February 15, 1845
Gentlemen!
At our last meeting I was accused of taking my examples and illustrations almost exclusively from foreign countries, namely from England. It was said that England and France were of no concern to us, we lived in Germany and it was our business to prove the necessity and advantages of communism for Germany. We were likewise accused of not having sufficiently demonstrated the historical necessity of communism in general. This is quite correct and it was not possible to do otherwise. A historical necessity cannot be demonstrated in as short a time as the congruence of two triangles. It can only be done by study and inquiry into all kinds of far-reaching presuppositions. I will, however, today do my best to answer these two accusations. I will try to show that communism is, if not a historical, at any rate an economic necessity for Germany.
Let us, first of all, consider the present social situation in Germany. It is known that a great deal of poverty exists among us. Silesia and Bohemia have spoken for^themselves. The Rheinische Zeitung had much to tell us about the poverty existing in the Mosel and Eifel areas.[3] Large-scale and continuous poverty has prevailed in the Erzgebirge from time immemorial. It is no better in the Senne and in the Westphalian linen districts. There are complaints from all parts of Germany and nothing else is to be expected. Our proletariat is numerous and must be so, as we must realise from the most superficial examination of our social situation. It is in the
Karl Marx, "Justification of the Correspondent from the Mosel" (see present edition, Vol. 1, pp. 332-58).—Ed.
nature of things that there should be a numerous proletariat in the industrial districts. Industry cannot exist without a large number of workers who are wholly at its disposal, work exclusively for it and renounce every other way of making a living. Under conditions of competition, industrial employment makes any other employment impossible. For this reason we find in all industrial districts a proletariat too numerous and too obvious for its existence to be denied.— But in the agricultural districts, on the other hand, many people assert, no proletariat exists. But how is this possible? In areas where big landownership prevails such a proletariat is necessary; the big farms need farm-hands and servant girls and cannot exist without proletarians. In areas where the land has been parcelled out the rise of a propertyless class cannot be avoided either; the estates are divided up to a certain point, then the division comes to an end; and as then only one member of the family can take over the farm the others must, of course, become proletarians, propertyless workers. This dividing up usually proceeds until the farm becomes too small to feed a family and so a class of people comes into existence which, like the small middle class in the towns, is in transition from the possessing to the non-possessing class, and which is prevented by its property from taking up any other occupation, and yet cannot live on it. In this class, too, great poverty prevails.
That this proletariat is bound steadily to increase in numbers is guaranteed by the increasing impoverishment of the middle classes of which I spoke in detail last week, and by the tendency of capital to become concentrated in a few hands. I do not need to return to these points today, and will only remark that these causes which continually produce and multiply the proletariat will remain the same and will have the same consequences as long as there is competition. The proletariat must under all circumstances not only continue to exist but also enlarge itself continually, become an ever more threatening power in our society as long as we continue to produce each on his own and in opposition to everyone else. But one day the proletariat will attain a level of power and of insight at which it will no longer tolerate the pressure of the entire social structure always bearing down on its shoulders, when it will demand a more even distribution of social burdens and rights; and then — unless human nature has changed by that time — a social revolution will be inevitable.
This is a question which our economists have not as yet gone into at all. They do not concern themselves with the distribution but only with the production of the national wealth. However, let us leave aside for the moment the fact that, as we have just demonstrated, a social revolution is the consequence of competition; let us consider the individual forms in which competition appears, the different economic possibilities for Germany, and see what the consequences of each must be.
Germany — or the German Customs Union,[94] to be more precise — has a juste-milieu customs tariff at the moment. Our duties are too low to constitute a real protective tariff and too high for free trade. So three things are possible. Either we go over to free trade completely, or we protect our industry by adequate tariffs, or we retain the existing system. Let us examine each of these possibilities.
If we proclaim free trade and do away with our tariffs, then our whole industry with the exception of a few branches will be ruined. There can then be no question whatsoever of cotton spinning, of mechanised weaving, of most branches of the cotton and woollen industry, of important branches of the silk industry, of almost all production and processing of iron. The workers suddenly made destitute in all these branches would be hurled in masses into agriculture and the debris of industry, pauperism would grow out of the very ground everywhere, the centralisation of property in the hands of a few would be speeded up by such a crisis and, judging by the events in Silesia, the result of this crisis would of necessity be a social revolution.
Or we provide ourselves with protective tariffs. These have lately become the darlings of most of our industrialists and therefore deserve closer examination. Herr List has brought the wishes of our capitalists into a system(1) and I should like to deal for a little while with this system, now almost generally adopted by them as a credo. Herr List proposes gradually increasing protective tariffs which are finally to become high enough to guarantee the home market for the manufacturers; they should then remain at that level for a time and then be gradually reduced again so that finally, after a number of years, all tariffs are abolished. Let us assume for a moment that this plan is adopted and increasing protective tariffs are decreed. Industry will expand, idle capital will rush into industrial undertakings, the demand for workers will increase and so will wages along with it, the poor-houses will empty, and to all appearances everything will be in a most flourishing state. This will continue until our industry has suffi-cierltly expanded to supply the home market. It cannot expand any further, for since it cannot maintain its hold on the home market without protection it will be even less able to do anything against foreign competition in neutral markets. But, says Herr List, by then home industry will be strong enough to require less protection and the reduction of tariffs can commence. Let us agree with this for a moment. The tariffs are reduced. Protection is decreased to such an extent — if not by the first reduction then certainly by the second or third — that foreign, let us say right away, English, industry can compete with our own in the German market. Herr List himself wishes this. But what will be the result of all this? From then on, German industry will have to endure, along with the English, all the fluctuations, all the crises, of the latter. As soon as the overseas markets are glutted with English goods, the English will throw the whole of their surplus stocks on the German market, the nearest one available, just as they are doing now, and as Herr List reports with great emotion, and so transform the German Customs Union into their "second-hand shop" once more. Then English industry will soon rise again because it has the whole world for its market, because the whole world cannot do without it, while German industry is not indispensable even for its own market and has to fear English competition in its own house and is labouring under a profusion of English goods thrown to its customers during the crisis. Then our industry will have to taste to the dregs all the bad times experienced by the English industry while being able to have only a modest share in the latter's boom periods — in short, we shall be in exactly the same position as we are now. And to come straightaway to the final result, there will then ensue the same depression in which our half-protected industries now find themselves, then one establishment after another will go under without new ones arising, then our machines will become obsolete without our being able to replace them with new and better ones, then the standstill will be transformed into retrogression and, according to Herr List's own assertion, one industry after another will decay and finally collapse altogether. But then we shall have a numerous proletariat which will have been created by industry and will now have no food, no work; and then, gentlemen, this proletariat will confront the propertied class with the demand to be given work and to be fed.
This is what will happen if the protective tariffs are reduced. Let us now assume that they are not reduced but remain in operation and that it is proposed to wait until competition between the home manufacturers makes them illusory and then to reduce them. The result of this will be that as soon as German industry is in a position to supply the German market completely it will stand still. New establishments will not be needed since the existing ones suffice for the market and, as has been said above, new markets are out of the question so long as protection is needed at all. But an industry which does not expand cannot improve itself. It remains stationary both internally and externally. For it there is no such thing as improving the machinery. The old machines cannot just be scrapped, and there are no new establishments which could make use of new ones. Meanwhile other nations go forward, and the standstill in our industry again becomes retrogression. The English, as a result of their advance, will soon be in a position to produce so cheaply that they can compete with our backward industry in our own market despite the protective tariffs, and since in competition as in every other kind of struggle victory always goes to the strongest, our ultimate defeat is certain. The same situation then arises about which I have just been speaking: the artificially created proletariat will demand from the property-owners something which, so long as they wish to remain exclusive owners, they are unable to provide, and social revolution begins.
There is yet another possibility, namely, the very improbable one that we Germans will be able owing to protective tariffs to bring our industry to a point at which it can compete with the English without protection. Let us assume that this is so, what would be the result? As soon as we begin to compete with the English in foreign, neutral markets, a life-and-death struggle will arise between our industry and that of the English. They will muster all their strength to keep us out of the markets they have supplied hitherto; they will have to do so because now they will be attacked at their life's source, at the most dangerous spot. And with all the means at their disposal, with all the advantages of a hundred-year-old industry, they will succeed in defeating us. They will keep our industry limited to our own market and thus make it stationary — and then the same situation will arise which has already been outlined; we shall remain stationary, the English will stride forward, and our industry, in view of its unavoidable decay, will not be in a position to feed the proletariat it will have artificially created — the social revolution begins.
But assuming that we could beat the English even in neutral markets, that we were to win from them one trade outlet after another — what would we have gained in this well-nigh impossible case? At best we should repeat the industrial development which England went through before us, and sooner or later we should arrive at the point which England has now reached — namely the eve of the social revolution. But in all probability it would not take as long as that. As a result of the continual victories of German industry that of the English would necessarily be ruined and this would only speed up the mass uprising of the proletariat against the propertied classes, which is imminent in England in any case. Rapidly spreading destitution would drive the English workers to revolution, and as things stand now, such a social revolution would have enormous repercussions in the continental countries, notably in France and Germany, which must be all the greater the more a proletariat is artificially produced by forcing the pace of industrial development in Germany. Such a revolution would immediately become a European one and would violently upset our manufacturers' dreams of a German industrial monopoly. And that German and English industry should exist peacefully side by side is made impossible if only by competition. I repeat, every industry must advance in order not to lag behind and go under; it must expand, conquer new markets, become enlarged by the addition of new establishments in order to be able to advance. But as no new markets are being won since the opening up of China,[95] and only better exploitation of the existing markets is possible, and as the expansion of industry will therefore proceed more slowly in future than it has done up to now, England can tolerate a competitor even less now than it could in the past. It must hold down the industry of all other countries in order to protect its own industry from ruin. For England the maintenance of industrial monopoly is no longer merely a question of a greater or lesser profit, it has become a question of life or death. The competitive struggle between nations is, in any case, much fiercer, much more decisive than that between individuals, because it is a more concentrated struggle, a struggle between masses, which can only be ended by the decisive victory of one side and the decisive defeat of the other. And for this reason, such a struggle between us and the English, no matter what the outcome, would be of no benefit either to our or to the English industrialists but, as I have shown, would only bring a social revolution in its train.
We have thus seen, gentlemen, what Germany can expect in all possible cases both from free trade and from protection. We still have, however, one economic possibility open to us, namely, that we continue with the juste-milieu tariffs now in operation. But we have already seen what the results would be. One branch of our industry after another would collapse, the industrial workers
10-762 would become destitute, and when the destitution reached a certain point they would explode into a revolution against the propertied classes.
So you see, gentlemen, substantiated also in detail what in the beginning, proceeding from competition in general, I set out in general terms — namely, that the unavoidable result of our existing social relations, under all circumstances, and in all cases, will be a social revolution. With the same certainty with which we can develop from given mathematical principles a new mathematical proposition, with the same certainty we can deduce from the existing economic relations and the principles of political economy the imminence of social revolution. Let us, however, look at this upheaval a little closer; what form will it take, what will be its results, in what ways will it differ from the previous violent upheavals? A social revolution, gentlemen, is something quite different from the political revolutions which have taken place so far. It is not directed, as these have been, against the property of monopoly, but against the monopoly of property; a social revolution, gentlemen, is the open war of the poor against the rich. And such a struggle, in which all the mainsprings and causes, which in previous historical conflicts lay dark and hidden at the bottom, operate openly and without concealment, such a struggle, to be sure, threatens to be far fiercer and bloodier than all those that preceded it. The result of this struggle can be twofold. Either the rebellious party only attacks the appearance, not the essence, only the form, not the thing itself, or it goes for the thing itself, grasps the evil itself by the root. In the first case private property will be allowed to continue and will only be distributed differently, so that the causes which have led to the present situation remain in operation and must sooner or later bring about a similar situation and another revolution. But, gentlemen, is this possible? Has there been a revolution which did not really carry out what it was out for? The English revolution realised both the religious and the political principles whose suppression by Charles I caused it to break out; the French bourgeoisie in its fight against the aristocracy and the old monarchy achieved everything that it aimed for, made an end to all the abuses which drove it to insurrection. And should the insurrection of the poor cease before poverty and its causes have been eliminated? It is not possible, gentlemen; it would be flying in the face of all historical experience to suppose such a thing. Furthermore, the level of education of the workers, especially in England and France, forbids us to consider this possible. There only remains, then, the other alternative, namely, that the future social revolution will deal with the real causes of want and poverty, of ignorance and crime, that it will therefore carry through a real social reform. And this can only happen by the proclamation of the principles of communism. Just consider, gentlemen, the ideas which actuate the worker in those countries where the worker too thinks. Look at France, at the different sections of the labour movement, whether they are not all communistic; go to England and listen to the kind of proposals being made to the workers for the improvement of their position— are they not all based on the principle of common property; study the different systems of social reform and how many will you find that are not communistic? Of all the systems which are still of any importance today, the only one which is not communistic is that of Fourier, who devoted more attention to the social organisation of human activity than to the distribution of its products. All these facts justify the conclusion that a future social revolution will end with the implementation of the principles of communism and hardly permit any other possibility.
If, gentlemen, these conclusions are correct, if the social revolution and practical communism are the necessary result of our existing conditions — then we will have to concern ourselves above all with the measures by which we can avoid a violent and bloody overthrow of the social conditions. And there is only one means, namely, the peaceful introduction or at least preparation of communism. If we do not want the bloody solution of the social problem, if we do not want to permit the daily growing contradiction between the education and the condition of pur proletarians to come to a head, which, according to all our experience of human nature, will mean that this contradiction will be solved by brute force, desperation and thirst for revenge, then, gentlemen, we must apply ourselves seriously and without prejudice to the social problem; then we must make it our business to contribute our share towards humanising the condition of the modern helots. And if it should perhaps appear to some of you that the raising of the hitherto abased classes will not be possible without an abasement of your own condition, then you ought to bear in mind that what is involved is to create for all people such a condition that everyone can freely develop his human nature and live in a human relationship with his neighbours, and has no need to fear any violent shattering of his condition; it must be borne in mind that what some individuals have to sacrifice is not their real human enjoyment of life, but only the semblance of this enjoyment produced by our bad conditions, something which conflicts
10* with the reason and the heart of those who now enjoy these apparent advantages. Far from wishing to destroy real human life with all its requirements and needs, we wish on the contrary really to bring it into being. And if, even apart from this, you will only seriously consider for a moment what the consequences of our present situation are bound to be, into what labyrinths of contradictions and disorders it is leading us — then, gentlemen, you will certainly find it worth the trouble to study the social question seriously and thoroughly. And if I can induce you to do this, I shall have achieved the purpose of my talk.
Delivered in Elberfeld Printed according to the journal on February 8 and 15, 1845 „ , , . , , . r ,. , r , r. ' Published in English lor the lirst Published in Rheinische Jahrbücher zur time gesellschaftlichen Reform, 1845, Bd. I
Endnotes
[3] Here and elsewhere Engels quotes Reichardt's reviews of C. Briiggemann's book, Preussens Beruf in der deutschen Staats-Entwickelung, und die nächsten Bedingungen zu seiner Erfüllung, Berlin, 1843 and A. Benda's Katechismus für wahlberechtigte Bürger in Preussen, Berlin, 1843. Both reviews were published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Heft VI, May 1844.
[94] The Customs Union (Zollverein) of the German states (initially they numbered 18), which established a common customs frontier, was founded in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced most of the German states, with the exception of Austria, the Hansa cities (Bremen, Lübeck, Hamburg) and a few small states. Brought into being by the demand for an all-German market, the Customs Union contributed to Germany's eventual political unification.
[95] In 1842, as a result of the so-called first Opium War, which Britain had been waging against China since 1839, the unequal Nanking Treaty was imposed; one of the clauses envisaged the ppening to English trade of five Chinese cities: Canton, Shanghai, Amoy, Ninbo and Fuchou.