A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

In 1836, a number of German exiles at Paris formed themselves into a secret society, under the name of the League of the Just, the principles of which were communistic.[^[1]] Being involved in a rising at Paris in 1839, they removed to London. Here they met with workmen belonging to the nations of Northern Europe, to which German is a common speech, and the League naturally began to assume an international character.

This was not the only change which the League underwent. Its members began to understand that their real duty under the present circumstances was not conspiracy or the stirring up of revolutionary outbreaks, but propaganda. The basis of the League had been a sentimental communism, based on their motto that ‘all men are brothers.’ From Marx they learned that the emancipation of the proletariat must be guided by scientific insight into the conditions of its own existence and its own history; that their communism must indeed be a revolutionary one, but it must be a revolution in harmony with the inevitable tendencies of social evolution. The cardinal point in the theory worked out by Marx and now impressed upon the League, was the doctrine that the economic conditions control the entire social structure, therefore the main thing in a social revolution is a change in economic conditions.

The group of exiles put themselves into communication with Marx, and a Congress was held in London in 1847, with the result that the association was reorganised under the name of the Communist League.

The aim of the League is very comprehensively stated in the first article of its constitution: ‘The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old society resting on class antagonisms, and the founding of a new society without classes and without private property.’

Marx and Engels were commissioned by the League to set forth its principles in a manifesto, which, as the manifesto of the communistic party, was published shortly before the Revolution of February 1848. We shall best illustrate the spirit and aim of the treatise by quoting Fr. Engels’ Preface to the edition of 1883:—

‘The Preface to the present edition I must, alas! sign alone. Marx, the man to whom the entire working class of Europe and America owes more than any other—Marx rests in the cemetery at Highgate, and the grass already begins to grow over his grave. Since his death nothing further can be said of a revisal or completion of the manifesto. It is therefore the more necessary expressly to make the following statement.

‘The pervading thought of the manifesto: that the economic production with the social organisation of each historical epoch necessarily resulting therefrom forms the basis for the political and intellectual history of this epoch; that accordingly (since the dissolution of the primitive common property in land) the entire history is a history of class struggles—struggles between exploited and exploiting, ruled and ruling, classes at different stages of social development; but that this struggle has now reached a stage when the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no more free itself from the exploiting and oppressing class (the bourgeoisie) without at the same time delivering the whole of society for ever from exploitation, oppression, and class struggles—this pervading thought belongs exclusively and alone to Marx.’

‘The history of all society hitherto has been the history of class struggles’; such is the keynote of the manifesto. ‘But it is a distinguishing feature of the present time that it has simplified class antagonisms; the entire human society more and more divides itself into two great hostile camps, into two great conflicting classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat.’ The manifesto is for the most part an exposition and discussion of these two classes, the historical conditions under which they have grown up, their mutual relations, past, present, and future.

It would not be easy to give a brief analysis of the manifesto, nor is it necessary, as we have, in our chapter on Marx, already given an account of the same views in their maturer and more philosophic expression. The manifesto is a treatise instinct with the fiery energy and enthusiasm of a young revolutionary party, and its doctrines are the doctrines of Marx in a crude, exaggerated, and violent form. In such a pamphlet, written for propaganda, we must not expect the self-restraining moderation of statement, the clear perspective, or the high judicial charity which should characterise a sober historical exposition.

The Iron Law of Wages is stated in its hardest and most exaggerated form. To the charge that they desire to abolish private property, its authors reply that individual property, the produce of a man’s own labour, is already abolished. What they desire to abolish is the appropriation of other men’s labour by the capitalist. To the charge that they wish to abolish the family, they reply to the bourgeoisie with a tu quoque: ye have already abolished it by the exploitation of women and children in the factories, which has broken up the family ties, through the prevalence of prostitution and the common practice of adultery. The charge of abolishing patriotism they repudiate in the same manner: the workman has no country.