CLASS STRUGGLE AND COMMUNISM
 A new labor movement will scarcely have further need, in its propaganda, of the word Communism, for the reason that the general concept "Communism" assumes more concrete forms. The general formulation, that it is a new economic system in which private property in means of production is abolished, no longer suffices. The "new economic system" of theory was still an empty vessel, it did not live. It now begins, in the class struggle, when the question is one of mastering the social forces through humanity itself, to fill with concrete things, with life. When up to that time we formed a notion of communism as an economic system, we now see that we had only one side in mind, got only a partial glimpse of the problems involved. Just as natural science by way of technics has subjected the natural forces to society, so must humanity direct and govern the social forces. These social forces which itself creates and by which it is tormented as by blind processes of nature, humanity must learn to know and to subject. The mass of human beings must themselves direct and control all the social forces. To this end, however, it is necessary that all functions in the social life be exercised by the masses directly; the organs shaped by the masses for that purpose are no longer, as special organs of dominance, to be separated from them. They can only be the instrument by which the masses carry out what they have decided upon by taking counsel together. Here we have for the first time what is involved in the workers' councils. For this reason also the carrying out of communism is at the same time the carrying out of workers' democracy. The control of the economic and social forces appears in this connection, to be sure, as the material foundation of society, but yet as only a part of a communist society, which in its entirety is far more comprehensive. Seen in this way, the development of communism does not wait to begin until the workers have won the power in society and are establishing the new order in the economic life. It begins even now, the very day when the workers in the class struggle take their fate into their own hands and themselves conduct their struggles. There is born the workers' democracy, which governs the social forces. Thus communism arises in the self-government of the masses; what we have here is the process of development in which the masses learn to conduct their own class forces and to apply them consciously in view of the goal. And it is only then, when the working class has its own class forces thus in hand, only then is it in a position also to conduct and administer the forces of society. In this sense, too, the saying of Karl Marx, that the new society is born in the lap of the old, turns to truth. With this there is found for communism the simplest, but also at the same time the most essential formula. It can be understood by any worker forthwith, however much he may doubt of its practical carrying out. At the same time it becomes clear that the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, before which bourgeois lackeys make the workers shudder, is in truth nothing other than the workers' democracy. But any worker also understands that this workers' democracy has nothing to do with the right to elect members of bourgeois parliaments. To make propaganda for the defense of universal suffrage as a defense of the democratic rights of the working class therefore amounts to nothing other than to work against the recognition of our real democratic rights. The mastery of our own class forces by way of the mass is not brought about through propaganda; the hard experience of life compels the masses in this direction. The democratic period is practically, and on an international scale, closed. Legal organizations can henceforth merely attempt to check incipient class actions as quickly as possible. In a succession of defeats, the working class frees itself from this leadership. Under these conditions, the new labor movement arises with quite new principles. It is composed of small illegal groups, which see the essence of the struggle for emancipation in the independent movement of the masses. And so they do not aim at power for their party or group; it is not their organization which shall become strong, but the class. Meanwhile, the coming to independence on the part of the masses is a tedious process which takes place in a veritable hell. For never yet in the history of humanity has a suppressed class stood confronted by such a powerful enemy, never yet by such a murderous power; never yet was such an extensive, all-embracing task to be accomplished as that of acquiring mastery over the social forces of the world. And yet the working class is bound to fight out this mighty conflict, because it can not be evaded and there is no other power which can do it. For the unchained forces of capitalist society menace all humanity with destruction. All humanity sees with fear and trembling the approaching mass slaughter of war with its poison gases and plague-bacilli, -- the result of the uncontrolled social forces released through capitalist production. No one wants this mass slaughter, and yet everyone is convinced that it is already terribly near and that it will finally break loose like an inexorable storm. It is a madness which no one wants and which nevertheless, with the certainty of a natural catastrophe, howls over the world. And because this is so, the battle for the mastery of the social forces must be fought. Even though, in a second world war, entire peoples should perish, the mastery of the social forces still remains as a problem which is unsolved. New and still more frightful catastrophes appear on the horizon. Therefore, the mastery of the social forces through the masses themselves is the problem of today and also of the coming time. Only the working class alone with its army of millions is capable of fulfilling this task. It is the productive class under capitalism, and as such it alone is in a position to master the social forces of production. That, however, is the most important part of the task, for the productive forces are the well from which all other social forces are nourished. The working class is here thrown upon its own resources. The Social Democracy and Third International call to the intellectuals and the middle classes for aid in order to tame the productive forces. They are looking for aid where none is to be found. The attempt at mastery over the forces of production through intellectuals and middle strata assumes the form of national mastery over the working class; it ends in National Socialism. The result is not the taming of the productive forces, but that the only force capable of taming them is completely subjected and the contradictions on an international scale thereby sharpened. The oncoming of new world-catastrophes is thereby accelerated. The working class, which creates the surplus value, is also the only class capable of stopping up the source of surplus value, in that it makes wage labor impossible and introduces new laws of motion for social production. Naturally, the middle strata and the intellectuals also are menaced with extinction by the unmastered social forces. But as a class which lives on surplus value they can form no auxiliary force where, with the introduction of new laws of motion for social production, the source of surplus value itself is done away with. The existence of the intellectuals and middle strata as a special class rests on wage labor for the working class; they can not be allies when the question is one of abolishing wage labor. But the first precondition for their conversion into allies is that the working class itself becomes a power to be reckoned with. When mighty working masses come forth in struggle and reveal the new, all-mastering power of the working class, it then becomes the magnet which draws to itself the dispersed revolutionary forces from all other strata of the population. Not sooner. The attempt at union with the middle strata or the intellectuals leads for this very reason to the opposite of what was intended. The working class may be proud to inscribe on its banner : Only the working class and only the working class alone ! In this way the preconditions are then set for the "coming over" of important groups from the intellectuals and the middle strata. It is class power that we need ! Class power ! |