State and Revolution, Part 1a
1848 in Germany
Permanent Revolution
In the thick of revolution
great questions are suddenly thrust forward demanding decisive responses, in
circumstances where the revolutionary forces - the Subject of History - are
hardly coherent and may still be largely clandestine, and therefore invisible.
In 1917 the revolution managed to articulate itself, as we will see during this
course on “The State and Revolution”, to a considerable extent by reference to
previous revolutionary experiences. One such passage of history began in 1848
and involved Karl Marx, who, like Lenin, applied himself to making clear the
necessities of the moment, the line-of-march to be followed, and the allies to
be taken.
Karl Marx’s March 1850
Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League begins by describing
the working proletariat as the “only decisively revolutionary class”, and ends
with a battle-cry for the workers: “The Permanent Revolution!”
In the Address, Marx is
advocating all possible means of achieving revolutionary change which, if not
theoretically irreversible, would nevertheless in practice not be reversed.
“The workers' party must go into battle with the
maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not
exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie,” said Marx, with the events of the previous two years
in mind, when the bourgeois allies of the working class had treacherously sold
the workers out as soon as they could secure favourable terms for themselves
from the reactionary feudal powers.
Marx then very frankly
reviews the competing self-interests of the contending classes and fractions of
the bourgeoisie.
“There is no
doubt that during the further course of the revolution in Germany, the
petty-bourgeois democrats will for the moment acquire a predominant influence.
The question is, therefore, what is to be the attitude of the proletariat, and
in particular of the League towards them,” declared Marx.
“As in the past, so in the coming struggle also, the
petty bourgeoisie, to a man, will hesitate as long as possible and remain
fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it
for itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, to
return to work and to prevent so-called excesses, and it will exclude the
proletariat from the fruits of victory,” warned Marx.
The working class must “be independently organized and centralized
in clubs,” and “it is the task of the
genuinely revolutionary party… to carry through the strictest centralization,” wrote
Marx. Reading this section, it becomes clear that Marx was convinced that the
building of the democratic republic and the building of the nation had to be
one and the same set of actions.
The working-class tactics in
alliance with the bourgeois democrats should be to “force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing
social order as possible,” and constantly to “drive the proposals of the democrats to their logical extreme”.
The workers must always look
ahead to the next act of the revolutionary drama. They will:
“contribute
most to their final victory by informing themselves of their own class
interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as
possible, and by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical
phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the
necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat.”
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Address
to the Central Committee of the Communist League, Karl Marx, 1850.
