|
|
|
|
||
INTRODUCTION TO MARXISM-LENINISMSECTION III: Socialism and the Tactics of class StruggleLesson 2 – Tactics of the Class Struggle of the Proletariat
TEXTS FOR DISCUSSION1. Marx, along with his theoretical work, devoted unremitting attention … to the tactical problems of the proletariat’s class struggle. … Marx justly considered that, without this aspect, materialism is incomplete, onesided, and lifeless. The fundamental task of proletarian tactics was defined by Marx in strict conformity with all the postulates of his materialist-dialectical Weltanschauung [“world-view”]. Only an objective consideration of the sum total of the relations between absolutely all the classes in a given society, and consequently a consideration of the objective stage of development reached by that society … can serve as a basis for the correct tactics of an advanced class. At the same time, all classes and all countries are regarded… dynamically … from the standpoint, not only of the past, but also of the future, and not in the vulgar sense understood in by the “evolutionists”, who see only slow changes, but dialectically: “...in developments of such magnitude 20 years are no more than a day,“ Marx wrote to Engels, “though later on there may come days in which 20 years are embodied”.[2] At each stage of development, at each moment, proletarian tactics must take account of this objectively inevitable dialectics of human history, on one hand using periods of political stagnation or of sluggish, so-called “peaceful” development to develop the class-consciousness, strength and militancy of the advanced class, and on the other hand, directing all (this) work … towards the “ultimate aim” of that class’s advance, towards creating in it the ability to find practical solutions for great tasks in the great days, in which “20 years are embodied”. Two of Marx’s arguments are of special importance in this connection: one … concerns tasks of the proletariat, the other … concerns the economic struggle and economic organizations of the proletariat; this argument runs as follows: “Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance-combination.... Combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups ... and in face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them [i.e., the workers] than that of wages.... In this struggle - a veritable civil war - all the elements necessary for coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character. Here we have the program and tactics of the economic struggle and of the trade union movement for several decades to come, for all the lengthy period in which the proletariat prepares its forces for the ‘coming battle’. … The tactics of the economic struggle, in connection with the general course (and outcome) of the working-class movement are considered here from a remarkably broad, comprehensive, dialectical and genuinely revolutionary standpoint. The Communist Manifesto advanced a fundamental Marxist principle on tactics of political struggle: “Communists fight for attainment of immediate aims, for enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement….”
2. In the celebrated Address of the International of Sept 9 1870, Marx warned the French proletariat against an untimely uprising, but when an uprising nevertheless took place (1871), Marx enthusiastically hailed the revolutionary initiative of the masses, who were “storming heaven” (Marx’s letter to Kugelmann). From the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism, the defeat of revolutionary action in that situation, as in many other, was a lesser evil, in the general course and outcome of the proletarian struggle, than abandonment of a position already occupied, than surrender without battle. Such a surrender would have demoralised the proletariat and weakened its militancy. While fully appreciating the use of legal means of struggle during periods of political stagnation and the domination of bourgeois legality, Marx, in 1877 and 1878, following the passage of the Anti-Socialist Law,[9] sharply condemned Most’s “revolutionary phrases”; no less sharply, if not more so, did he attack the opportunism that had for a time come over the official Social-Democratic Party, which did not at once display resoluteness, firmness, revolutionary spirit and the readiness to resort to an illegal struggle in response to the Anti-Socialist Law (Briefwechsel, Vol. 4, pp. 397 – 424).
3. ‘The question of the class struggle is one of the fundamental questions of Marxism. It is, therefore, worth while dealing with the concept of class struggle in greater detail. Every class struggle is a political struggle.[2] … the opportunists, slaves to ideas of liberalism, understood these profound words of Marx incorrectly … The Economists believed any clash between classes was a political struggle … recognised as “class struggle” the struggle for a wage increase of five kopeks on the ruble and refused to recognise a higher, more developed … class struggle, the struggle for political aims … The Economists recognised, in other words, only that part of the class struggle that was more tolerable to the liberal bourgeoisie, … they refused to recognise the higher form of class struggle unacceptable to the liberals. By so doing, the Economists became liberal workers’ politicians … they rejected the Marxist, revolutionary conception of the class struggle. … it is not enough that the class struggle becomes real, consistent and developed only when it embraces the sphere of politics. In politics, too, it is possible to restrict oneself to minor matters, and it is possible to go deeper, to the very foundations. Marxism recognises a class struggle as fully developed … only if it does not merely embrace politics but takes in the most significant thing in politics—the organisation of state power. On the other hand, the liberals, when the working-class movement has grown a little stronger, dare not deny the class struggle but attempt to narrow down, to curtail and emasculate the concept of class struggle. Liberals are prepared to recognise class struggle in the sphere of politics, too, but on one condition—that the organisation of state power should not enter into that sphere... The bourgeoisie “want” to curtail the class struggle, to distort and narrow the conception and blunt its sharp edge. The proletariat “wants” this deception exposed. The Marxist wants… to expose the narrowness, the selfish narrowness, indeed, of the bourgeois conception of the class struggle... The liberal “wants” to appraise the bourgeoisie and its class struggle in such a way as to conceal its narrowness, to conceal the failure to include in the struggle that which is “basic” and most important. ... The Marxist point of view, however, will always require a profound, not a superficial “appraisal,” will always expose the poverty of liberal distortions, understatements and cowardly concealment. … the liquidators substitute a liberal conception of the class struggle for the Marxist conception, forgetting how to examine social events from the revolutionary point of view’. (Liberal and Marxist Conceptions of the Class Struggle 1913 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/may/31b.htm)
Questions:
Click here if you would like feedback on your answers from one of our tutors.
|