The Marxist OrthodoxyThe
1891 Erfurt Programme gave a classically orthodox Marxist account of
capitalist development. ·
The
capitalist mode of production was destroying small-scale production and
turning the small farmers and artisans into property-less proletarians.
It was achieving a "marvellous increase in the productivity of
labour. But all the advantages of this transformation are monopolised by
capitalists and landowners. For the proletariat and the disappearing
middle class ...it means increasing uncertainty of subsistence; it means
misery, oppression, servitude, degradation and exploitation." ·
Society
was being divided into two opposing camps and the class warfare between
the bourgeoisie and proletariat was constantly increasing in bitterness.
As the economic crises intensified and the internal contradictions of
capitalism became more apparent the working class through the Socialist
Party, having taken possession of political power, would effect a
revolutionary transformation by taking the means of production into social
ownership and instituting socialist production. This would end class
society and liberate the whole human race. Regarding
a programme for the peasantry: ·
The
orthodox view was that the peasants were a class doomed by capitalism; to
support them would be futile and regressive. As Kautsky wrote “a Social
Democratic agrarian programme for the capitalist mode of production is an
absurdity.” The party as a
whole accepted this viewpoint which Kautsky refined in Die
Agrarfrage (1899) by proposing support for peasant associations and
the gradual rationalisation and socialisation of agricultural production. Revolution Kautsky
remained committed to a revolutionary transformation but revolution could
only occur under a peculiar conjunction of circumstances.
The SPD was a "revolutionary but not a revolution-making
party. " "Our task is not to organise the revolution, but to
organise ourselves for the revolution,” he wrote.
In The Road to Power
(1903) Kautsky explained that revolution would occur when the ruling
regime had lost the confidence of the bureaucracy and army, when the mass
of the population were hostile to it, and when their confidence was given
to an organised party placed in irreconcilable opposition to the present
government. Essentially
their hopes lay in an "evolutionary revolutionism." They aspired
to a revolutionary transformation which would be achieved through the
peaceful conquest of political power; violent revolution would only arise
if the old ruling elite sought to retain their control through the use of
force. Remembering the years of persecution and recognising the continued
antipathy of the forces of tradition and reaction within the Reich, this
group had little truck with party or class alliances. |
Revisionism
1)
The Peasantry In
early 1890s, the South German Social Democrats noticed that the peasants
were not disappearing as fast as had been foretold. In fact, they remained
and formed a sizeable proportion of the electorate. The Bavarian Social
Democratic leader, Georg von Vollmar argued that the SPD must formulate a
programme designed to attract peasant support.
2)
Electoral Growth Engels
was not a revisionist but he gave unintended support to their position in
his 1895 introduction to Marx’s "Class Struggles where he wrote
that the growth of the SPD vote... "
. . .proceeds as spontaneously, as steadily, as irresistibly and at the
same time as tranquilly as a natural process.
If it continues in this fashion, by the end of the century ...we
shall grow into the decisive power in the land...To keep this growth going
until it of itself gets beyond the control of the prevailing governmental
system, that is our main task." 3)
Growth of the Free Trade Unions
At
the Cologne congress of the trade unions in 1906, they adopted a
resolution against mass strikes. The
SPD, at its Jena congress in the same year voted overwhelmingly for their
use if necessary. This impasse was settled at the Mannheim party congress
in 1906 where, despite majority feeling against, a motion was passed which
recognised the trade unions' institutional parity with the SPD. 4)
Bernstein Bernstein
attacked two essential bases of the Marxist system - historical
materialism and surplus value. Modern society, he claimed, was "much
richer than earlier societies in ideologies which are not determined by
economics" and in this way "The Iron Necessity of History"
received its limitation. Similarly
surplus value was no more than an abstraction misleadingly characterised
as the rate of exploitation - it offered no "scientific basis for
socialism”. Fundamentally
though, Bernstein's case was empiricist.
With considerable documentation Bernstein pointed out that the
middle class were not declining and that the possessing classes were not
diminishing. In fact, national wealth was reaching all strata of society
though he admitted that the upper classes were doing disproportionately
well. Neither were the small or medium sized firms being driven out of'
existence, in some areas they were increasing. Finally, in this assault on
the economic prophecies of the Erfurt Programme, Bernstein argued that
economic crises were diminishing in intensity rather than intensifying as
capitalism, through improved credit facilities and the formation of
cartels, became more capable of managing itself. Cartelisation and the
increase of share holding also had the effect of socialising production
and so aiding the transformation to social ownership. Bernstein
drew the obvious conclusions from these theses - the class struggle was no
longer the dynamic of history, nor was revolution necessary or inevitable.
For Marx's dialectic Bernstein substituted a broadly evolutionary
development, and he transformed socialism from an economic necessity to an
ethical ideal. Socialism was "something that ought to be, or a
movement toward something that ought to be."
Bernstein felt this to be little more than a recognition of the
real attitude of the party and pleaded " that "the social
democracy could find the courage to emancipate itself from a phraseology
which is actually outworn" and "to appear what it is in reality
today: a democratic, socialistic party of reform."
To this end, Bernstein proposed a reformist strategy based on his
hopes for the socialisation of capital and the democratising powers of
parliament, the trade unions and cooperatives.
Tactically, the party would have to drop its Marxist revolutionism
and isolationism in order to achieve an open an avowed reformism with a
constructive participation in the Reichstag and Landtage.
This entailed the possibility of tactical party or class alliances
to achieve legislative progress The
revisionists’ basic ethic was a belief in a non-violent and gradualist
evolutionism in which, as Bernstein put it, "the ultimate aim of
socialism is nothing but the movement is everything”. 5)
“The state within the state”; “Negative Integration” At
the same time, the SPD on a local rather than national level was
participating vigorously in the Reich's representative institutions. In
1906 there were 116 SPD deputies in the Landtage, by 1913 this figure had
increased to 231. Also by
1913 there were approximately 11,000 SPD representatives on municipal and
district councils. By
the outbreak of war the SPD’s organisation was immense - in 1913 it
employed 4000 full-time officials and 10,000 print workers (publishing 90
daily newspapers). 6)
“The Iron Law of Oligarchy” Roberto
Michels Political Parties (1911) "Organization
implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a
political party, a professional union, or any other association of the
kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. The
mechanism of the organization, while conferring a solidity of structure,
induces serious changes in the organized mass, completely inverting the
respective position of the leaders and the led. As a result of
organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a
minority of
directors and a majority of directed... Who
says organisation, says oligarchy |
The
Revolutionary Left
Rosa
Luxemburg was the ideological spokesperson for this group which included
the radical intellectuals of the party and its militant rank and file,
particularly those from northern Germany where social and political
antagonisms were more sharply drawn. The
Left were justifiably cynical about the powers and potential of the
Reichstag and took their cue from the Russian Revolution of 1905. In her
work Massenstreik, Partei und
Gewerkschaft
published in 1906 Luxemburg argued that the SPD should learn the
lessons of the Russian example, its role was to guide and discipline the
spontaneous struggles of the proletariat. She contrasted the “healthy
revolutionary instinct" of the masses with the “parade-ground
mentality" of the party leadership.
Anton
Pannekoek too criticised the naive parliamentarianism of the reformists
and even of Kautsky, arguing that "the struggle of the working class
is not simply a struggle against the bourgeoisie for state power as a
prize; it is a struggle against state power." Mass action was a
necessary ideological weapon in instilling a fighting proletarian
consciousness in the working class. |