So now Marx and Engels had completed their original purposes in making an intensive study of history. They felt they had successfully explained the origin of the various institutions in society by showing that all of these were the product of Economic Determinism, and they felt they had traced to its source the cause of strife, inequity and injustice among men—private property. Only one task now remained for the master architects—to apply this knowledge to a “plan of action” which would permanently solve the economic, political and social ills of all mankind.
The Communist Plan of Action
As Marx and Engels analyzed modern civilization they concluded that capitalistic society is rapidly reaching that point where a revolution is inevitable. This is the way they reasoned: After the overthrow of feudalism the capitalistic society came into being. At first it consisted primarily of individuals who owned their own land or their own workshops. Each man did his own work and reaped the economic benefits to which he was entitled. Then the industrial revolution came along and the private workshop was supplanted by the factory. Products no longer came from the private workshop but from the factory where the united effort of many individuals produced the commodity. Engels said manufacturing thereby became social production rather than private production. It was therefore wrong for private individuals to continue owning the factory because the factory had become a social institution. He argued that no private individual should get the profits from something which many people were required to produce.
“But,” critics asked, “do not the workers share in the profits of the factory through their wages?”
Marx and Engels did not believe that wages were adequate compensation for labor performed unless the workers received all the proceeds from the sale of the commodity. Since the hands of the workers produced the commodity they believed the workers should receive all the commodity was worth. They believed that the management and operation of a factory were only “clerical in nature” and that in the near future the working class should rise up and seize the factories or means of production and operate them as their own.
“But does not the investment of the capitalist entitle him to some profit? Without his willingness to risk considerable wealth would there be any factory?”
Marx and Engels answered this by saying that all wealth is created by the worker. Capital creates nothing. Marx and Engels believed that the reason certain men have been able to accumulate wealth is because they have taken away the fruits of the worker in the form of interest, rent or profits. They said this was “surplus value” which had been milked from the labor of men in the past and should be confiscated from the capitalists by the workers of the present.
Marx and Engels now dared to predict the ultimate trend of development in modern capitalistic civilization. They said that just as private workshops had been taken over by the factory, so the small factory would be taken over by the big combine. They said the monopoly of capital would continue until it was concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer men while the number of exploited workers would grow proportionately. And while a few were becoming richer and richer the exploited class would get poorer and poorer. They predicted that the members of the so-called middle class who own small shops and businesses would be squeezed out of economic existence because they could not compete with the mammoth business combines. They also predicted that the government would be the instrument of power which the great banks and industrial owners would use to protect their ill-gotten wealth and to suppress the revolt of the exploited masses.
In other words, all levels of society were being forced into the opposing camps of two antagonistic classes—the exploiting class of capitalistic property owners and the bitterly exploited class of the propertyless workers.
They further predicted that the revolutionary explosion between these two classes would be sparked by the inevitable advancement of technological improvements in capitalistic industry. The rapid invention of more and more efficient machines was bound to throw more and more workers out of employment and leave their families to starve or perhaps survive on a bare subsistence level. In due time there would be sufficient hatred, resentment and class antagonism to motivate the workers in forming militant battalions to overthrow their oppressors by violence so that the means of production and all private property could be seized by the workers and operated for their own advantage.
It is at this point that Communists and Socialists take different forks of the road. The Socialists have maintained from the beginning that centralized control of all land and industry can be achieved by peaceful legislation. Marx denounced this as a pipe dream. He held out for revolution. Nevertheless, he was quick to see some advantage in pushing forward any legislation which concentrated greater economic power in the central government. But he did not look upon such minor “victories of the Socialists” as anything more than a psychological softening up for the revolution which was to come.
Marx was particularly emphatic that this revolution must be completely ruthless to be successful. It must not be a “reform” because reforms always end up by “substituting one group of exploiters for another” and therefore the reformers feel “no need to destroy the old state machine; whereas the proletarian revolution removes all groups of exploiters from power and places in power the leader of the toilers and exploited… therefore it cannot avoid destroying the old state machine and replacing it by a new one.”{40}
Marx further justified the use of violence to bring about the new society because he felt that if moral principles were followed the revolution would be abortive. He pointed to the failure of the Socialist Revolution in France during 1871: “Two errors robbed the brilliant victory of its fruit. The proletariat stopped half-way: instead of proceeding with the ‘expropriation of the expropriators,’ it was carried away with dreams of establishing supreme justice in the country…. The second error was unnecessary magnanimity of the proletariat: instead of annihilating its enemies, it endeavored to exercise moral influence on them.”{41}
Marx attempted to soften the blow of his doctrine of violence by stating that he would be perfectly satisfied if the capitalistic state could be transformed into a Communist society by peaceful means; however, he pointed out that this would be possible only if the capitalists voluntarily surrendered their property and power to the representatives of the workers without a fight. He logically concludes that since this is rather unlikely it must be assumed that revolutionary violence is unavoidable.
Marx and Engels were also convinced that the revolution must be international in scope. They knew that all countries would not be ready for the revolution at the same time, but all Marxist writers have emphasized the “impossibility of the complete and final victory of socialism in a single country without the victory of the revolution in other countries.”{42}