[Marxism] Marx and Engels sectarian views on Permanent Revolution, a few penny operas

[Anthony Boynton <northbogota@xxxxxxxxx>]

My (first) few cents on the permanent revolution:

Sorry if I?m chiming in late on this discussion.

Hopefully discussions on this list can increase,
rather than decrease, the real level of understanding
among Marxists about little things like social
revolutions.

The ?Theory of Permanent Revolution? is one thorny
subject where the smoke and blood from old factional
battles was so thick that it was hard for anyone to
get through. Some of it is still hanging around in the
current discussion.

The idea of permanent revolution was always
contrversial among socialists and communists.

It was another example of the confrontational
sectarian politics of Marx and Engels. Those two guys
could not say enough bad things about bourgeois and
petty bourgeois democrats.

The use of the two words ? permanent and revolution -
together first became important (as far as I know)  as
a slogan for struggle proposed by Karl Marx in 1850 ?
after the defeat of the revolutions of 1848 all over
Europe. Later, Trotsky revived the slogan.

Here is the conclusion to Marx and Engel?s ?Address of
the Central Committee to the Communist League?
London, March 1850

?Although the German workers cannot come to power and
achieve the realization of their class interests
without passing through a protracted revolutionary
development, this time they can at least be certain
that the first act of the approaching revolutionary
drama will coincide with the direct victory of their
own class in France and will thereby be accelerated.
But they themselves must 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, 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.
Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.?

Anyone interested in the issue of permanent
revolution, should go back and read the entire address
by Marx ? it is permeated with a deep conviction that
the German bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie would
betray the bourgeois revolution, and that they would
especially betray the working class.

For example,

?We told you already in 1848, brothers, that the
German liberal bourgeoisie would soon come to power
and would immediately turn its newly won power against
the workers. You have seen how this forecast came
true. It was indeed the bourgeoisie which took
possession of the state authority in the wake of the
March movement of 1848 and used this power to drive
the workers, its allies in the struggle, back into
their former oppressed position. Although the
bourgeoisie could accomplish this only by entering
into an alliance with the feudal party, which had been
defeated in March, and eventually even had to
surrender power once more to this feudal absolutist
party, it has nevertheless secured favourable
conditions for itself. In view of the government's
financial difficulties, these conditions would ensure
that power would in the long run fall into its hands
again and that all its interests would be secured, if
it were possible for the revolutionary movement to
assume from now on a so-called peaceful course of
development.?

Or,

?The treacherous role that the German liberal
bourgeoisie played against the people in 1848 will be
assumed in the coming revolution by the democratic
petty bourgeoisie, which now occupies the same
position in the opposition as the liberal bourgeoisie
did before 1848. This democratic party, which is far
more dangerous for the workers than were the liberals
earlier, is composed of three elements: 1) The most
progressive elements of the big bourgeoisie, who
pursue the goal of the immediate and complete
overthrow of feudalism and absolutism. Tis fraction is
represented by the former Berlin Vereinbarer, the tax
resisters; 2) The constitutional-democratic petty
bourgeois, whose main aim during the previous movement
was the formation of a more or less democratic federal
state; this is what their representative, the Left in
the Frankfurt Assembly and later the Stuttgart
parliament, worked for, as they themselves did in the
Reich Constitution Campaign; 3) The republican petty
bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic
similar to that in Switzerland and who now call
themselves 'red' and 'social-democratic' because they
cherish the pious wish to abolish the pressure exerted
by big capital on small capital, by the big
bourgeoisie on the pretty bourgeoisie. The
representatives of this fraction were the members of
the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders
of the democratic associations and the editors of the
democratic newspapers.

?After their defeat all these fractions claim to be
'republicans' or 'reds', just as at the present time
members of the republican petty bourgeoisie in France
call themselves 'socialists'. Where, as in Wurtemberg,
Bavaria, etc., they still find a chance to pursue
their ends by constitutional means, they seize the
opportunity to retain their old phrases and prove by
their actions that they have not changed in the least.
Furthermore, it goes without saying that the changed
name of this party does not alter in the least its
relationship to the workers but merely proves that it
is now obliged to form a front against the
bourgeoisie, which has united with absolutism, and to
seek the support of the proletariat.

?The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is
very powerful. It not only embraces the great majority
of the urban middle class, the small industrial
merchants and master craftsmen; it also includes among
its followers the peasants and rural proletariat in so
far as the latter has not yet found support among the
independent proletariat of the towns.

?The relationship of the revolutionary workers' party
to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it
cooperates with them against the party which they aim
to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to
secure their own position.

These ideas, expressed so forcefully after the defeat
of the German revolution of 1848, had developed before
the revolution, and were central to the preparation of
the Communists for the revolution. Here is what Marx
wrote in 1848, in his article ?The Bourgeoisie and the
Counter-revolution?,

"The German bourgeoisie has developed so slothfully,
cravenly and slowly that at the moment when it
menacingly faced feudalism and absolutism it saw
itself menacingly faced by the proletariat and all
factions of the burgers whose interests and ideas were
akin to those of the proletariat. And it saw
inimically arrayed not only a class behind it but all
Europe before it. The Prussian bourgeoisie was not, as
the French of 1789 had been, the class which
represented the whole of modern society vis-a-vis the
representatives of the old society, the monarchy and
the nobility. It had sunk to the level of a kind of
social estate, as distinctly opposed to the crown as
to the people, eager to be in the opposition to both,
irresolute against each of its opponents , taken
severally, because it always saw both of them before
or behind it; inclined to betray the people and
compromise with the crowned representative of the old
society because it itself already belonged to the old
society; ". (K. Marx, The Bourgeoisie and the
Counter-revolution, in MESW, vol. 1, p. 140-1.)
http://www.trotsky.net/trotsky_year/permanent_revolution.html

Similarly Engels wrote,

?The proletarian, or really revolutionary party,
succeeded only very gradually in withdrawing the mass
of the working people from the influence of the
democrats whose tail they formed in the beginning of
the revolution. But in due time the indecision
weakness and cowardice of the democratic leaders did
the rest, and it may now be said to be one of the
principal results of the last years' convulsions, that
wherever the working class is concentrated in anything
like considerable masses, they are entirely freed from
that democratic influence which led them into an
endless series of blunders and misfortunes during 1848
and 1849." (F. Engels, Revolution and
Counter-revolution in Germany, MESW,  vol. 1, p. 332.)
http://www.trotsky.net/trotsky_year/permanent_revolution.html

Most Marxists today would never use such strong
langauge against any petty bourgeois political
current, and not against bourgeois political currents
in oppressed countries, either.

Lenin?s ideas


?The bourgeoisie in the mass" he wrote in 1905, "will
inevitably turn towards the counter-revolution, and
against the people as soon as its narrow, selfish
interests are met, as soon as it 'recoils' from
consistent democracy (and it is already recoiling from
it!). (Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 98.)

Marx, Engels, and Lenin were not simple sectarian
idiots. They learned these lessons from participation
in political struggles, and from studying the
political struggles which had occurred recently in
their countries, and in other countries.

They had the notion that they could learn lessons from
other struggles which could be applied to their own
countries. In particular they looked to the great
French revolution as the best example of social
revolution.

What they observed was that the French revlution had
developed in a process - in stages ? where its initial
aristocratic, clerical and bourgeois leadership
mobilized the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie,
workers, and lumpen against the monarchy, but then
backed away from the struggle when these lower layers
of society began to press their own interests. The
revolution entered into a series of crisis where it
could only advance by changing its old leadership ? in
terms of individuals, but also in terms of leading
social layers ? for newer and more radical leaders.

The process in France exhausted the revolution because
the social layers with no self interest in preserving
the old fabric of society were too small and narrow.
As the revolution became more radical, it?s social
base became smaller and smaller. (Napolean, and the
Napoleanic wars, were the results. But more on that
later.)

Similar processes have occurred every time social
conflicts have become intense in every country
everywhere at all times. This is why the idea of
permanent revlution is a powerful historical
observation with profound implications for the
political practice of revlutionaries.

A few more cents later, Anthony


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