III. Marx and Engels and the German Social-Democracy

The history of the communist movement in Germany, in general lines, in the nineteen century, can be summarised like this: in 1847, in a Congress in London, the clandestine organization, League of the Justs, would transform itself, under Marx’s jefatura, into the Communist League. The Communist League, in 1848, had an active performance in the German Democratic Revolution. In March that year Marx moves to Cologne where he publishes the Party’s legal newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhenish Newspaper) . After the defeat of the German revolution and second expulsion of Marx by the Prussia’s kingdom and the Cologne’s files against communist militants and leaders, the League ends up its activities, in 1852. However, this first experience of an active communist organization in the German territory would frutify in Germany itself some years late.

In 1863, a year before the creation of the International Worker Association ( the First International), under a strong influence of Ferdinand Lassalle, the General Association of the Workers was founded in Germany which had a political position very near the petty-bourgeois socialism of Proudhon. In 1869, the Social Democratic Worker Party, Marxist-inspired, was founded by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebnecht ( who had broken with the proudhonist Association) which would compose the I International left-wing and strongly support Marx’s positions in the struggle against anarchism. Contrary to Marx and Engels’ stances, in 1875, therefore four years after the dramatic and important events of the Commune of Paris, the Social-Democratic Worker Party merges with the Lassalist Association and thus the Socialist Worker Party of Germany is conformed. The Anti-Socialist Law is ratified in 1878, and until 1890 the Party was forced into illegality. In 1891, at the the Erfurt Congress, a Marxist Programme is approved and the Party is named Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

This article will analyse three moments of the German social-democracy history: the unification with the lassallists, in 1875; the influence of the cathedra socialism of Eugen Düring, in 1877, and the growing settlement after the enactment of Anti-Socialist Law. At that moment Marx and Engels decisive participation in the two-line struggle against the petty-bourgeois socialism is highlighted.

1. Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx’s last major theoretical oeuvre

The Party founded by Bebel, in 1869, was the real continuation of the Communist League traditions. At that year, even though it was not yet properly Marxist, since in its programme there were many non scientific and imprecise postulations, the Party always tried to have an internationalist and  proletarian positioning. This character of the Party and its leadership was proved when Bebel and Liebknecht were arrested accused of treachery to the Motherland, in 1870, for denouncing the Prussian Empire that defeated Napoleon III Empire and was preparing Alsace-Lorraine annexation. Bebel, who was a deputy, demanded, repudiating all sort of chauvinism or bourgeois nationalism, that Prussia would provide a “peace without annexations” with the newly created French Second Republic. Furthermore, he shouted from the parliamentary tribune the revolutionary slogan: “War to the palaces, peace to the huts!

Marx and Engels knew about the revolutionary perspective of Bebel and Liebknecht’s Party as well as its theoretical limitations. That is why they have always devoted great attention – mainly Engels – to the elaboration of articles for the Social-Democrat press in Germany. Those articles analysed the political situation as much the newly unified German State as the diffusion of Marxism and mostly the two-line struggle against the petty-bourgeois socialist stances. Among these Engels’ articles we can highlight: For the housing question, in which he debates with the German proudhonist, Mülberger, and his project for transforming the workers into small owners; The bakunists in action, in which he criticises the performance of the anarchist positions in Italy and Spain but aimed as well at the existing reformism in the party in Germany; and the Preface to the third edition of the Peasant Wars in Germany, 1874, in which he carries out a thorough class analysis of the German unified State, its social basis: the contradictory alliance between the economically decaying landlords ( the junkers ) and the industrial German bourgeoisie, politically weak.

Marx and Engels’ expectations as to the development of the Party in Germany have been described in the following way:

“For the first time, since the existence of the working party, the struggle develops in a methodical manner in its three concentrated directions and related to each other: theoretical, political and pratical-economic ( resistence to the capitalists). In a concentric attack, so to speak, is the principal power and the invincibility of the German  movement”. ( Engels, 1874, Preface to the third edition of The peasant war in Germany).

Notwithstanding these prospects, in 1875, mostly due to the ideological and theoretical insufficiencies of the leaders, a merging process occurs between the Social-Democrat Worker Party and the lassallist Association. Marx and Engels became aware of the process by the social-democrat press and the project of the programme of the future unified party which had a huge amount of petty-bourgeois positions. The Gotha Programme (1) meant a great step backwards to the already feeble Programme of Eisenach from 1869. Engels wrote, against this position, a letter to the main leaders of the Party, on its left-wing: Bebel, Liebknecht and Bracke and he soon made it known to Marx. The great communist leader then engaged himself in a extraordinary depth criticism to the Gotha Programme. This work, according to Lenin, exceeds a simple programmatic controversy since it deals fundamentally with the “connection between the development of communism and the State extinction”. (Lenin, The State and the Revolution).

Marx’s criticism was made in a long letter, on May 1875, in which he carefully approaches 14 points of the above mentioned Gotha Programme. The Marxist criticisms were not accepted by the Gotha Congress and the programme was passed with very little changes. This congress, however, represented a victory of the right-wing and the unification occurred with the ideological prevalence of the lassallist positions. The two-line struggle against these stances will follow a tortuous path for 16 years and the left-wing will only attain the programmatic victory in 1891, at the Erfurt Congress. It was the year that the Critique of the Gotha Programme would be published for the first time, by Engels, during another phase of the SDP two-line struggle.

From what Lenin pointed out on, we must consider Marx’s last great work as the crowning of his huge task and doctrine. Similar to a highest synthesis of the three constitutive parts of it, and  with the unprecedented approach of very important problems of the political economy of socialism, inherent contradictions to this “first phase of the communist society”. Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme has been a fundamental oeuvre for the development of the ideology of the proletariat inasmuch as it has served as a foundation for works of such an importance as The State and the Revolution and Marxism on the State, from comrade Lenin, and Economic Problems of Socialism in USSR, from comrade Stalin. All of them of utmost importance as Marxist theoretical foundation in the great ideological battle as a vanguard done by Chairman Mao against the modern revisionism of Khrushev, brilliantly presented at the 9th Commentary to the Central Committee Letter of the revisionsit CPSU: On the false communism of Khrushev and its historical lessons to the world, to refute the rotten “theory of the productive forces”, “end of the dictatorship of the proletariat”,”State of the whole people” and for the understanding and defence of the continuation of the class struggle for the whole period of transition as dictatorship of the proletariat through necessary and “subsequent Proletarian Cultural Revolutions so that we can reach the bright communist as pointed out by Chairman Gonzalo on his masterful synthesis “People’s War until Communism”.

1.1 Socialization of the production and the ‘bourgeois right’

At criticising the starting points of the Gotha programme, comrade Marx discusses important economical elements of the socialist society or, as he affirmed, from “the first phase of the communist society”. Marx refutes emphatically the programatic proposition that the Party fought so that the workers could receive “ their full work”. Marx analyses the inconsistency of this consign contrasting it with the scientific socialism, and showing its incompatibility with the socialist society. Marx demonstrates how the consigns on “equitable sharing” and “equal rights” do not have anything radical and they are just the repetition of the outdated revolutionary programme of the bourgeoisie in its fight against feudalism.

Marx demonstrates scientifically that, in a socialist society, the fruit of a collective work is the “whole of the social  product”. He questions what the equitable distribution of this product would be and then concludes that the distribution of the  result of the collective work among the individuals constitutes only the final link of a chain. Since, from the totality of this social product, ought to be: 1st) to replace the means of production; 2nd) part of this product is intended to the production expansion; 3rd) to set aside part of the product to a reserve fund for emergency situations; 4th) deducted the precedent installments, we would have the part designed for the individual consumption; however, from this part it would be necessary, before arriving to the individual distribution of the production output: a) deduct the general expenditure of the administration: b) deduct the expenditure for the collective satisfaction ( building of squares,etc.); c) supporting of people unable to work.

Marx, with this precise description, resumes something he had already disclosed, in 1859, in Contribution for the Critique of the Political Economy, that the solution for the harms of the capitalist system would not be in the distribution of the production output but the contradiction would be in the capitalist mode of production that determines the way of distribution of the wealth produced. It was not a matter, therefore, for the working class to fight for a fair distribution of the capitalists’ profits; as long as the private property of the means of production existed from one side and, another side, the workers lacking these means of production, the distribution would be, inevitably, exploitative and keeping the proletariat solely under the condition to reproduce his individual life as an exploited class.

Marx, overcoming all the bourgeois classical economics from Smith and Ricardo, demonstrates that, before the distribution of the production output, there is the distribution of the production conditions and the second determines the first one. Namely, in an economic system in which the production conditions are distributed, as in capitalism: factories and land in the hands of the capitalists and proprietors, and for the workers only their individual condition of production, that is, their labour force. An economic system which conditions of production are distributed this manner can only result in an absurdly unequal and antagonistic distribution of the same output production.

Marxism had already previously substantiated that for the proletariat could only be an alternative for its emancipation: the socializtion of the means of production and that the corresponding political form to this socialization would be the State of a dictatorship of the proletariat. This socialization being completely done, the means of production distributed as a colective class property, conducted in a planified way by its State, the problem of the distribution of the production output would be solved.

From this point on Marx starts a fundamental aspect of which would be the socialist society contradictions, that the socialization of the production, even a complete one, would not solve promptly the preservation of the bourgeois right. Marx emphasises the limit of a society brought for from the wombs of the capitalist society, demonstrating that in a first phase the individual distribution of the totality of the social production would still be marked by the seal of the bourgeois society; and only then, from this new basis, namely, the socialist society, one can reach the communism final goal, not only socializing the means of production and developing the productive forces but also extinguishing the bourgeois right.

Thus Marx affirms: “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed in its own foundations economically, morally and intellectually, but one that has just emerged from the capitalist society and still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society. ( …) That is why the equal right keeps being, in principle, the bourgeois right though now the principle and the practice are no more in conflict, while in the interchange of goods the interchange of equivalents is not verified unless as a middle term and not in the individual cases. Despite this progress, the equal right continues bringing an implicit bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the work performed; the equality consists in which is measured by the same criteria: by the work. But some individuals are superior physically and intellectually to others and, at the same time, work more or are able to work longer; and the work serving as a measure has to be determined about the length or intensity, otherwise cannot be a measure. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal work. It does not recognize any class difference because each individual here is not more than a worker as any other; but it recognizes implicitally, like any other natural privilege, the uneven skills of the individuals and, consequently, the uneven performance capabilities. In fact it is, therefore, as any other right, the right of the unequality”. (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, the author’s bold).

Let us see Marx precision – the greatest scientist of the history: in socialism, inferior phase of the communism, all individuals in society have equal rights, each individual participates in the production with his work and all means of production are collective. This collective condition of the production, Marx stresses, diferently from the regime of merchandise exchanges, as in the capitalist system, determines that every individual will receive, in the distribution of the total of the social production, a proportional part to the work that every person provided to the society.

This is a great advance as to the capitalist society and, at the same time, a necessity of the socialist society. However, the “equitable distribution” will not be possible in socialism and does not correspond to an objective for the communist society. In socialism, the measure of the individual distribution of the result of the social production will be the work ( in capitalism, the measure is, for the bourgeoisie, the property of determined quantity of capital; and for the proletariat, the conditions of the sale of their workforce); however the work can only be a measure when considered in its quantity and quality. A large quantity of work implies in a larger participation in the distribution; a superior quality of work, either a greater precision or the accomplishment of a more complex work will correspond , as well, to the right to a greater part in the distribution. 

Marx demonstrates that this limit of the right to distribution in socialism is an intrinsic necessity to this society which has emerged from the former one and still bears the bourgeois stamp in economy, moral and mentality. The experience of socialist building in the USSR and China under the respective commands of the comrades Lenin/Stalin and Chairman Mao Tsetung have confirmed that only acting by this necessary law the construction of socialism in a specific country and all over the world is possible. These teachings from Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme are the foundations of the political economy of socialism; they helped Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao to act, on the one hand, against the utopic and petty-bourgeois concepts, and the revisionist right-wing ones, on the other hand. In other words, they combated the positions of those who assumed that there should be an absolute equality of the salaries and those who wanted  to prolong the great differences for restoring the capitalism. Such a thing contradicted the socialism and overlooked the difference between the quantity and the quality of the individual works, and the contradictions that are in the socialism between the material basis in the society and its superstructure, between the socialist production relations and the  consciousness of the working masses.

The Soviet wage policy differentiated in production was extremely important for the powerful construction of the socialist industry, a decisive element for the defeat for the Nazi-fascism at the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). A question that has been subsequently elaborated and developed by Chairman Mao, in China, mostly with the Great Cultural Proletarian Revolution, expressed in the more correct relations between the base industry, products for mass comsumption and agriculture, as well as the gradual necessary reduction of the differences between the wage levels. In turn, the disregard of the qualitative difference between the simple work and the complex work was one of the mistakes of the anarchist experience in the “self-management” of the factories during the Spanish Civil War.The absolute “equitable” barter between factories of distinct complexities, that is, distinct qualities of work, has driven the anarchist economy to a fast bankruptcy because of this brief and disastrous “practical” experience of the petty-bourgeois socialism. This anarchist economic policy, added up to the unsystematic imposition of collective property of the land, has compromised the development of the Spanish Republic and the Anti-fascist Front led by the communists, and helped to drive the peasantry to Franco’s fascism.

This economic law of socialism, therefore, as provided by Marx, brings implicit the contradiction between the socialist economic base and the bourgeois right in the distribution of its results. Comrade Stalin, aware of this law and this contradiction, tried to solve ( Missing words/phrases. Incomplete paragraph. NT)  or its manifestation in the differences between the industrial and agricultural production, in his work Economic Problems of Socialism in USSR. However, this was not  only an economic problem, capable of having a solution through the continuos raise of the industrial production. This increase was an economic supposition, but not its definite resolution, since such an increase was conditional upon the degree of development of the socialist consciousness of the masses. The question was in the contradiction between the economic structure and the superstructure of the society. Let us see what Marx says:

“But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of the communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby”. (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme).

In other words, Marx points out that the problem of the prevalence of the bourgeois right in socialism is a result of the superstructure backwardness with regard to the economy, that is why a “superior” right to economy will always be a utopy. In turn, the prevalence of the bourgeois right , its resistance to disappear determines the need for the continuation of the class struggle in socialism. It will be with the Chinese Revolution, under the jefatura of  Chairman Mao, that the question will, for the first time, placed by Marx, find its pratical solution and theoretical development. The bourgeois right could not disappear by the simple development of the productive forces, as the revisionists with their rotten “theory of the productive forces” have always preached. If there is a law of the old society still necessary in socialism, as postulated by Marx, it will only lose its validity by the class struggle that under the conditions of the proletariat dictatorship will remain the history motor. The historical experience of the Great Cultural Proletarian Revolution is the demonstration that the bourgeois right in socialism will not disappear in a natural, economic form or spontaneously but only by the conscious, ideological and political action of the Communist Party and the masses. Only thus humankind will reach what was formulated by Marx in 1875 on his masterful oeuvre Critique of the Gotha Programme:

“In the higher phase of communist society, after enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme).

Note:

1) Gotha: a German town where the Unification Congress was held. It became a tradition in Germany to name the congresses and respective programmes by the name of the town where they were held. That is why Bebel’s party was known as the eisenachians since the Working Party had been founded, in 1869, in the town of Eisenach. Likewise, the Marxist Congress in 1891 would, for the same reason, be named as the Erfurt Congress.