Early Statements

B. Early Statements

Engels’s Principles of Communism (October 1847) – which constitutes the blue print for the joint Communist Manifesto – formulates the early Marxian approach towards social reform: The very same measures appearing as part of a program designed to dismantle the private-property system – “[d]emocracy would be quite useless

1 The term “revisionist” has been used more broadly to refer to Engels as “responsible for the evolutionism and accommodation of the Second International” (Levine 1975: xv, 182–3; see

also Elliott 1967: 73–5; Tucker 1972: 406). But as in Chapter 13, Engels will make an appearance in this chapter only insofar as necessary for better comprehension of Marx’s position. Our concern is the welfare dimension specifically; but the main outcome is corroborated from a study of Marx’s position regarding constitutional reform.

445 to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means of carrying through

B. Early Statements

further measures directly attacking private ownership and securing the means of subsistence of the proletariat” (MECW 6: 350) – were otherwise unacceptable: “ . . . [the] democratic socialists . . . in the same way as the Communists desire part of the measures listed,” alluding here essentially to the program to appear shortly in the Communist Manifesto “not, however, as a means of transition to commu- nism” – recall that this program assumes proletarian control of the state apparatus (Chapter 13, p. 407) – “but as measures sufficient to abolish the misery of present society and to cause its evils to disappear” (355). What is said of the “democratic socialists” held true a fortiori of the “bourgeois” or “reactionary” socialists who sought to “preserve present society.” The objection here is not merely that their proposals cannot succeed in improving living conditions within capitalist society, “the evils” being “inseparable from it” and “bound up with it” – for this incapac- ity was equally the case with free trade and unionization which were nonetheless favored as we shall see – but that they “would retain the foundations of present society.” The Communist Manifesto itself reacts in just this way to a variety of “reac- tionary,” “conservative,” “democratic,” or “bourgeois” socialists – Proudhon falls into the latter category – and “hole and corner reformers of every imaginable kind” (MECW 6: 513).

The approach towards Free Trade illustrates a further aspect of Marx’s perspec- tive on social policy. As reported by Engels, Marx maintained in a speech prepared for delivery in September 1847, that the “laws” of “classical” political economy are increasingly approximated insofar as a free-trade regime comes to be adopted: “If you wish to read in the book of the future, open Smith, Say, Ricardo. There you will find described, as clearly as possible, the condition which awaits the working man under the reign of perfect Free Trade” (“Speech of Dr. Marx on Protection, Free Trade and the Working Classes,” in Engels, “The Free Trade Congress at Brussels”;

MECW 6: 289). 2 “Th[e] law, that the lowest level of wages is the natural price of the commodity of labour, will realise itself in the same measure with Ricardo’s supposi- tion that Free Trade will become a reality” (290). There is also reference to Malthus in the further proposition that with Free Trade his “law of population” will – along with the other laws of economics – come into its own, Marx concluding: “Either you must disavow the whole of political economy as it exists at present, or you must allow that under the freedom of trade the whole severity of the laws of political economy will be applied to the working classes.” But precisely because the capitalist system would be given free reign to expand, with these consequences,

he favored Free Trade: “by Free Trade all economical laws . . . will act upon a larger scale, upon a greater extent of territory, upon the territory of the whole earth; and

2 The speech, prepared for the International Congress of Economists in Brussels, was not deliv- ered, but extracts were published by Engels in The Northern Star in October. These extracts

also cover several substantive notions conveyed by Marx in a speech delivered on 9 January 1848 to the Democratic Association of Brussels.

Principles of Social Reform

because from the uniting of all these contradictions into a single group, where they stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emanci- pation of the proletarians.” His “Speech on the Question of Free Trade,” delivered in Brussels on 9 January 1848, contains the assertion that with the “progress of industry” the subsistence basket itself deteriorates – that “as means are constantly found for the maintenance of labor on cheaper and more wretched food, the min- imum of wages is constantly sinking” (MECW 6: 463). And again he concludes that by allowing free reign to capital, the “laws” relating to subsistence wages come fully into their own, “the whole severity of the economic laws . . . fall[ing] upon the workers.” The efficiency advantages obtained were irrelevant to the principle issue: “It is really difficult to understand the presumption of the Free Traders who imag- ine that the more advantageous application of capital will abolish the antagonism between industrial capitalists and wage-workers. On the contrary. The only result will be that the antagonism of these two classes will stand out more clearly.” And though with Free Trade the exploitative system remains in place on terms increas- ingly less favorable to labor, he strongly favored it from a “revolutionary standpoint”: “[G]enerally speaking, the Protective system in these days is conservative, while the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade” (465).

A related consideration emerges from the treatment of unions in Poverty of Phi- losophy (1847). We note incidentally that Marx here applied the Ricardian inverse wage-profit relation to counter Proudhon’s case against strikes that if followed by an increase in wages, they “culminate in a general rise of wages” (MECW 6: 206). The main theme though is the perception of combination as a natural consequence of a developing competitive capitalist system to such an extent that its legalization is forced upon the legislature: “it is the economic system which has forced Parliament to grant this legal authorisation. . . . The more modern industry and competition develop, the more elements there are which call forth and strengthen combination, and as soon as combination becomes an economic fact, daily gaining in solidity, it is bound before long to become a legal fact” (209). England “whose industry has attained the highest degree of development, has the biggest and best organ- ised combinations,” whereas “the article of the [French] Penal Code proves at the most that modern industry and competition were not yet well developed under the

Constituent Assembly and under the Empire. . . . ” (209–10). 3 Indeed, Marx points to the success of British unionization extending far beyond the “passing strike” by “partial combinations,” to trades unions and beyond that even towards a national

3 Marx distanced himself from the “socialists,” including Fourierists and Owenites, on the grounds that they, like the “economists,” though for different reasons, opposed unionization

(MECW 6: 209–10).

447 organization along with the Chartists’ formation of a working-class political party

B. Early Statements

(210–22). What though of the effectiveness of unions with respect to real wages? For Marx the effect would be counter-productive considering substitution against labor; indeed, the encouragement of new technology seems to be represented as a desirable consequence: “If combinations and strikes had no other effect than that of making the efforts of mechanical genius react against them, they would still exercise an immense influence on the development of industry” (207). Marx does go on to emphasize attempts by the early combinations merely to maintain wages in a sort of defensive operation, but it is the political not the wage effects that he saw as the major preoccupation of unions: “If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. . . . In this struggle – a veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character” (210–11). Unions were thus represented by Marx as a necessary feature of capitalist development, rather than

a restraint, reflecting the increasingly bitter class struggle that would end with the dissolution of capitalist organization (212). This perspective is elaborated further in The Communist Manifesto. Here is spelled out the process of increasing “concentration” of labor in masses receiv- ing, with the obliteration of skills, a uniform rate of pay which tends downwards in consequence of improvement in machinery “to the same low level,” though sub- ject increasingly to cyclical instability (MECW 6: 492). Under these conditions – all part-and-parcel of the industrialization process – “the collisions between indi- vidual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes” (492–3). Even a successful effort “to keep up the rate of wages” – i.e., to maintain it – could be “only for a time” (493), since real conditions necessarily deteriorate: “The modern labourer” – unlike the serf or the petty bourgeois of earlier times – “instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. . . . Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society” (495–6).

As for factory legislation, this too is represented in the Communist Manifesto as reflecting the “organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party,” a natural outcome of capitalist development, which “com- pels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers,” who profit from the “divisions among the bourgeoisie itself ” (493). “Thus the ten hours’ bill in England was carried.” From this specific perspective the legislation should have been championed in the same manner as unionization. But the matter is rather more complex, for in two papers of 1850 on the Ten Hours Bill Engels did not take

Principles of Social Reform

this line but condemned the legislation as “reactionary,” on the grounds that such controls, if effective – a major qualification we shall see – threatened to restrain

capitalist development (MECW 10: 271–6; 288–300). 4 And this general principle is patently clear in Marx’s “The Class Struggles in France 1848–50” of 1850, condemn- ing reformist measures proposed by those he classified as “bourgeois socialists” – credit institutions, progressive taxation, limitation of inheritance, nationalization of industry, state support of “association” – who sought thereby to assure “the peaceful achievement” of their objectives, which was to “forcibly stem the growth of capital ” (MECW 10: 126). On the other hand, such “reactionary attempts to hold up bourgeois development” must fail “just as certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats” (135). The inevitable failure reflects in some formulations the uncontrollable force of ongoing capitalist devel- opment, but in the present context Marx intended rather a refusal of the capitalist state to tolerate them. Thus several reformist enactments introduced by the French National Assembly before the outbreaks of 1848–49 were withdrawn or reversed immediately thereafter, as with a so-called “right to work” – an “absurdity” from the bourgeois viewpoint, considering that it implied the undermining of capital- ism, but enacted out of fear of the working class – which was then whittled down to a mere “right to public relief ” (77–8). Progressive taxation Marx represented as a “bourgeois measure which can be carried out within the existing relations of production to a greater or less degree,” a purely intra-bourgeois matter of little consequence to labor (78); but even this was reversed by the “big-bourgeoisie” who “by the legal prohibition of a progressive tax . . . put bourgeois reform on the same level as proletarian revolution,” leaving only the “big bourgeoisie” as the mainstay of their republic.”

A joint Marx-Engels “Address of the Central Authority to the [Communist] League” (March 1850) elaborates further the charge that the French “democratic petty bourgeoisie” had a self-serving reform program: “by means of which the exist- ing society will be made as tolerable and comfortable as possible for them” (MECW

10: 280). Nonetheless, since the workers were in no position to “propose any directly communist measures,” they were advised to cooperate with the “democrats” in the sense, however, of taking the democratic program further (286). They were to “[c]ompel the democrats to interfere in as many spheres as possible of the hitherto existing social order, to disturb its regular course and to . . . concentrate the utmost possible productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc., in the hands of the state; and to “carry to the extreme” the proposals of the democrats, in order to “transform them into direct attacks upon private property.” For example, con- fiscation by the state rather than purchase of railways and factories; progressive rather than proportional taxation, and at rates designed to ruin “big capital”; and measures to assure state bankruptcy rather than mere regulation of state debts.

4 The factory legislation dealt solely with employment of women and children not adult males (and the law was not extended beyond the textile trades till 1867).

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s 449 These recommendations pose a problem. They propose all manner of interven-

tions including income redistribution which, one might suppose, would constrain capitalistic growth and ultimate collapse, on which grounds such interventions had been condemned. The probable solution is that the proposals were designed to stir political dissent but not considered to be in any way realistic.

As for Britain, we find in the joint paper “May to October [1850],” a similar if less dramatic picture of reform measures proposed but not instituted: “each spell of prosperity is a time when Whiggery comes into its own. . . . The ministry brings before Parliament little hole-and-corner reform bills which it knows will

be rejected by the Upper House or which it withdraws itself at the end of the session on the pretext of insufficient time” (MECW 10: 510). Measures that were enacted by Sir Robert Peel during the 1840s were largely designed to strengthen the industrial bourgeoisie at the expense of the financial and landed aristocracy and, by implication, of little interest to labour: “Thus it was with the Catholic emancipation and the police reform, by which he increased the political power of the bourgeoisie; with the bank laws of 1818 and 1844, which strengthened the finance aristocracy; with the tariff reform of 1842 and the free-trade laws of 1846, by which the landed aristocracy was positively sacrificed to the industrial bourgeoisie” (512).

We return to the factory legislation of 1847 which applied to the work-day of female workers and juveniles under eighteen. Noteworthy here is a further joint paper pertaining to “January-February 1850” which remarks that with the busi- ness upturn commencing in spring of 1849 when “factories are overloaded with orders and are working at an accelerated rate . . . every means is being sought to dodge the Ten Hours’ Bill and gain new hours of labour . . . ” (MECW 10: 264), demonstrating the impossibility of achieving in practice any effective progress under capitalist organization beneficial to labor. This is the theme of the two papers by Engels of 1850 – “The Ten Hours’ Question” and “The English Ten Hours’ Bill” – referred to above (pp. 447–8).