Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s

Our next port of call is Marx’s “Inaugural Address to the Working Men’s Inter- national Association” of September 1864. Here we find mixed evidence regarding working-class welfare. As for Britain, Marx insists “that the misery of the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864” despite “unrivalled” development of industry and commerce (MECW 20: 5). So too in the “industrious and progres- sive countries of the Continent . . . as in England”, only “a minority of the working classes got their real wages somewhat advanced . . . [while] [e]verywhere the great mass of the working classes was sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate, at least, that those above them were rising in the social scale” (9). And this is the forecast: “every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point [sic] social antagonisms.” Also conspicuous is the political reaction on the Continent immediately after 1848, carried over to

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Britain, namely the withdrawal of promised concessions by property owners, con- tributing to the depression of British working-class morale, already undermined by mass emigration “leaving an irreparable void in the ranks of the British pro- letariat,” and treachery by better-paid categories of labour “turned into ‘political blacks’” (10). This evaluation is reinforced the following year by the declaration that “the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and . . . sink the average standard of wages . . . more or less to its minimum limit,” a trend that union activity could not prevent: “they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction” (“Value, Price and Profits,” 1865; MECW 20: 148), repeating an earlier theme that played down wage effects (above, p. 447).

Despite this evaluation of the course of real wages, Marx at the same time – in his Inaugural Address in September 1864 – recognized the “immense physical, moral and intellectual benefits” to labor of factory legislation: “After a thirty years’ struggle, fought with most admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving

a momentaneous split between the landlords and money-lords, succeeded in car- rying the Ten Hours’ Bill. The immense physical, moral, and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the

inspectors of factories, are now acknowledged on all sides” (MECW 20: 10). 5 Even most continental governments had to adopt the factory legislation “in more or less modified forms,” and the English Parliament itself was “every year compelled to enlarge its sphere of action.” Taking a broader view, “the marvellous success of this working men’s measure” refuted middle-class predictions made “[t]hrough their most notorious organs of science, such as Dr. Ure, Professor Senior . . . that any legal restriction of the hours of labour must sound the death knell of British

industry . . . ” (10–11). 6 Yet more significant were the profound implications of the legislation for “the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the work- ing class” (11). It was in fact “the first time that in broad daylight the political

5 In a letter to Engels dated early 1860, Marx had qualified this “progress”: “It appears from the ‘Factory Inspectors’ Reports’ (of ‘1855’-‘1859 first six months’) that, since 1850, industry

in England has made miraculous progress. The state of health of the workers (adults) has improved since your Conditions of the Working-Class . . . whereas that of the children (mortal- ity) has deteriorated” (MECW 41: 5). 6 On Senior’s “last-hour” position and Marx’s objections, see Bowley 1937: 256; Johnson 1969; West 1983.

Pullen (1989) shows that Senior’s case against a reduction in hours assumed the daily wage to remain unchanged, i.e., the real wage to increase, though he failed to spell this out in 1837. Marx too treated the number of hours worked apart from the hourly wage rate as if they are two separate issues. And this procedure is desirable, since the legislation made no provision for rates of pay and it cannot be ascertained a priori what effect reduced hours will have on pay. As Jevons pointed out: “I suppose that no Union ever yet proposed a reduction of the hours of labour without wanting the same wages [per hour] as before; thus really attempting somewhat by a sidewind to raise the rate per hour. But the rate of wages and the length of

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s 451 economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working

class.” We are here witness to a sea-change in the evaluation of the effectiveness of social- reform measures within capitalist organization, since in 1850 Marx and Engels had denied that industrialists would tolerate factory legislation in practice and empha- sised the devices designed to by-pass the 1847 regulations. But with appropriate control by the State these devices could, it is now accepted, be prevented: “Since you wrote your book about England [1844], a second Children’s Employment Commis- sion Report [1863] has at long last appeared. It shows that all those horrors that were banished from certain spheres of industry by the Factory Acts, have proliferated with redoubled vigour wherever there is no control !” (Marx to Engels, 15 August 1863; MECW 41: 490).

Furthermore, whereas in his two papers of 1850 on the issue Engels had insisted that the effective application of the Ten Hours’ Act would hold back industrial growth, Marx’s remark in 1864 on Ure and Senior implies that British industry had not been restrained. Striking too is the representation of the 1847 legislation as a proletarian victory – again in contrast to Engels’s earlier interpretation – and

a step from market towards control organization. Finally, the “immense physical and moral benefits,” which in 1850 had been recognized even by Engels in the case of juveniles and female factory workers are now extended it seems quite generally.

There were though limits to what could be achieved. For example, in The Eighteenth Brumaire (1852) Marx had written somewhat disparagingly of the French proletariat which partly “throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers’ associations [co-operatives], hence into a movement in which it renounces the revolutionising of the old world by means of the latter’s own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society’s back, in private fashion, within its limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck” (MECW 11: 110–11). The Inaugural Address of September 1864 is only

a little more positive regarding co-operatives. For while Marx here recognized the expansion of the British cooperative movement 1848–64 and thought it “excel- lent in principle, and . . . useful in practice,” he reiterates the theme of 1852, that because “kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen,” it was unable “to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, [or] even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries” (MECW

20: 11–12). To have effects of this order “co-operative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and consequently, to be fostered by national means”; and this would never be countenanced by “the lords of land and the lords of capital [who] will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economical monopolies” (12). That we end up with a denial of prospects for truly radical reform – extending, that is, to communal ownership – is scarcely surprising. We shall return to this issue presently (below, p. 457).

As will be recalled from Chapter 3, there is much evidence of Marx’s commitment

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Gladstone’s position in his budget speech of 16 April 1863 that real wages had risen since 1843, basing his objection on evidence of a rise in general prices 1860–62 of some 20 percent compared with 1851–53 and a further “progressive rise” in wage- goods prices over the following three years 1863–65 (MECW 35: 646). He also cited Gladstone’s somewhat ambiguous budget speech of 7 April 1864, and Fawcett’s view that “the rich grow rapidly richer, whilst there is no perceptible advance in the com- fort enjoyed by the industrial classes,” money-wage increases being largely balanced by rising wage-goods prices (Fawcett 1865: 67–82). By contrast, and in line with the September 1864 address, he represents the British Factory Acts in the Preface to the first German edition of Capital as having assured a meaningful improve- ment in labor’s welfare (unlike the German situation). Here too we find a paean of praise for the quest to “get at the truth” regarding social conditions, specifically in the British case a quest involving government, parliament and inspectorate. Underlying the contrast were the “natural laws of capitalist production” entail- ing “tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results,” the more advanced industrially showing the less advanced “the image of its own future” (MECW 35: 9). For the social legislation was imposed upon the ruling classes by the ever-growing power of organized labor: “In England the progress of social dis- integration is palpable. . . . Apart from higher motives” – for these are not denied – “their own most important interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free devel- opment of the working class” (9–10). And the same course “must re-act on the Continent [where] it will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to

the degree of development of the working class itself.” 7 This is the reason he had devoted so much space to English factory legislation, the “unmistakable advance” in Britain extended, in prospect, to the Continent and the United States (10–11).

All this is reinforced in discussion of “The Struggle for the Normal Working Day” in the body of Capital. 8 We note first various considerations introduced to

7 As for the impact of British experience on Continental developments, Marx failed to specify how such linkage would operate, and steps back from any implication that a country can,

learning from another’s experience, leapfrog the “normal” obstacles that had to be overcome: “One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement – and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of modern society – it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development” (MECW 35: 10). It could, however, he did allow, “shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.” 8 It is a history, to begin with, of concessions by capital “conquered by the work people” that were merely nominal: “Parliament passed 5 Labour Laws between 1802 and 1833, but was shrewed enough not to vote a penny for their carrying out, for the requisite officials, &c.” (MECW 35: 283). The 1833 Factory Act fixed a “normal working day for modern industry” including cotton, wool, flax, and silk factories, but because of continued efforts by factory owners to avoid its application it only came fully into effect in 1836 (285). This law remained in effect until June 1844 when females over 18 were included together with “young persons” with a limit of 12 hours and night work forbidden and when the working day of children under

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s 453 account for intervention by the state, albeit “the repository of power of the ruling

and exploiting bourgeois class,” as West put it (1983: 277). For under competitive capitalism each employer, who follows the dictum “Apr`es moi le d´eluge,” tends to force the limits of his workers: “Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society. . . . Free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist” (MECW 35: 275–6). 9 An instance of what is in effect a measure to overcome free riding is provided by the fact that some manufacturers “who had managed their factories in conformity with the Act of 1833, overwhelmed Parliament with memorials on the immoral competition of their false brethren whom greater impudence, or more fortunate local circumstances, enabled to break the law” (286). There is also the matter of “public morals, of bringing up an orderly population . . . ” referred to in Horner’s reports (283n), that might be comfortably incorporated into this “public good” perspective. 10

But this is far from the whole story, for the timing of the intervention must

be accounted for. A reference to “concessions conquered by the work people” in discussing the period 1802–33 (283) sets the stage for a general emphasis on working-class pressure as the main driving force, especially from the late 1830s. This emerges in a discussion of the “origin” of the 1844 legislation which went part way in meeting labor’s demands for a Ten Hours’ Bill: “The factory hands, especially since 1838, had made the Ten-Hours’ Bill their economic, as they had made the Charter their political, election-cry. . . . [H]owever much the individual

to control directly and officially the labour of adults” (287). Of singular importance is the consequence that the working day of adult males in the industrial sector came in effect to

be regulated “since in most processes of production the co-operation of the children, young persons, and women is indispensable” (288). Accordingly, from 1844 through 1847 “the 12 hours’ working day became general and uniform in all branches of industry under the Factory Act.” Furthermore, the legislature also sought to assure the end of abuses – various forms of the “relay system” – by which employers had avoided the regulations and which the Factory Inspectorate had soundly condemned from the outset.

See the later remark by Jevons that though the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878 still covered only children, young persons, and women “[i]ndirectly . . . a large number of workmen fell practically under restriction . . . ” (Jevons 1910 [1882]: 66). 9 Marx cites the Times (5 November 1861): “But though the health of a population is so important

a fact of the national capital, we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not been the most forward to guard and cherich this treasure. . . . The consideration of the health of the operatives was forced upon the mill-owners” (MECW 35: 275). 10 Marx cites Horner’s “Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st December 1841,” p. 30: “Without entering into the question of health no one will hesitate, I think, to admit that, in a moral point of view, so entire an absorption of the time of the working classes, without intermission, from the early age of 13, and in trades not subject to restriction, much younger, must be extremely prejudicial, and is an evil greatly to be deplored . . . ” (MECW 35: 283n). Accordingly, the Report concluded, “[f]or the sake . . . of public morals, of bringing up an orderly population, and of giving the great body of the people a reasonable enjoyment of life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some portion of every working day should be reserved for rest and

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manufacturer might give the rein to his old lust for gain, the spokesmen and political leaders of the manufacturing class ordered a change of front and of speech towards the workpeople” (286). These changes, at least in formal attitude, on the part of the industrialists to some extent reflected a temporary need for labor’s support in “the contest for the repeal of the Corn Laws,” enducing them to promise “not only

a double-sized loaf of bread, but the enactment of the Ten Hours’ Bill in the Free- trade millennium.” For their part, “[t]hreatened in their holiest interest, the rent of land, the Tories thundered with philanthropic indignation against the ‘nefarious practices’ [Horner’s term] of their foes,” referring to attempts by firms to by-pass existing restrictions. Nonetheless, taking center stage is the necessitarian character of the legislative interventions – “these minutiae, which, with military uniformity, regulate by stroke of the clock the times, limits, pauses of the work” – for they “developed gradually out of circumstances as natural laws of the modern mode of production. Their formulation, official recognition, and proclamation by the State, were the result of a long struggle of classes” (287–8; emphasis added). We are apparently to attribute the reforms largely to the growth of proletarian power, itself a necessary consequence of modern industrial development.

The same story underlies the Ten Hours’ Bill of 1847 itself – though it still did not formally cover adult males. For in the same years as repeal of the Corn Laws and of the duties on cotton and other raw material (1846–47) “the Chartist movement and the 10 hours’ agitation reached their highest point ” (288; emphasis added). Supported by revengeful Tories, and in the face of “the fanatical opposition of the army of perjured Free-traders, with Bright and Cobden at their head” – who had reneged on their earlier promises – “the Ten Hours’ Bill, struggled for so long, went through Parliament.”

The theme of legislative intervention to regulate the workday as necessitated by the very nature of industrial development, is elaborated in a convenient overview of British experience: “The history of the regulation of the working day . . . prove[s] conclusively that the isolated labourer, the labourer as ‘free’ vendor of his labour power, when capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance. The creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capital- ist class and the working class. As the contest takes place in the arena of mod- ern industry, it first breaks out in the home of that industry – England” (303; emphasis added). Also to be found is the implicit notion – a wholly orthodox position – that the factory legislation actually reinforced the competitive char- acter of the labor contract, since in the absence of social control the individ- ual worker is far from a “free” agent on a par with his employer: “In the mar- ket he stood as owner of the commodity ‘labour power’ face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour power proved . . . that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no ‘free agent,’ that the time for which he is free to sell his labour power is the time for which he is forced to sell

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s 455 it . . . ” (306). 11 In defense, “the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a

class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death” (emphasis added).

On Marx’s account the struggle was not a smooth one. The efforts of industrialists to circumvent the regulations which came into force in May 1848 (such as the discharge of women and young people and restoring night work for adult males who were not formally covered), constituted a retrogression ascribed at home to “the fiasco of the Chartist party” which “had shaken the confidence of the English working class in its own strength;” and abroad to “the June insurrection in Paris and its bloody suppression” which “united, in England as on the Continent, all fractions of the ruling classes . . . under the common cry for the salvation of Property, Religion, the Family and Society” (290). Under these conditions, “[t]he manufacturers had no need any longer to restrain themselves. They broke out in open revolt not only against the Ten Hours’ Act, but against the whole of the legislation that since 1833 had aimed at restricting in some measure the ‘free’ exploitation of labour power.”

It was, Marx concluded, “a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature, carried on for two years with a cynical recklessness. . . . ” 12 All the more striking then was the legal battle fought by the factory inspectorate on moral grounds. Now initially this was to little avail since the county magistrate courts before whom capitalists were summoned for infringement of the labor laws were under the industrialists’ control

(293–4). 13 Worse still, “one of the four highest Courts of Justice in England, the Court of Exchequer . . . in a case brought before it on February 8th, 1850, decided that the manufacturers were certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that this Act itself contained certain words that rendered it meaningless” (296). “By this decision” – Marx here cites Engels’s “The English Ten Hours’ Bill” (1850; MECW 10: 297) – “the Ten Hours’ Act was abolished.” But this is far from the end of the story, for this reaction was very short-lived. We recall first that in their joint contribution of early 1850 and in the two papers by Engels of that year,

11 Marx cites here Engels, “The English Ten Hours’ Bill,” MECW 10: 288; and also the Reports of the Factory Inspectors regarding “the fallacy of the assertion so often advanced, that operatives

need no protection, but may be considered as free agents in the disposal of the only property which they possess – the labour of their hands and the sweat of their brows” (MECW 35: 306n) 12 The term “pro-slavery rebellion” is also used by Marx to describe the likely capitalist response once proletarian power had been achieved (see, for example, the “First Draft of The Civil War in France” (MECW 22: 491). 13 An interesting passage describes the reneging by employers of their earlier promises: “They paid 10 hours’ wages for 12 to 15 hours’ lordship over labour power. This was the gist of the matter, this the masters’ interpretation of the 10 hours’ law!” (MECW 35: 296). Marx added that “[t]hese were the same unctuous Free-traders, who for full 10 years, during the anti-Corn Law agitation, had preached to the operatives . . . that with free importation of corn, and with the means possessed by English industry, 10 hours’ labour would be quite enough to enrich the capitalists.”

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the efforts “to dodge” the regulations of 1847 were seen as a successful reaction by employers especially upon the upturn of activity beginning in 1849 (above, p. 449). What we now have in Capital is Marx’s insistence upon the almost immediate failure of that reaction, a failure due to working-class counter-threats: “But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed at once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a passive . . . resistance. They now protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening meetings. The pretended Ten Hours’ Act was thus simple humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The Factory Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension” (MECW 35: 296). Even some industrialists complained of the disparity of application, that “the manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, the manufacturer in country districts could not find the people necessary for the relay system, still less for the shifting of hands from one factory to another, &c.,” while – Marx adds – a uniform rate of exploitation characterized (mature) capitalism: “the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labour power by all capitalists” (297). The outcome was the Factory Act of August 1850, whereby “an end was put to the relay system once for all.” Remaining abuses were met by legislation of 1853 so that “[h]enceforth with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850 regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of industry [textiles] that came under it” (299). All in all, “the gradually surging revolt of the working class compelled Parliament to shorten compulsorily the hours of labour, and to begin by imposing a normal working day on factories proper . . . ” (412). 14

What stands out in all this is the success of working-class pressure, and this despite the absence of representation in Parliament. And that Marx intended success in the very real sense of improvement to working-class welfare is clear from the following extraordinary passage relating to the effect of the 1850 Act as modified by that of 1853 – extraordinary were it not that it merely reiterates what was already insisted upon in 1864: “. . . the principle had triumphed with its victory in those great branches of industry which form the most characteristic creation of the modern mode of production. Their wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand in hand with the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers, struck the most purblind. The masters from whom the legal limitation and regulation had been wrung step by step after a civil war of half a century, themselves referred ostenta- tiously to the contrast with the branches of exploitation still ‘free’” (300; emphasis added). Again one notes that the most impressive advances achieved by labor in terms of its “physical and moral regeneration,” occurred in the most advanced industries. Marx goes on to allude to further progress since 1860: “It will be easily

14 Marx adds that “so soon consequently as an increased production of surplus value by the prolongation of the working day was once for all put a stop to, from that moment capital

threw itself with all its might into the production of relative surplus value, by hastening on the further improvement of machinery” (MECW 35: 412–13). See on this matter Chapter 14, p. 429.

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s 457 understood that after the factory magnates had resigned themselves and become rec-

onciled to the inevitable, the power of resistance of capital gradually weakened, whilst at the same time the power of attack of the working class grew with the number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately interested in the question. Hence the comparatively rapid advance since 1860” (emphasis added). Extensions of the Act in 1863 and further proposals to cover all the important branches of industry – except for agriculture, mining, and transportation – illustrate that advance (302).

That the “factory magnates” should have become thus “reconciled to the inevitable” presumably reflects fear of an increasing class-conscious proletariat. But perhaps Marx himself had written prematurely since he adds a note to the second edition (1873) reading: “Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a reaction has set in” (302n), though it is difficult to imagine that by this he came to withdraw the remarkable proposition that effective welfare legislation accompanied the development of modern industry, indeed was its necessary consequence. Interesting indeed is the notion that the Owenite proposals once disparaged as “utopian” had become normal features of the capitalist system: “Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working day in theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours’ day into his factory at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were his ‘Combination of children’s education with productive labour’ and the Co-operative Societies of working men, first called into being by him. To-day the first Utopia is a Factory Act, the second figures as an official phrase in all Factory Acts, the third is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug” (304n).

The somewhat disparaging implication regarding cooperatives just cited is in line with earlier expressions of skepticism (see above, p. 451). But in “Instructions” he drew up in August 1866 for the delegates of the Provisional General Council of the International in preparation for the Geneva meetings in September Marx offered

a more positive, if still cautious, opinion: (a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of

the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers. (b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves (MECW 20: 190).

Marx adds two specific recommendations of high practical significance. First, that workers “embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The

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latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork. . . . ” Second: “In order to prevent co-operative societies from degen- erating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (soci´et´es par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.” 15

At this time too we find J. G. Eccarius, Marx’s echo on the General Council of the International (Berlin 1963: 231; McLellan 1973: 369, 381), opining in his newspaper series of 1866–67 – of which Marx approved (Marx to Engels 27 June 1867; MECW

42: 394; see also Bernstein 1961 [1899] 110; Evans 1989: 292) – that cooperative associations were indeed significant as a transitional form to socialist production. (Eccarius incidentally ignored Mill’s own arguments favoring cooperation; see Evans 1989: 293.) A formulation of this evaluation appearing in Capital 3 (MECW

37: 438). provides a splendid summary of Marxian “evolutionism” elaborated in our Chapter 13 (above, pp. 406–7). We return to the “Instructions” of August 1866. This same document throws light on Marx’s position regarding unions. The emphasis is partly on their role in countering capitalists’ bargaining advantage by restricting competition between individual laborers: “It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades’ Unions throughout all countries” (MECW 20: 191). More significant is the role of unions as a training ground: “On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades’ Unions were forming centres of organisa- tion of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades’ Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for supersed- ing the very system of wages labour and capital rule.” And there was also evidence of the unions’ growing awareness of “their great historical mission,” including “their participation, in England, in the recent political movement,” referring to their active support of electoral reform. As for the immediate future Marx cautioned against exclusivity: “Considering themselves and acting as the champions and rep- resentatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large that their efforts, far from

15 Marx’s caution in practice is reflected too in his reaction to the draft scheme of the Gotha Programme of 1875 according to which “The German workers’ party, in order to pave the way

for the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers’ co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the working people. The producers’ co- operative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organisation of the total labour will arise from them” (cited, MECW 24: 93). On this Marx warned that cooperative societies “are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not prot´eg´es either of the governments or of the bourgeois” (94).

C. Marx’s “Revisionism”: The 1860s and 1870s 459 being narrow and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions”

(192). Eduard Bernstein, who emphasized Marx’s cautious perspective regarding coop- eratives, found Marxist practice to be “predominantly political, and . . . directed towards the conquest of political power and attributes, and gives importance almost solely to the trade union movement, as a direct form of the class struggle of the workers” (Bernstein 1961 [1899]: 109). There may be some undue underplaying here of Marx’s enthusiasm for cooperatives; but the particular emphasis on unions and the political dimension seems to be justified. 16

In his “Political Indifferentism” (1873) Marx refers to his refutation in Poverty of Philosophy (1847) of Proudhon’s “sophisms against the working-class movement” (MECW 23: 395), but reformulates his position in the light of Proudhon’s anarchical De la capacit´e politique des classes ouvri`eres (1868). The logic of the case attributed to Proudhon against all forms of compromise with the State, extends beyond working- class political activity to unionization, strikes, legal limitation of the working-day, restrictions of female and child factory labor and state-financed primary education (392–3). 17

Proudhon’s position that a weak French law of 1864 authorizing combinations was, in his own terms, “highly anti-juridical, anti-economic and contrary to any society and order” or “contrary to the economic Right of free competition,” Marx rejected, as was by now his wont, on grounds of the “necessity” of such activity in

a competitive bourgeois state, such freedom of combination being on the books in England for decades: “If the master had been a little less chauvin, he might have asked himself how it happened that forty years ago a law, thus contrary to the eco- nomic rights of free competition, was promulgated in England, and that as industry develops, and alongside it free competition, this law – so contrary to any society and order – imposes itself as a necessity even to bourgeois states themselves” (396).

The document of 1873 also complains, as in 1847 (above, p. 446), of Proud- hon’s neglect of Ricardian theory when he maintained in 1868 that “[w]age rates determine the price of commodities.” It is unlikely that Marx intended to assert that Britain’s relatively high wages actually reflected successful union activity, since (as we have seen) he consistently played down real-wage effects, pointing rather to educational and organizational training. The point at hand may then be: even

16 The significance of the latter is incidentally confirmed in the apparent approval of the evaluation by the Factory Inspectorate whereby by making the workers “masters of their own time,” the

Factory Acts “have given them a moral energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power” (Reports for 31 October 1859, cited MECW 35: 307n). 17 Marx nonetheless distinguished between Proudhon and his disciples, “the master” himself energetically opposing economic activities such as combinations and strikes, but in practice encouraging the working-class political movement (MECW 23: 395).

Principles of Social Reform

if unions had positive wage effects they would not damage Britain’s international competitiveness. 18

For all his criticisms of Proudhon, there is some evidence from this period that Marx was losing confidence in the British unions, representing them as “an aristocratic minority” – this brings to mind J. S. Mill (see Hollander 1985: 753, 897–907) – and looking rather to the International Working Men’s Association. This emerges in an address at the London meetings of the International held on 20 September 1871 opining that the British unions would not enter into a federation as proposed at the Basle Congress in 1869: “Marx . . . thought at that time – the thing possible – now he is persuaded that the trades unions will not accept this federation – The trades unions, he says, are an aristocratic minority. . . . [They] will remain a minority – they have no power over the mass of proletarians – whereas the International . . . is the only society to inspire complete confidence in the workers” (MECW 22: 614). There is too an interview accorded The World on 3 July 1871, which downplays “every known workmen’s organization . . . ,” again putting faith in the International: “The working classes remain poor amid the increase of wealth, wretched amid the increase of luxury. Their material privation dwarfs their moral as well as their physical stature. They cannot rely on others for a remedy. . . . They must revise the relations between themselves and the capitalists and landlords, and that means they must transform society. . . . To establish a perfect solidarity between these organizations” – Marx includes in addition to workmen’s organizations, “land and labor leagues, trade and friendly societies, co-operative stores and co- operative production” – “is the business of the International Association” (MECW

22: 602–3; emphasis added). Clearly then, there were limits to what could be achieved by union activity within capitalist arrangement by way of material benefit. Transformation of society was still the order of day and cooperation between national proletariats would be an essential feature in its achievement. Yet, none of this can efface what is described in Capital as “the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers” in con- sequence of social legislation by the bourgeois state (above, p. 456), a “revisionist” perspective contrasting sharply with the pessimism of 1850 by conveying the mes- sage that reaction had failed. Nor does Marx suddenly revert in the 1871 reports to Proudhonist nihilism regarding working-class activity within the bourgeois state. It is noteworthy, for example, that he finds even local strike activity to be rendered more effective by international cooperation: “Formerly, when a strike took place in one country, it was defeated by the importation of workmen from another. The International has nearly stopped all that” (The World, 18 July 1871; MECW

18 Ricardo’s inverse wage-profit relation provided J. S. Mill with a reply to critics of union activity engendered by the legislation of 1867 (see Hollander 1985: 917–19).

461 We note finally an indication of prospects for welfare reform in Marx’s late

D. Summary and Conclusion

“Preamble to the Programme of the French Workers’ Party” of May 1880. This document champions universal suffrage as the means to achieve the ultimate pro- letarian objective, namely collective ownership of the means of production; but Marx outlines as a “minimum programme” for the Party a series of reform demands within going capitalist arrangement potentially achievable via the ballot box: factory regulations including Monday holidays, restrictions of hours for adults and juve- niles, abolition of child labour, minimum wages, non-discriminatory pay between the sexes, state finance of scientific and technological education, exclusive worker control of their mutual societies, and employer contributions to insurance (MECW