The development of Marxism to 1914

The development of Marxism to 1914

The most important development in Marxist thought from the 1860s onwards was the notion that communism might be attained by electoral means, and state power assumed by the working class through a peaceful transition process. This is identified chiefly with German Social Democracy, and in the first instance with its chief creator, FERDINAND LASSALLE (1825–64), whose supporters’ restatement of socialist aims was criticized by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), which rejects that notion that the state can be used as a neutral tool, rather than remaining the chief instrument of capitalist domination. In addition, Marx dismissed the value of moralizing appeals for a more ‘just’ or fairer society based on abstract ethical standards. Lassalle, however, was willing not only to use the state, once universal suffrage had been introduced, to achieve socialist ends, but also even to negotiate with Bismarck to do so. His main successor, and the chief architect of the theory called Revisionism, was Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), who under the influence of Darwinian evolutionism in particular laid great stress on the determinist elements in the materialist conception of history, and the need to await a ripening of revolutionary conditions through the laws of capitalist development. He also believed that socialism could be introduced via existing parliamentary institutions, through democratic rule. These views were supported by EDUARD BERNSTEIN (1850–1932), whose Evolutionary Socialism (1898) stressed the gradualist accomplishment of Social Democratic ends. Bernstein also emphasized the tendency of capitalism to stabilize itself through the growth of large-scale cartels and monopolies, as well as the rise of working- class wages and the growth of the middle classes, all of which indicated that Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis required modification. Rejecting the application of the Hegelian dialectic, he preferred to use a Kantian (see KANT, IMMANUEL) moral basis for socialist argument. In How is Scientific Socialism Possible (1901), he broke from the ideal that communism must result from the necessary development of capitalism, and instead contended that it was an ideal to be strived for. Amongst the opponents of such views, ROSA LUXEMBURG (1871–1919) notably criticized Bernstein’s revisionism, and in Social Reform or Revolution (1899) argued that only a revolutionary transformation could introduce socialism. She was also an important critic of Social Democratic support for the German war effort from 1914–18. Luxemburg also emphasized, with New Liberal writers like J.A.HOBSON, the increasing extension of the capitalist search for markets and raw materials through imperialism. Amongst those who also remained much closer to Marx theoretically were AUGUSTE BEBEL (1840–1913) and WILHELMLIEBKNECHT (1826–1900), whose son Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) was one of the founders of the German Communist Party, and was killed during the abortive revolution that followed the war’s end in 1918. Revisionist ideals, though officially rejected at the 1903 party congress, were on the whole extremely influential in the German labour movement.

Other European countries had smaller Marxist movements than Germany, which tended to develop according to their national momentums following the collapse of the First International. In France, following the failure of the Commune, the Parti Ouvrier emerged in 1875–6, led by JULES GUESDE (1845–1922), though tension remained constant between Marxists and both the anarchists and trade unionists. In Britain, the main leader was the prominent anti-imperialist HENRY MYERS HYNDMAN (1842–

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Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 448

1921), who helped to found the Social Democratic Federation in 1881, and whose popular works include England for All (1881). Another quasi-Marxist group was the Socialist League led by the poet WILLIAM MORRIS (1834–96). Marxism was however less influential on the British labour movement than the Fabian Socialism of SIDNEY WEBB and BEATRICE WEBB, Annie Besant, G.B.Shaw and others, whose definitive viewpoint was outlined in Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889).

In both Italy and Russia Marxist ideas were actively combated by anarchists, and Bakunin’s followers remained influential through his International Social Democratic Alliance, founded in 1868. Though the Russian Revolution lies outside the scope of this volume, it should be noted that the chief contribution of the Russian Marxist leader, and the most important Marxist revolutionary theorist of the early twentieth century, VLADIMIR ILLICH LENIN (1870–1924), was his theory of the vanguard party of full- time, trained professional revolutionaries, an account of whose mission is outlined in What is to be Done ? (1902) and The State and Revolution (1917). This represented to some degree a reversion to the conspiratorial Blanquism of the Communist League in the period before 1848. It was combated by the other leading tendency in Russian Social Democracy, Menshevism, which split from Lenin’s Bolshevik faction in 1903, insisting both that the socialists should create a more open, less conspiratorial party, and that revolution would necessarily ensure only after a lengthy stage of industrialization had created a large-scale proletariat of the type described by Marx in the Manifesto. Lenin also completed the first major study of The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), extended the views of Hobson, Hilferding and others on the extension of capitalism overseas in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), and went on, of course, to emerge as the leader of the new Soviet Union after the success of the 1917 revolution. Other Russian Marxist thinkers of note include Georgii Plekhanov (1856–1918), who was the first to contend that a Russian proletariat could become the revolutionary class needed to overthrow the existing system.