The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 7
Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy
After the second Congress, which established the first International on a firm scientific basis, Engels and Marx went to Paris and thence to Germany, where they established the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. Here they worked both practically and theoretically at combating the illusions of the revolutionaries of 1848, who for the most part thought that all that was needed was the gaining of civil and political freedom; that, these gained, the chains would at once fall from the people and they would live thereafter in peace and prosperity. Needless to say, both Marx and Engels called for energetic action for the attainment of political liberties, for the overthrow of the reaction—but this only for the purpose of preparing the ground for the real struggle of the workers for their emancipation from capitalist domination. For Engels as for Marx, democracy without Communism was no democracy.
"Any other democracy" (not Communism), said Engels, "can only exist in the heads of visionary theoreticians, who do not bother about realities, and according to whom men and circumstances do not develop principles, but principles develop of themselves. Democracy has become a proletarian principle—the principle of the masses." But for this democracy to have any value, it must be Communist, not bourgeois, democracy.
It may not be out of place to say a few words here as to this democracy whose praises we hear sung now on all sides, including such sturdy democrats as King George, Lloyd George, Bonar Law and so on, and so on.
Our ideas on democracy illustrate admirably the way in which all our thoughts and ideas are coloured by the prevailing economic conditions and the interests of the governing class. Of course, it is true, in the abstract, that if the working class desired to do so they could simply, by using their vote, set up a Socialist, even a Communist, Government, and proceed to carry out any measure of reform they desired, and even to abolish the private ownership in the means of production and to Socialise them by orderly parliamentary methods.
But a moment's reflection must surely convince us that democracy, as it exists at the present time, is a mere sham so far as the workers are concerned. In the first place,the school and pulpit are in the hands of the governing class, who quite naturally use them as far as they can to inculcate views in their own interests. The Press, which is the most powerful moulder of public opinion, is again in the hands of the capitalist class. For one Socialist or Labour paper there are hundreds of Liberal, Tory, Radical—in short, bourgeois—papers, all inculcating the morals, ideas and ideals of the governing class, whatever particular name or method they may adopt in doing this. The Labour forces have not at their command the halls, motor-cars, and vast sums of money spent on supporting bourgeois candidates. The electoral machinery and institutions, too, are so contrived that it is the Government—the representatives of the ruling classes—that chooses the issues and the moment of the elections.
The consequence is that democracy in a bourgeois society simply tends to strengthen the position and interests of the bourgeoisie by giving to its domination the apparent sanction of the popular vote. Engels, therefore, truly says in his Origin of the Family, which we shall treat in greater detail below, "Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot, and never will, be anything else but that in the modern State. But that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the labourers, they, as well as the capitalists, will know what to do." That is to say, the granting of universal suffrage shows the growing strength of the working class, the fact that the governing classes in order to maintain their rule must, whilst preserving for themselves the reality, grant the masses the appearance of power. But when the working class or its active class-conscious section is really ready to use this power, then it will have become obsolete, for the capitalist classes, seeing the reality of their power about to be filched from them, will take, as so far in history they always have taken, to far different weapons than that of moral suasion and the kissing of grimy little children or shaking hands with bewildered housewives at election times.
And it is necessary to note here that no Socialist or Communist advocates forcible or violent revolution as an end in itself. But we must face realities. If the other side will not abdicate and quietly give up their possessions—what is to be done? So long as they are possessed of their wealth and are allowed to use that wealth freely, so long do the governing classes possess a weapon far stronger than any vote of the workers, and this wealth and the power it gives them they will not yield up without a struggle.
Should the Russian workers' Republic, surrounded by internal and external foes ready and eager to rend it to pieces, should it, figuratively speaking, fold its arms and turn the other cheek to be smitten by its enemies? Would it really be more "moral" for the Russian Red Army, instead of defending themselves and their revolution, to lay down their arms and let the Whites and the Blacks and Tans over-run them and make a shambles of their country like the Horthy gangs are doing in Hungary? The absurdity of the anti-force fanaticism has only to be stated to be at once recognised.
At the same time, we are not, as Engels shows in his Anti-Dühring, to make a fetish of force. Force alone will not make a revolution or preserve a dominant class indefinitely in power. It is the underlying economic conditions and the degree of development of the productive forces which gives rise to particular forms of society, and it is the further development of the means of production which again gives rise to our scorn of former or still prevailing forms of society and our will and ability to overthrow them when conditions are ripe for such a step.
Thus, after pointing out the useful and necessary role played even by slavery in, the progress of society from primitive Communism, Engels says: "It is very easy to make sermons about slavery and to express our moral indignation at such a scandalous institution. Unfortunately, the whole significance of this is that it merely says that these old institutions do not correspond with our present conditions, and the sentiments engendered by these conditions. We do not, however, in this way explain how these institutions came into existence, why they came into existence and the role which they have played in history. And when we enter upon this matter we have to say, in spite of all contradiction and accusations of heresy, that the introduction of slavery under the conditions of that time was a great step forward."
The old primitive Communism was incapable of expanding because of the limited means of subsistence, and when these became more plentiful, then the productive forces of labour, being still so slight, "yielding only a small surplus over the daily necessities of life, the development of the productive forces, the institution of commerce, the development of the State and of law, and the foundation of Art and Science were only possible through an increase in the subdivision of labour." The most natural and simplest form of this subdivision was that of slavery, which, whilst burdening one section of men with all the menial work of society, left another, the master class, free to direct this work, to carry on the work of the State and to pursue trade, art and science. At that time, had the thought of the iniquity of slavery occurred, it would have been useless to attempt to abolish it, and no mass party could, or did, arise to demand and carry out its abolition.
But the wheel of time does not stand still, and leisured classes tend more and more to become purely parasitic; and now the productive forces have made such gigantic strides as to make the existence of a special leisured class not only superfluous, but a direct obstacle to further social progress; and they will, therefore, be "unceremoniously brushed aside in spite of their possession of 'pure force'" (a term used by Dühring). Nevertheless, force has played an important part in history, and should not be despised and lightly disclaimed.
"According to Herr Dühring" (read now our anti-forcists), says Engels, “force is the absolute evil. The first act of force is to him the first fall into sin. His whole conception is a sort of sermon over the infection of all history up to the present time with the original sin. He talks about the disgraceful falsifying of all natural and social laws by the invention of the devil force. That force plays another part in history, a revolutionary part, that it is in the words of Marx, the midwife of the old society when pregnant with the new, that it is the tool and means by which social movements hack their way through and break up the dead and fossilised political forms—of all this not a word by Herr Dühring. Only with sighs and groans does he admit the possibility that for the overthrow of the system of exploitation force may, perhaps, be necessary, but most unfortunate if you please, because all use of force, forsooth, demoralises him who uses it!
"And this is said in face of the great moral and intellectual advance which has followed every successful revolution! And this is said in Germany, where a violent collision—which might, perhaps, be forced on the people—should have, at the very least, the advantage that it would destroy the spirit of subservience which has permeated the national mind ever since the degradation and humiliation of the Thirty Years' War."
The reader can himself make the necessary substitutions for Germany in the above passage.