Violence and the Labor Movement

by Robert Hunter

Such were the doctrines and tactics proclaimed by Marx and Engels in 1847. The Manifesto is said to have been received with great enthusiasm by the League, but, whatever happened at the moment, it is clear that the members never understood the doctrines manifested. In any case, various factions in the movement were still clamoring for insurrection and planning their conspiracies, wholly faithful to the revolution-making artifices of the period. Two of the most prominent, Willich and Schapper, were carried away with revolutionary passion, and "the majority of the London workers," Engels says, "refugees for the most part, followed them into the camp of the bourgeois democrats, the revolution-makers." [(16)] They declined to listen to protests. "They wanted to go the other way and to make revolutions," continues Engels. "We refused absolutely to do this and the schism followed." [(17)]

On the 15th of September, 1850, Marx decided to resign from the central council of the organization, and, feeling that such an act required some justification, he prepared the following written declaration: "The minority[R] [i. e., his opponents] have substituted the dogmatic spirit for the critical, the idealistic interpretation of events for the materialistic. Simple will power, instead of the true relations of things, has become the motive force of revolution. While we say to the working people: 'You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and wars between nations not only to change existing conditions, but to change yourselves and make yourselves worthy of political power,' you, on the contrary, say, 'We ought to get power at once, or else give up the fight.' While we draw the attention of the German workman to the undeveloped state of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetish of the words 'the people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.' Like them, you substitute revolutionary phrases for revolutionary evolution." [(18)] This statement of Marx is one of the most significant documents of the period and certainly one of the most illuminating we possess of Marx's determination to disavow the insurrectionary ideas then so prevalent throughout Europe. Although he had said the same thing before in other words, there could be no longer any doubt that he cherished no dreams of a great revolutionary cataclysm, nor fondled the then prevalent theory that revolutions could be organized, planned, and executed by will power alone.

It is clear, therefore, that Marx saw, as early as 1850, little revolutionary promise in sectarian organizations, secret societies, and political conspiracies. The day was past for insurrections, and a real revolution could only arrive as a result of economic forces and class antagonisms. And it is quite obvious that he was becoming more and more irritated by the sentimentalism and dress-parade revolutionism of the socialist sects. He looked upon their projects as childish and theatrical, that gave as little promise of changing the world's history as battles between tin soldiers on some nursery floor. He seemed no longer concerned with ideals, abstract rights, or "eternal verities." Those who misunderstood him or were little associated with him were horrified at what they thought was his cynical indifference to such glorious visions as liberty, fraternity, and equality. Like Darwin, Marx was always an earnest seeker of facts and forces. He was laying the foundations of a scientific socialism and dissecting the anatomy of capitalism in pursuit of the laws of social evolution. The gigantic intellectual labors of Marx from 1850 to 1870 are to-day receiving due attention, and, while one after another of the later economists has been forced reluctantly to acknowledge his genius, few now will take issue with Professor Albion W. Small when he says, "I confidently predict that in the ultimate judgment of history Marx will have a place in social science analogous with that of Galileo in physical science." [(19)] In exile, and often desperate poverty, Marx worked out with infinite care the scientific basis of the generalization—first given to the world in the Communist Manifesto—that social and political institutions are the product of economic forces. In all periods there have been antagonistic economic classes whose relative power is determined by struggles between them. "Freedman and slave," he says, "patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." [(20)] Here is a summary of that conflict which Professor Small declares "is to the social process what friction is to mechanics." [(21)] It may well be that "the fact of class struggle is as axiomatic to-day as the fact of gravitation," [(22)] yet, when Marx first elaborated his theory, it was not only a revolutionary doctrine among the socialist sects, but like Darwin's theory of evolution it was assailed from every angle by every school of economists. The important practical question that arises out of this scientific work, and which particularly concerns us here, is that this theory of the class struggle forever destroyed the old ideas of revolution, scrap-heaped conspiracies and insurrections, and laid the theoretical foundations for the modern working-class movement.

Actually, it was utopian socialism that was destroyed by this new theory. It expressed itself in at least three diverse ways. There were groups of conspirators and revolutionists who believed that the world was on the eve of a great upheaval and that the people should prepare for the moment when suddenly they could seize the governments of Europe, destroy ancient institutions, and establish a new social order. Another form of utopianism was the effort to persuade the capitalists themselves to abolish dividends, profits, rent, and interest, to turn the factories over to the workers, to become themselves toilers, and to share equally, one with another, the products of their joint labor. Still another form of utopian socialism was that of Owen, Fourier, and Cabet, who contemplated the establishment of ideal communities in which a new world should be built, where all should be free and equal, and where fraternity would be based upon a perfect economic communism. Some really noble spirits in France, England, and America had devoted time, love, energy, and wealth to this propaganda and in actual attempts to establish these utopias. But after '48 the upper classes were despaired of. Their brutal reprisals, their suppression of every working-class movement, their ferocious repression of the unions, of the press, and of the right of assembly—all these materially aided Marx's theory in disillusioning many of the philanthropic and tender-hearted utopians. And from then on the hope of every sincere advocate of fundamental social changes rested on the working class—on its organizations, its press, and its labors—for the establishment of the new order.

The most striking characteristic of the period which follows was the attempt of all the socialist and anarchist sects to inject their ideas into the rising labor movement. With the single exception of Robert Owen in England, the earlier socialists had ignored the working classes. All their appeals were made to well-to-do men, and some of them even hoped that the monarchs of Europe might be induced to take the initiative. But Marx and Engels made their appeal chiefly to the working class. The profound reaction which settled over Europe in the years following '48 ended all other dreams, and from this time on every proposal for a radical change in the organization of society was presented to the workers as the only class that was really seeking, by reason of its economic subjection, basic alterations in the institutions of property and the constitution of the State. The working classes of Germany, France, England, and other countries had already begun to form groups for the purpose of discussing political questions, and the ideas of Marx began to be propagated in all the centers of working-class activity.

The blending of labor and socialism in most of the countries of Europe was not, however, a work of months, but of decades. The first great effort to accomplish that task occurred in 1864, when the International Working Men's Association was launched in St. Martin's Hall in London. During the years from '47 to '64, Marx and Engels, with their little coterie in London and their correspondents in other countries, spent most of their time in study, reading, and writing, with little opportunity to participate in the actual struggles of labor. Marx was at work on "Capital" and schooling, in his leisure hours, a few of the notable men who were later to become leaders of the working class in Europe. It was a dull period, wearisome and vexatious enough to men who were boldly prophesying that industrial conditions would create a world-wide solidarity of labor. The first glimmer of hope came with the London International Exhibition of 1862, which brought together by chance groups of workingmen from various countries. The visit to London enabled them to observe the British trade unions, and they left deeply impressed by their strength. Furthermore, the Exhibition brought the English workers and those of other nationalities into touch with each other. How much this meant was shown in 1863. When the Polish uprising was being suppressed, the English workers sent to their French comrades a protest, in answer to which the Paris workmen sent a delegation to London. This gathering in sympathy with Poland laid the foundations for the International. Nearly every important revolutionary sect in Europe was represented: the German communists, the French Blanquists and Proudhonians, and the Italian Mazzinians; but the only delegates who represented powerful working-class organizations were the English trade unionists. The other organizations, even as late as this, were still little more than coteries, of hero-worshiping tendencies, fast developing into sectarian organizations that seemed destined to divide hopelessly and forever the labor movement.

It was perhaps inevitable that the more closely the sects were brought together, the more clearly they should perceive their differences, although Marx had exercised every care to draft a policy that would allay strife. Mazzini and his followers could not long endure the policies of the International, and they soon withdrew. The Proudhonians never at any time sympathized with the program and methods adopted by the International. The German organizations were not able to affiliate, by reason of the political conditions in that country, although numerous individuals attended the congresses. Nearly all the Germans were supporters of the policies of Marx, while most of the leading trade unionists of England completely understood and sympathized with Marx's aim of uniting the various working-class organizations of Europe into an international association. They all felt that such a movement was an historic and economic necessity and that the time for it had arrived. They intended to set about that work and to knit together the innumerable little organizations then forming in all countries. They sought to institute a meeting ground where the social and political program of the workers could be formulated, where their views could be clarified, and their purposes defined. It was not to be a secret organization, but entirely open and above board. It was not for conspiratory action, but for the building up of a great movement. It was not intended to encourage insurrection or to force ahead of time a revolution. In the opinion of Marx, as we know, a social revolution was thought to be inevitable, and the International was to bide its time, preparing for the day of its coming, in order to make that revolution as peaceable and as effective as possible.

The Preamble of the Provisional Rules of the International—entirely the work of Marx—expresses with sufficient clearness the position of the International. It was there declared: "That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule;

"That the economic subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence;

"That the economic emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;