGGLES WITH VIOLENCE

[Ill.u.s.tration: KARL MARX]

CHAPTER VII

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIALISM

While terrorism was running its tragic course, the socialists grew from a tiny sect into a world-wide movement. And, as terrorist acts were the expression of certain uncontrollably rebellious spirits, so cooperatives, trade unions, and labor parties arose in response to the conscious and constructive effort of the ma.s.ses. As a matter of fact, the terrorist groups never exercised any considerable influence over the actual labor movement, except for a brief period in Spain and America.

Indeed, they did not in the least understand that movement. The followers of Bakounin were largely young enthusiasts from the middle cla.s.s, who were referred to scornfully at the time as "lawyers without cases, physicians without patients and knowledge, students of billiards, commercial travelers, and others."[1] Yet it cannot be denied that violence has played, and still in a measure plays, a part in the labor movement. I mean the violence of sheer desperation. It rises and falls in direct relation to the lawlessness, the repression, and the tyranny of the governments. Furthermore, where labor organizations are weakest and the ma.s.ses most ignorant and desperate, the very helplessness of the workers leads them into that violence. This is made clear enough by the historic fact that in the early days of the modern industrial system nearly every strike of the unorganized laborers was accompanied by riots, machine-breaking, and a.s.saults upon men and property.

No small part of this early violence was directly due to the brutal opposition of society to every form of labor organization. The workers were fought violently, and they answered violence with violence. It must not be forgotten that the trade unions and the socialist parties grew, in spite of every menace, in the very teeth of that which forbade them, and under the eye of that which sought to destroy them. And, like other living things in the midst of a hostile environment, they covered themselves with spurs to ward off the enemy. The early movements of labor were marked by a sullen, bitter, and destructive spirit; and some of the much persecuted propagandists of early trade unionism and socialism thought that "implacable destruction" was preferable to the tyranny which the workers then suffered. Not the philosophy, but the rancor of Bakounin, of Nechayeff, and of Most represented, three-quarters of a century ago, the feeling of great ma.s.ses of workingmen. Riots, insurrections, machine-breaking, incendiarism, pillage, and even murder were then more truly expressive of the att.i.tude of certain sections of the brutalized poor toward the society which had disinherited them than most of us to-day realize. In every industrial center, previous to 1850, the working-cla.s.s movement, such as it was, yielded repeatedly to self-exhausting expressions of blind and sullen rage. The resentment of the workers was deep, and, without program or philosophy, a spirit of destruction often ran riot in nearly every movement of the workers.

During the first fifty years, then, of last century, little building was done. A mob spirit prevailed, and the great body of toilers was divided into innumerable bands, who fought their battles without aim, and, after weeks of rioting, left nothing behind them. Toward the middle of the century the real building of the labor movement commenced. In every country men soberly and seriously set to work, and everywhere throughout the entire industrial world the foundations were laid for the great movement that exists to-day. Yet the present world-wide movement, so harmonious in its principles and methods and so united in doctrines, could not have been all that it is had there not come to its aid in its most critical and formative period several of the ablest and best-schooled minds of Europe. At the period when the workers were finding their feet and beginning their task of organization on a large scale, there was also in Europe much revolutionary activity in "intellectual" circles. The forties was a germinating period for many new social and economic theories. In France, Germany, and England there were many groups discussing with heat and pa.s.sion every theory of trade unionism, anarchism, and socialism. On the whole, they were middle-cla.s.s "intellectuals," battling in their sectarian circles over the evils of our economic life, the problems of society, and the relations between the cla.s.ses. Suddenly the revolution was upon them--the moment which they all instinctively felt was at hand--but, when it came, most of them were able to play no forceful part in it. It was a movement of vast ma.s.ses, over which the social revolutionists had little influence, and the various groups found themselves incapable of any really effective action. To be sure, many of those seeking a social revolution played a creditable part in the uprisings throughout Europe during '48 and '49, but the time had not yet arrived for the working cla.s.ses to achieve any striking reforms of their own. The only notable result of the period, so far as the social revolutionary element was concerned, was that it lost once again, nearly everywhere, its press, its liberty of speech, and its right of a.s.sociation. It was driven underground; but there germinated, nevertheless, in the innumerable secret societies, some of the most important principles and doctrines upon which the international labor movement was later to be founded.

In France socialist theories had never been wholly friendless from the time of the great Revolution. The memory of the _enrages_ of 1793 and of Babeuf and his conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti and Marechal. The ruling cla.s.ses had very cunningly lauded liberty and fraternity, but they rarely mentioned the struggle for equality, which, of course, appeared to them as a regrettable and most dangerous episode in the great Revolution. Yet, despite that fact, this early struggle for economic equality had never been wholly forgotten. Besides, there were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who, with very great scholarly attainments, had rigidly a.n.a.lyzed existing society, exposed its endless disorders, and advocated an entire social transformation. There were also Considerant, Leroux, Vidal, Pecqueur, and Cabet. All of these able and gifted men had kept the social question ever to the front, while Louis Blanc and Blanqui had actually introduced into politics the principles of socialism. Blanqui was an amazing character. He was an incurable, habitual insurrectionist, who came to be called _l'enferme_ because so much of his life was spent in prison.[Q] The authorities again and again released him, only to hear the next instant that he was leading a mob to storm the citadels of the Government. His life was a series of unsuccessful a.s.saults upon authority, launched in the hope that, if the working cla.s.s should once install itself in power, it would reorganize society on socialist lines. He was a man of the street, who had only to appear to find an army of thousands ready to follow him. Blanqui used to say--according to Kropotkin--that there were in Paris fifty thousand men ready at any moment for an insurrection. Again and again he arose like an apparition among them, and on one occasion, at the head of two hundred thousand people, he offered the dictatorship of France to Louis Blanc. The latter was an altogether different person. His stage was the parliamentary one. He was a powerful orator, who, throughout the forties, was preaching his practical program of social reform--the right to work, the organization of labor, and the final extinction of capitalism by the growth of cooperative production fostered by the State. In 1848 he played a great role, and all Europe listened with astonishment to the revolutionary proposals of this man who, for a few months, occupied the most powerful position in France. At the same time Proudhon was developing the principles of anarchism and earning everlasting fame as the father of that philosophy. In truth, the whole gamut of socialist ideas and the entire range of socialist methods had been agitated and debated in peace and in war for half a century in France.

In England the same questions had disturbed all cla.s.ses for nearly fifty years. There had been no great revolutionary period, but from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the extinction of Chartism in 1848 every doctrine of trade unionism, syndicalism, anarchism, and socialism had been debated pa.s.sionately by groups of workingmen and their friends. The principles and methods of trade unionism were being worked out on the actual battlefield, amid riots, strikes, machine-breaking, and incendiarism. Instinctively the ma.s.ses were a.s.sociating for mutual protection and, almost unconsciously, working out by themselves programs of action. Nevertheless, Joseph Hume, Francis Place, Robert Owen, and a number of other brilliant men were lending powerful intellectual aid to the workers in their actual struggle. A group of radical economists was also defending the claims of labor.

Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas Hodgskin, and J. F.

Bray were all seeking to find the economic causes of the wrongs suffered by labor and endeavoring, in some manner, to devise remedies for the immense suffering endured by the working cla.s.ses. Together with Robert Owen, a number of them were planning labor exchanges, voluntary communities, and even at one time the entire reorganization of the world through the trade unions. In this ferment the cooperative movement also had its birth. The Rochdale Pioneers began to work out practically some of the cooperative ideas of Robert Owen. With 28 a pathetic beginning was made that has led to the immensely rich cooperative movement of to-day. Furthermore, the Chartists were leading a vast political movement of the workers. In support of the suffrage and of parliamentary representation for workingmen, a wonderful group of orators and organizers carried on in the thirties and forties an immense agitation.

William Lovett, Feargus O'Connor, Joseph Rayner Stephens, Ernest Jones, Thomas Cooper, and James Bronterre O'Brien were among the notable and gifted men who were then preaching throughout all England revolutionary and socialist ideas. Such questions as the abolition of inheritances, the nationalization of land, the right of labor to the full product of its toil, the necessity of breaking down cla.s.s control of Parliament--these and other subversive ideas were germinating in all sections of the English labor movement. It was a heroic period--altogether the most heroic period in the annals of toil--in which the most advanced and varied revolutionary ideas were hurtling in the air. The causes of the ruin that overcame this magnificent beginning of a revolutionary working-cla.s.s movement cannot be dwelt upon here.

Quarrels between the leaders, the incoherence of their policies, and divisions over the use of violence utterly wrecked a movement that antic.i.p.ated by thirty years the social democracy of Germany. The tragic fiasco in 1848 was the beginning of an appalling working-cla.s.s reaction from years of popular excesses and mob intoxications, from which the wiser leadership of the German movement was careful to steer clear. And, after '48, solemn and serious men settled down to the quiet building of trade unions and cooperatives. Revolutionary ideas were put aside, and everywhere in England the responsible men of the movement were pleading with the ma.s.ses to confine themselves to the practical work of education and organization.

Although Germany was far behind England in industrial development and, consequently, also in working-cla.s.s organization, the beginnings of a labor and socialist movement were discernible. A brief but delightful description of the early communist societies is given by Engels in his introduction to the _Revelations sur le Proces des Communistes_. As early as 1836 there were secret societies in Germany discussing socialist ideas. The "League of the Just" became later the "League of the Righteous," and that eventually developed into the "Communist League." The membership cards read, "All men are brothers." Karl Schapper, Heinrich Bauer, and Joseph Moll, all workingmen, were among those who made an imposing impression upon Engels. Even more notable was Weitling, a tailor, who traveled all over Germany preaching a mixture of Christian communism and French utopian socialism. He was a simple-hearted missionary, delivering his evangel. "The World As It Is and As It Might Be" was the moving t.i.tle of one of his books that attracted to him not only many followers among the workers, but also notable men from other cla.s.ses. Most of the communists were of course always under suspicion, and many of them were forced out of their own countries. As a result, a large number of foreigners--Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans, and Italians--found themselves in Paris and in London, and astonished each other by the similarity of their views.

All Europe in this period was discussing very much the same things, and not only the more intelligent among the workers but the more idealistic among the youth from the universities were in revolt, discussing fervently republican, socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas. In "Young Germany," George Brandes gives a thrilling account of the spiritual and intellectual ferment that was stirring in all parts of the fatherland during the entire forties.[2]

It was in this agitated period that Marx and Engels, both mere youths, began to press their ideas in revolutionary circles. They met each other in Paris in 1844, and there began their lifelong cooperative labors.

Engels, although a German, was living in England, occupied in his father's cotton business at Manchester. He had taken a deep interest in the condition of the laboring cla.s.ses, and had followed carefully the terrible and often b.l.o.o.d.y struggles that so frequently broke out between capital and labor in England during the thirties and forties. Arriving by an entirely different route, he had come to opinions almost identical with those of Marx; and the next year he persuaded Marx to visit the factory districts of Lancashire, in order to acquaint himself actually with the enraged struggle then being fought between masters and men.

Engels had not gone to a university, although he seems somehow to have acquired, despite his business cares and active a.s.sociation with the men and movements of his time, a thorough education. On the other hand, Marx was a university man, having studied at Jena, Bonn, and Berlin. Like most of the serious young men of the period, Marx was a devoted Hegelian. When his university days were over, he became the editor of the _Rheinische Zeitung_ of Cologne, but at the age of twenty-four he found his paper suppressed because of his radical utterances. He went to Paris, only to be expelled in 1845. He found a refuge in Belgium until 1848, when the Government evidently thought it wise that he should move on. Shortly after, he returned to Germany to take up his editorial work once more, but in 1849, his _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ was suppressed, and he was forced to return to Paris. The authorities, not wishing him there, sent him off to London, where he remained the rest of his life.

By the irony of fate, even the governments of Europe seemed to be conspiring to force Marx to become the best equipped man of his time. To the leisure and travel enforced upon him by the European governments was due in no small measure his long schooling in economic theory, revolutionary political movements, and working-cla.s.s methods of action.

Both he and Engels penetrated into every nest of discontent. They came personally in touch with every group of dissidents. They spent many weary but invaluable weeks in the greatest libraries of Europe, with the result that they became thoroughly schooled in philosophy, economics, science, and languages. They pursued, to the minutest detail, with an inexhaustible thirst, the theories not only of the "authorities" but also of nearly every obscure socialist, radical, and revolutionist in England, France, Russia, and Germany.

In Brussels, Paris, and London, around the forties, a number of brilliant minds seemed somehow or other to come frequently in contact with each other. Many of them had been driven out of their own countries, and, as exiles abroad, they had ample leisure to plan their great conspiracies or to debate their great theories. Some of the notable radicals of the period were Heine, Freiligrath, Herwegh, Willich, Kinkel, Weitling, Bakounin, Ruge, Ledru-Rollin, Blanc, Blanqui, Cabet, Proudhon, Ernest Jones, Eccarius, Marx, Engels, and Liebknecht; and many of them came together from time to time and, in great excitement and pa.s.sion, fought as "Roman to Roman" over their panaceas.

Marx and Engels knew most of them and spent innumerable hours, not infrequently entire days and nights, at a sitting, in their intellectual battles.

It was a most fortunate thing for Marx that the French Government should have driven him in 1849 to London. "Capital" might never have been written had he not been forced to study for a long period the first land in all Europe in which modern capitalism had obtained a footing. On his earlier visit in 1845 he had spent a few weeks with Engels in the great factory centers, and he had been deeply impressed with this new industrialism and no less, of course, with the English labor movement.

Nothing to compare with it then existed in France or Germany. As early as 1840 many of the trades were well organized, and repeated efforts had been made to bring them together into a national federation. How thoroughly Engels knew this movement and its varied struggles to better the status of labor is shown in his book, "The Condition of the Working Cla.s.s in England in 1844." How thoroughly and fundamentally Marx later came to know not only the actual working-cla.s.s movement, but every economic theory from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, and every insurgent economist and political theorist from William G.o.dwin to Bronterre O'Brien, is shown in "Capital." In fact, not a single phase of insurgent thought seemed to escape Marx and Engels, nor any trace of revolt against the existing order, whether political or industrial. In Germany they were schooled in philosophy and science; in France they found themselves in a most amazing fermentation of revolutionary spirit and idealism; and in England they studied with the minutest care the cooperative movement and self-help, the trade-union movement with its purely economic aims and methods, the Chartist movement with its political action, and the Owenite movement, both in its purely utopian phases and in its later development into syndicalist socialism. This long and profound study placed Marx and Engels in a position infinitely beyond that of their contemporaries. Possessed as they were of unusual mental powers, it was inevitable that such a training should have placed them in a position of intellectual leadership in the then rapidly forming working-cla.s.s organizations of Europe.

The study of English capitalism convinced Marx of the truthfulness of certain generalizations which he had already begun to formulate in 1844.

It became more and more evident to him that economic facts, to which history had hitherto attributed no role or a very inferior one, const.i.tuted, at least in the modern world, a decisive historic force.

"They form the source from which spring the present cla.s.s antagonisms.

These antagonisms in countries where great industry has carried them to their complete development, particularly in England, are the bases on which parties are founded, are the sources of political struggles, are the reasons for all political history."[3] Although Marx had arrived at this opinion earlier and had generalized this point of view in "French-German Annals," his study of English economics swept away any possible doubt that "in general it was not the State which conditions and regulates civil society, but civil society which conditions and regulates the State, that it was then necessary to explain politics and history by economic relations, and not to proceed inversely."[4] "This discovery which revolutionized historical science was essentially the work of Marx," says Engels, and, with his customary modesty, he adds: "The part which can be attributed to me is very small. It concerned itself directly with the working-cla.s.s movement of the period. Communism in France and Germany and Chartism in England appeared to be something more than mere chance which could just as well not have existed. These movements became now a movement of the oppressed cla.s.s of modern times, the working cla.s.s. Henceforth they were more or less developed forms of the historically necessary struggle which this cla.s.s must carry on against the ruling cla.s.s, the bourgeoisie. They were forms of the struggle of the cla.s.ses, but which were distinguished from all preceding struggles by this fact: the cla.s.s now oppressed, the proletariat, cannot effect its emanc.i.p.ation without delivering all society from its division into cla.s.ses, without freeing it from cla.s.s struggles. _No longer did Communism consist in the creation of a social ideal as perfect as possible; it resolved itself into a clear view of the nature, the conditions, and the general ends of the struggle carried on by the working cla.s.s._"[5]

It was not the intention of Marx and Engels to communicate their new scientific results to the intellectual world exclusively by means of large volumes. On the contrary, they plunged into the political movement. Besides having intercourse with well-known people, particularly in the western part of Germany, they were also in contact with the organized working cla.s.ses. "Our duty was to found our conception scientifically, but it was just as important that we should win over the European, and especially the German, working cla.s.ses to our convictions. When it was all clear in our eyes, we set to work."[6] A new German working-cla.s.s society was founded in Brussels, and the support was enlisted of the _Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung_, which served as an organ until the revolution of February. They were in touch with the revolutionary faction of the English Chartists under the leadership of George Julian Harney, editor of _The Northern Star_, to which Engels contributed. They also had intercourse with the democrats of Brussels and with the French social democrats of _la Reforme_, to which Engels contributed news of the English and German movements. In short, the relations that Marx and Engels had established with the radical and working-cla.s.s organizations fully served the great purposes they had in mind.

It was in the Communist League that Marx and Engels saw their first opportunity to impress their ideas on the labor movement. At the urgent request of Joseph Moll, a watchmaker and a prominent member of the League, Marx consented, in 1847, to present to that organization his views, and the result was the famous Communist Manifesto. Every essential idea of modern socialism is contained in that brief declaration. Unfortunately, however, outside of Germany, the Communist League was an exotic organization that could make little use of such a program. Its members were mostly exiles, who, by the very nature of their position, were hopelessly out of things. Little groups, surrounded by a foreign people, exiles are rarely able to affect the movement at home or influence the national movement amid which they are thrust.

There is little, therefore, noteworthy about the Communist League. It had, to be sure, gathered together a few able and energetic spirits, and some of these in later years exercised considerable influence in the International. But, as a rule, the groups of the Communist League were little more than debating societies whose members were filled with sentimental, visionary, and insurrectionary ideas. Marx himself finally lost all patience with them, because he could not drive out of their heads the idea that they could revolutionize the entire world by some sudden dash and through the exercise of will power, personal sacrifice, and heroic action. The Communist League, therefore, is memorable only because it gave Marx and Engels an opportunity for issuing their epoch-making Manifesto, that even to-day is read and reread by the workers in all lands of the world. Translated into every language, it is the one pamphlet that can be found in every country as a part of the basic literature of socialism.

There are certain principles laid down in the Communist Manifesto which time cannot affect, although the greater part of the doc.u.ment is now of historic value only. The third section, for instance, is a critique of the various types of socialism then existing in Europe, and this part can hardly be understood to-day by those unacquainted with those sectarian movements. It deals with Reactionary Socialism, Feudal Socialism, Clerical Socialism, Petty Bourgeois Socialism, German Socialism, Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism, Critical-Utopian Socialism, and Communism. The mere enumeration of these types of socialist doctrine indicates what a chaos of doctrine and theory then existed, and it was in order to distinguish themselves from these various schools that Marx and Engels took the name of communists.

Beginning with the statement, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of cla.s.s struggles,"[7] the Manifesto treats at length the modern struggle between the working cla.s.s and the capitalist cla.s.s. After tracing the rise of capitalism, the development of a new working cla.s.s, and the consequences to the people of the new economic order, Marx and Engels outline the program of the communists and their relation to the then existing working-cla.s.s organizations and political parties. They deny any intention of forming a new sect, declaring that they throw themselves whole-heartedly into the working-cla.s.s movement of all countries, with the one aim of encouraging and developing within those groups a political organization for the conquest of political power. They outline certain measures which, in their opinion, should stand foremost in the program of labor, all of them having to do with some modification of the inst.i.tution of property.

In order to achieve these reforms, and eventually "To wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State,"[8] they urge the formation of labor parties as soon as proper preparations have been made and the time is ripe for effective cla.s.s action. All through the Manifesto runs the motif that every cla.s.s struggle is a political struggle. Again and again Marx and Engels return to that thought in their masterly survey of the historical conflicts between the cla.s.ses. They show how the bourgeoisie, beginning as "an oppressed cla.s.s under the sway of the feudal n.o.bility," gradually ... "conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway," until to-day "the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."[9] Tracing the rise of the modern working cla.s.s, they tell of its purely retaliative efforts against the capitalists; how at first "they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze"; how they fight in "incoherent" ma.s.ses, "broken up by their mutual compet.i.tion";[10] even their unions are not so much a result of their conscious effort as they are the consequence of oppression. Furthermore, the workers "do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies."[11] "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers."[12] It is when their unions grow national in character and the struggle develops into a national struggle between the cla.s.ses that it naturally takes on a political character. Then begins the struggle for conquering political power. But, while "all previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities, the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."[13] Returning again to the underlying thought, it is pointed out that the working cla.s.s must "win the battle of democracy."[14] It must acquire "political supremacy." It must raise itself to "the position of ruling cla.s.s," in order that it may sweep away "the conditions for the existence of cla.s.s antagonisms, and of cla.s.ses generally."[15]

Such were the doctrines and tactics proclaimed by Marx and Engels in 1847. The Manifesto is said to have been received with great enthusiasm by the League, but, whatever happened at the moment, it is clear that the members never understood the doctrines manifested. In any case, various factions in the movement were still clamoring for insurrection and planning their conspiracies, wholly faithful to the revolution-making artifices of the period. Two of the most prominent, Willich and Schapper, were carried away with revolutionary pa.s.sion, and "the majority of the London workers," Engels says, "refugees for the most part, followed them into the camp of the bourgeois democrats, the revolution-makers."[16] They declined to listen to protests. "They wanted to go the other way and to make revolutions," continues Engels.

"We refused absolutely to do this and the schism followed."[17]

On the 15th of September, 1850, Marx decided to resign from the central council of the organization, and, feeling that such an act required some justification, he prepared the following written declaration: "The minority[R] [_i. e._, his opponents] have subst.i.tuted the dogmatic spirit for the critical, the idealistic interpretation of events for the materialistic. Simple will power, instead of the true relations of things, has become the motive force of revolution. While we say to the working people: 'You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and wars between nations not only to change existing conditions, but to change yourselves and make yourselves worthy of political power,' you, on the contrary, say, 'We ought to get power at once, or else give up the fight.' While we draw the attention of the German workman to the undeveloped state of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetish of the words 'the people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.' Like them, you subst.i.tute revolutionary phrases for revolutionary evolution."[18] This statement of Marx is one of the most significant doc.u.ments of the period and certainly one of the most illuminating we possess of Marx's determination to disavow the insurrectionary ideas then so prevalent throughout Europe. Although he had said the same thing before in other words, there could be no longer any doubt that he cherished no dreams of a great revolutionary cataclysm, nor fondled the then prevalent theory that revolutions could be organized, planned, and executed by will power alone.