Marx' Manifesto Revisited

...Consciously, Marx would scoff at the suggestion that he held such a belief...

...after the Bolshevik takeover it was based on hard facts and harsh realities...

...But the very struggle of the proletariat that was supposed to produce a classless society may well be responsible for developments the otherwise farsighted German economist and philosopher did not envision...

...It began, ostensibly, as a move by the Communist Party to bring order into the many little soviets that were destructively divided geographically, ethnically, occupationally, and along political lines among Communists, Social Democrats, Anarchists, Social Revolutionaries, Constitutional Democrats, and others...

...In the preface to the 1888 edition of the Manifesto, Engels proclaims that Marx' concept "is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology...

...Many of the reforms were achieved through epic efforts led by men and women inspired by the Manifesto's promise of a proletarian victory and a subsequent social order that would end "man's inhumanity to man...

...This might have been overlooked if the Soviet economy was allowing the people to live better materially, even if not spiritually...

...It dated back to at least 1904, when the Mensheviks (literally minority) in the Russian Social Democratic Party rejected the Bolshevik (majority) view of the party's structure...

...To them, Marxism was a catechism with tidy "Q"s and "A"s...

...Rather, they developed what the Swedes called the "middle way," what some called "social democracy" or the "social market," and what the United States called the "New Deal...

...His distressingly simple argument was summed up in one of his typically clever phrases: "Reform is chloroform...

...Even if such a party came to power democratically, how long would it be before the forms of democracy were turned into a facade for dictatorship...

...In that sense, his words may have contributed much to shaping the contours of the last century and a half, but in ways that made socialism far less "inevitable" than Marx expected...

...De Leon's philosophy, based on the idea of "the worse, the better," never took hold in the United States...

...His father was a lawyer who converted to Christianity because no Jew was allowed to practice law in Germany at that time...

...Those leaders gave their lives to winning a penny here and a penny there because, to quote the Manifesto, "the real fruit of their battles [lay] not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers...

...Of the ills plaguing the proletariat, the Manifesto proclaimed, none was more devastating than "the commercial crises that by their periodic returns put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society...

...Now the state was finally becoming an entity responsible—as James Madison had put it—"for the regulation of [the] various and competing interests" that are in constant conflict in every society...

...Nevertheless, during the past 150 years there has not been one country where the economy has been collectively owned and democratically controlled...

...These two souls within the one man seem to be independent entities, and they are, but they had an impact on each other...

...Those who sided with the "ins" were in...

...After the Bolshevik takeover, this found expression in soviets (or councils) of workers, farmers, soldiers, sailors—a transfer of power that, in form, appeared to be the ultimate in "all power to the people.' According to Marx, with the coming of the soviets the state as an instrument of oppression would "wither away...

...But that, too, was not happening...

...The answer may lie in large part in the crucial notion that is a leitmotif of the Manifesto—namely, the class struggle...

...In the 40 years after the Manifesto appeared, Engels observed, such crises occurred "about once every 10 years...

...Marx was no exception to this rule...

...As the Communist experiment evolved in the Soviet Union, it became evident that instead of shifting from a brief interim dictatorship to an ultimate democracy, it was going in quite the opposite direction...

...Madison's hope was that in a large nation of 13 different states there would be so much diversity that no single faction could by itself compose a majority...

...A Friedrich Ebert in Germany, a Léon Blum in France, a Ramsay MacDonald in England could hardly maintain that the state is the embodied will of the capitalists when, in effect, they were the embodiment of the state and were all Socialists...

...Should someone ask Karl Marx whether this is a Marxist way to behave, he would undoubtedly reply: "I don't know...

...By this script, the anti-thesis becomes the thesis and that is the end of history...

...Marx saw it correctly as a natural law that has played a key role in history since "the dissolution of primitive tribal society...

...The Mensheviks argued that if the Bolsheviks ever came to power, they would impose their form of the party on the whole society...

...Thus did Marx the mystic mythmaker breathe fire into the hearts and minds of several generations of zealots who accomplished what could not be done without the fervor of a true-believing missionary or martyr...

...When differences later developed within the Presidium, a faction was formed that wiped out dissent in the ruling committee...

...In 1904, the argument was based on abstractions and theory...

...In the USSR's intensely politicized society, rewards such as pay and perks were not based on economic output but on political input...

...each sought to find a delicate balance between public and private power, in order to achieve a second delicate balance between the capacity to produce and the capacity to consume...

...He abhorred the notion that major social currents sprang from the words or deeds of some great personage, like an Athena springing full blown from the head of Zeus...

...He was motivated by the spirit of inquiry...

...Governments decided to use their right to curb the unchecked freedom granted to the bourgeoisie under the anarchic rubric of "laissez faire...

...Nonetheless, under the thumb of Lenin and his successors the soviets became probably the most oppressive state in all previous history...

...In a number of Western industrial nations Socialists, Social Democrats or Laborites have been in power over extended periods of time, but they have never fully socialized the economy...

...Why has the inevitable been so evitable...

...When a majority is included in a faction," he wrote, it is able "to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens...

...Then what...

...Many initial admirers of the Bolshevik Revolution, including former Party members, were especially shocked by Stalin's liquidation of some to the most distinguished revolutionary leaders...

...Madison was arguing in favor of "a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government...

...By marching on the picket lines and to the polls, they repealed what was known as The Iron Law of Wages, shortened the workweek, and wonjob security, workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, occupational safety and health legislation, Social Security, better housing, and medical care...

...Yet despite their all espousing "Marxist" concepts, they were more often than not in deep, sometimes deadly, disagreement with one another...

...The debate between Socialists and Communists preceded the Bolshevik Revolution...

...The great schism within the Marxist movement that separated them from the Communists concerned the issue of democracy versus dictatorship...

...Opponents were incarcerated or liquidated...

...Each fight, no matter how trivial the gain, was seen as preparing the working class for the day of the classless society...

...In addition, he had a chiliastic view of life that is most commonly held by religious seers who prophesy a Judgment Day when the evil will be tossed into Hell and the virtuous will live happily ever after...

...Marx assumed they would grow increasingly menacing as long as capitalism existed, because the state was nothing more than "the executive committee of the ruling class" and would give the bourgeoisie a free hand to do whatever it pleased...

...Their differences would not have surprised Marx, who set out to uncover the forces that shaped history and then apply his findings to the world he lived in...

...Labeling them "Utopians," he pointed out that they had little or no understanding of history's determining dynamics...

...Marx insisted that just as "natural selection" was the driving force in the origin of species, the "class struggle" was the driving force in societal transformations...

...Then Communists in different occupations and areas clashed with one another...

...Increasingly, Socialists began to respect what British Socialist and political scientist Harold Laski called "pluralism," a philosophy spelled out brilliantly many years earlier by James Madison in his Federalist Paper Number 10...

...His fear was that in a democracy, a majority made up of a homogenous body of citizens would seek to impose its will on the entire society...

...Consequently, when Socialists come to power they do not rush to put an immediate end to capitalism by socializing the economy...

...The progressive pauperization of the masses never took place in industrial societies, however, because the "prisoners of starvation" and the "wretched of the earth" did "arise" and did launch a class struggle that profoundly improved their condition...

...subconsciously, he preached it minus its theological overtones...

...For instance, it is told that during a debate at a convention of the First International—a global organization of Anarchists and Marxists—a True Believer turned to his Deity and asked, "What would the position of a Marxist be on this question...

...The first is described by Engels in his essay "Socialism—Utopian and Scientific" when he notes the restriction that applies to all outstanding minds in every era: "The great thinkers of the 18th century could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch...

...The worldwide crisis of the 1930s, though, finally provoked a political response...

...Which brings us to another aspect of our basic question: Why didn't they socialize their economies...

...In a classless society there is no one to challenge...

...Disparagingly Marx answered, "Je ne suis pas un Marxiste" ("I am not a Marxist") If he were alive today and you asked him whether he expected the worldwide response the Manifesto evoked, Marx would no doubt deny that it had very much, or anything, to do with the many movements that have publicly identified themselves as Marxist...

...It did find an admirer in Lenin, who in Russian style called for "all power to the soviets...

...Actually, there were two Karl Marxes: (a) the realist probing the economic base of social orders and the role of class conflict in reshaping societies, and (b) the surrealist with an ill-defined, really undefined, sketch of some future social order where the class struggle (like the state itself) would no longer exist...

...So the Presidium (the executive committee of the ruling bureaucracy) arrogated all power to itself...

...Although Marx declared that "religion is the opiate of the people," he believed in a Messiah who would make his appearance as the proletariat...

...In the USSR and Communist China there have been forms of collective ownership sans democracy...

...He wanted the whole loaf—or nothing...

...Je ne suis pas un Mamste" Gus Tyler, a longtime New Leader contributor and former Assistant President of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, is currently a syndicated columnist and radio commentator...

...the Mensheviks wanted a more open and democratic configuration...

...Part of the answer here may be found in the turn-of-the-century debate among American Socialists on the relationship of reform to revolution...

...In short order, the soviets that were to be the instrument for carrying out the policies of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" became the means employed by a self-designated tyrant to impose his dictatorship over the proletariat and peasantry...

...The "great man" theory of history was precisely the opposite of what he held shaped humanity's ever evolving societal expressions...

...The economy was moving from stagnant to sinking...

...As time passed it became apparent that the Russian dictatorship was not peculiar to Russia...

...the others—no matter their skill or stamina— were out...

...As Engels explained, when the proletariat takes power "it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state...

...The Bolsheviks wanted a party built along military lines (top down...

...In forecasting the result of the bourgeoisie-proletariat contest, for instance, Marx was unwittingly influenced by the ancient proclivity to envision the moment of humanity's worst degradation as the necessary precondition for the coming of the Savior...

...According to Marx' "scientific socialism," an economy based on collective ownership and democratic control of the means of production and exchange (socialism or communism) was not merely something that was desirable, it was inevitable...

...But Socialists were not surprised...

...They prefer a "synthesis" in which the economic advantages of capitalist production are countered and balanced by the ethical imperatives of a socialistic distribution of income and wealth...

...His paternal grandfather was a rabbi...

...The question asked by many Socialists, and eventually by many former Communists, was whether what happened in Russia was peculiar to the Russian "'soul," or was inherent in the Communist (Bolshevik) ideology...

...And when disagreements developed in that inner circle, one man—Joseph Stalin—used the military, the secret police and plain old patronage to foist his autocratic authority on the Presidium, the Party and the nation...

...Fourier referred to it as a crise pléthorique, a crisis of plethora...

...The debate led to a split, with the "reformers" headed by Morris Hillquit creating the Socialist Party and De Leon remaining in the Socialist Labor Party...

...Happy workers don't make social revolutions...

...But the Communists simply outlawed every party except their own...

...Marx' prophetic powers had two limitations—one was universal, the other was idiosyncratic...

...In his eyes, to credit him with fathering the numerous movements that have claimed his name would be equivalent to crediting Darwin with inventing the process whereby the ape became man, or crediting Copernicus with inducing the earth to revolve around the sun instead of vice versa...

...Old Marxists found themselves wondering if Lord Acton was not right when he said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' After all, in a truly socialized society the governing party and its controlling cabal has a monopoly over the Buck, the Book and the Bang—the economy, the media and the Armed Forces, not to mention the police and the secret police...

...Messianism was in his bones...

...The first section of the Manifesto closes with the ringing prophecy that "the fall [of the bourgeoisie] and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable," not because Marx wanted it but because natural factors at work in the world preordained it...

...For his followers, however, this consisted of inquiring exactly what Marx provided as the ultimate answer...

...Hence, in describing the prospects of capitalism, he saw the entire middle class being wiped out, leaving only a small number of bourgeois exploiters on the one hand and, on the other hand, the rest of humanity, the proletariat, sinking ever deeper into a mire of misery...

...Within that "social contract" there is a constant conflict and a coming together, a steady argument and agreement, among competing interests...

...According to Hegel, a concept (or system) he called the "thesis" invariably generated its opposition, the "antithesis," and out of the battle between them would emerge the "synthesis" that, in turn, would generate its "antithesis," and so on ad infinitum...

...He envisioned achieving the "majority" needed for governing in a democracy through a compromise of differences among minorities who, over time, would move about in ever changing political alliances...

...Since its appearance in 1848, it has been the pocket bible of political parties—Socialist, Social Democratic, Labor, and Communist—that at times collectively governed better than half of the earth's population...

...Ironically, Marx' Messianic message ran quite contrary to the Hegelian philosophy he was deeply devoted to...

...But they did not rum to socialism...

...The conversion of antistate into the superstate occurred quickly...

...His Dutch Jewish mother came from a long line of rabbis...

...De Leon also broke away from the American Federation of Labor to set up his own Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, whose sole purpose was to organize workers for the moment when conditions got so bad that they would rise up en masse, seize the factories they worked in and declare the day of liberation...

...Indeed, if any persons were to be credited with being the first to propose the idea of a cooperative commonwealth, they would be François Fourier, Saint-Simon or Robert Owen, who preceded Marx and whom he looked upon with disdain for their foolish conceit that they could by exhortation and example create the perfect society...

...To Marx the thesis was capitalism, the antithesis was the working class, and the outcome would be the classless society...

...Daniel De Leon, the head of the Socialist Labor Party, opposed bringing about change incrementally through either collective bargaining by unions or political action by his party...

...In place of the abolition of the state there was now the absolutism of the state...

...the same totalitarianism was evident in Yugoslavia, Albania, the Baltic states, Cuba, China, and other countries that applied the Leninist formula...

...This concept was particularly applicable in a democracy where contending interests were (and are) a palpable presence in legislative and executive positions...

...In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction...

...In essence, these were variations on the same theme...