1
i
1. "Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."(1)
First part of the paragraph: "Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture."
Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labour is performed with the pertinent objects and instruments. But a socialist programme cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the outset behaves towards nature, the primary source of all instruments and objects of labour, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labour becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; since precisely from the fact that labour is determined by nature, it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only with their permission, hence live only with their permission.
Let us now leave the sentence as it stands, or rather limps. What would one have expected in conclusion? Obviously this:
"Since labour is the source of all wealth, no one in society can appropriate wealth except as the product of labour. Therefore, if he himself does not work, he lives by the labour of others and also acquires his culture at the expense of the labour of others."
Instead of this, by means of the verbal rivet "and since" a second proposition is added in order to draw a conclusion from this and not from the first one.
Second part of the paragraph: "Useful labour is possible only in society and through society."
According to the first proposition, labour was the source of all wealth and all culture; therefore no society is possible without labour. Now we learn, conversely, that no "useful" labour is possible without society.
One could just as well have said that only in society can useless and even socially harmful labour become a gainful occupation, that only in society can one live by being idle, etc., etc.—in short, one could just as well have copied the whole of Rousseau.
And what is "useful" labour? Surely only labour which produces the intended useful result. A savage — and man was a savage after he had ceased to be an ape — who kills an animal with a stone, who collects fruits, etc., performs "useful" labour.
Thirdly. The conclusion: "And since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."
A fine conclusion! If useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong to society — and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the "condition" of labour, society.
In fact, this proposition has at all times been made use of by the champions of the state of society prevailing at any given time. First come the claims of the government and everything that sticks to it, since it is the social organ for the maintenance of the social order; then come the claims of the various kinds of private owners for the various kinds of private property are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired.
The first and second parts of the paragraph have some intelligible connection only in the following wording:
"Labour becomes the source of wealth and culture only as social labour", or, what is the same thing, "in and through society".
This proposition is incontestably correct, for although isolated labour (its material conditions presupposed) can create use values, it can create neither wealth nor culture.
But equally incontestable is the other proposition: "In proportion as labour develops socially, and becomes thereby a source of wealth and culture, poverty and destitution develop among the workers, and wealth and culture among the non-workers."
This is the law of all history hitherto. What, therefore, had to be done here, instead of setting down general phrases about "labour" and "society", was to prove concretely how in present capitalist society the material, etc., conditions have at last been created which enable and compel the workers to lift this historical curse.
In fact, however, the whole paragraph, bungled in style and content, is only there in order to inscribe the Lassallean catchword of the "undiminished proceeds of labour" as a slogan at the top of the party banner. I shall return later to the "proceeds of labour", "equal right", etc., since the same thing recurs in a somewhat different form further on.
2. "In present-day society, the means of labour are the monopoly of the capitalist class; the resulting dependence of the working class is the cause of misery and servitude in all their forms."
This sentence, borrowed from the Rules of the International, is incorrect in this "improved" edition.[109]
In present-day society the means of labour are the monopoly of the landowners (the monopoly of land ownership is even the basis of the monopoly of capital) and the capitalists. In the passage in question, the Rules of the International mention neither the one nor the other class of monopolists. They speak of the "monopoly of the means of labour, that is, the sources of life". The addition, "sources of life", makes it sufficiently clear that land is included in the means of labour.
The correction was introduced because Lassalle, for reasons now generally known,[110] attacked only the capitalist class and not the landowners. In England, the capitalist is mostly not even the owner of the land on which his factory stands.
3. "The emancipation of labour demands the raising of the means of labour to the common property of society and the collective regulation of the total labour with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labour."
"The raising of the means of labour to common property"! Ought obviously to read their "conversion into common property". But this only in passing.
8* What are "proceeds of labour"? The product of labour or its value? And in the latter case, is it the total value of the product or only that part of the value which labour has newly added to the value of the means of production consumed?
"Proceeds of labour" is a loose notion which Lassalle has put in the place of definite economic concepts.
What is "fair" distribution? Do not the bourgeois assert that present-day distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal concepts or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise from economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution?
To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase "fair distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together. The latter presupposes a society wherein "the means of labour are common property and the total labour is collectively regulated", and from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society".
"To all members of society"? To those who do not work as well? What remains then of "the undiminished proceeds of labour"? Only to those members of society who work? What remains then of "the equal right" of all members of society?
But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously mere phrases. The crucial point is this, that in this communist society every worker must receive his "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of labour".
Let us take first of all the words "proceeds of labour" in the sense of the product of labour; then the collective proceeds of labour are the total social product.
From this must now be deducted:
First, cover for replacement of the means of production used
u p -
Secondly, additional portion for expansion of production.
Thirdly, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, disturbances caused by natural factors, etc.
These deductions from the "undiminished proceeds of labour" are an economic necessity and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and party by com-putation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.
There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.
Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be again deducted from it:
First, the general costs of administration not directly appertaining to production.
This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops.
Secondly, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc.
From the outset this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society and it grows in proportion as the new society develops.
Thirdly, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.
Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the programme, under Lassallean influence, has alone in view in its narrow fashion, namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the collective.
The "undiminished proceeds of labour" have already unnotice-ably become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.
Just as the phrase of the "undiminished proceeds of labour" has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labour" disappear altogether.
Within the collective society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour. The phrase "proceeds of labour", objectionable even today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.
What we are dealing with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.
Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society— after the deductions have been made — exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. H e receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour costs. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form he receives back in another.
Here obviously the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is the exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption. But, as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity-equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.
Hence, equal right here is still in principle—bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange only exists on the average and not in the individual case.
In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly encumbered by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour. But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can work for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class distinctions, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises the unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity of the workers as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right by its nature can exist only as the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable by an equal standard only insofar as they are made subject to an equal criterion, are taken from a certain side only, for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Besides, one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, etc., etc. Thus, given an equal amount of work done, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, etc. To avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth-pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development which this determines.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of common wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!
I have dealt at greater length with the "undiminished proceeds of labour", on the one hand, and with "equal right" and "fair distribution", on the other, in order to show what a crime it is to attempt, on the one hand, to force on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while again perverting, on the other, the realistic outlook, which it cost so much effort to instil into the Party but which has now taken root in it, by means of ideological, legal and other trash so common among the Democrats and French Socialists.
Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it.
Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of capital and land ownership, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the collective property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. The vulgar socialists (and from them in turn a section of the Democrats) have taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?
4. "The emancipation of labour must be the work of the working class, in relation to which all other classes are only one reactionary mass."
The main clause is taken from the introductory words of the Rules of the International,(2) but "improved". There it is said: "The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves"; here, on the contrary, the "working class" has to emancipate — what? "Labour". Let him understand who can.
In compensation, the subordinate clause, on the other hand, is a Lassallean quotation of the first water: "in relation to which (the working class) all other classes are only one reactionary mass".
In the Communist Manifesto it is said: "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product."(3)
The bourgeoisie is here conceived as a revolutionary class — as the bearer of large-scale industry — in relation to the feudal lords and the middle estates, who desire to maintain all social positions that are the creation of obsolete modes of production. Thus they do not form together with the bourgeoisie only one reactionary mass.
On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary in relation to the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the basis of large-scale industry, it strives to strip off from production the capitalist character that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate. But the Manifesto adds that the "middle estates" are becoming revolutionary "in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat".
From this point of view, therefore, it is again nonsense to say that they, "together with the bourgeoisie", and with the feudal lords into the bargain, "form only one reactionary mass" in relation to the working class.
Did anyone proclaim to the artisans, small manufacturers, etc., and peasants during the last elections: In relation to us you, together with the bourgeoisie and feudal lords, form only one reactionary mass?[111]
Lassalle knew the Communist Manifesto by heart, as his faithful followers know the gospels written by him. If, therefore, he has falsified it so grossly, this has occurred only to put a good colour on his alliance with absolutist and feudal opponents against the bourgeoisie.
In the above paragraph, moreover, his oracular saying is dragged in by the hair, without any connection with the botched quotation from the Rules of the International. Thus it is here simply an impertinence, and indeed not at all displeasing to Mr. Bismarck, one of those cheap pieces of insolence in which the Marat of Berlin [112] deals.
5. "The working class strives for its emancipation first of all within the framework of the present-day national state, conscious that the necessary result of its efforts, which are common to the workers of all civilised countries, will be the international brotherhood of peoples."
Lassalle, in opposition to the Communist Manifesto and to all earlier socialism, conceived the workers' movement from the narrowest national standpoint. He is being followed in this — and that after the work of the International!
It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organise itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle. To this extent its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, "in form".(4) But the "framework of the present-day national state", for instance, the German Empire, is itself in its turn economically "within the framework of the world market", politically "within the framework of the system of states". Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Mr. Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely in his pursuing his kind of international policy.
And to what does the German workers' party reduce its internationalism? To the consciousness that the result of its efforts "will be the international brotherhood of peoples"—a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom, which is intended to pass as equivalent to the international brotherhood of the working classes in the joint struggle against the ruling classes and their governments. So not a word about the international functions of the German working class! And it is thus that it is to defy its own bourgeoisie — which is already linked up in brotherhood against it with the bourgeois of all other countries — and Mr. Bismarck's international policy of conspiracy!
In fact, the internationalism of the programme stands even infinitely below that of the Free Trade Party. The latter also asserts that the result of its efforts will be "the international brotherhood of peoples". But it also does something to make trade international and by no means contents itself with the consciousness — that all peoples are carrying on trade at home.
The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the "International Working Men's Association". This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for that activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave, but which was no longer realisable in its first historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.
Bismarck's Norddeutsche was absolutely right when it announced, to the satisfaction of its master, that the German workers' party had forsworn internationalism in the new programme.[113]
II
il
"Starting from these basic principles, the German workers' party strives by all legal means for the free state—and—socialist society; the abolition of the wage system together with the iron law of wages—and — exploitation in every form; the elimination of all social and political inequality."
I shall return to the "free" state later. So, in future, the German workers' party has got to believe in Lassalle's "iron law of wages" [114]! That this may not be lost, the nonsense is perpetrated of speaking of the "abolition of the wage system" (it should read: system of wage labour) "together with the iron law of wages". If I abolish wage labour, then naturally I abolish its laws too, whether they are of "iron" or sponge. But Lassalle's attack on wage labour turns almost solely on this so-called law. In order, therefore, to prove that the Lassallean sect has won, the "wage system" must be abolished " together with the iron law of wages" and not without it.
It is well known that nothing of the "iron law of wages" is Lassalle's except the word "iron" borrowed from Goethe's "eternal, iron, great laws".(1) The word iron is a label by which the true believers recognise one another. But if I take the law with Lassalle's stamp on it and, consequently, in his sense, then I must also take it with his substantiation. And what is that? As Lange already showed, shortly after Lassalle's death, it is the Malthusian theory of population (preached by Lange himself).(2) But if this theory is correct, then again I cannot abolish the law even if I abolish wage labour a hundred times over, because the law then governs not only the system of wage labour but every social system. Basing themselves directly on this, the economists have been proving for fifty years and more that socialism cannot abolish destitution, which has its basis in nature, but can only make it general, distribute it simultaneously over the whole surface of society!
But all this is not the main thing. Quite apart from the false Lassallean formulation of the law, the truly outrageous retrogres-sion consists in the following:
Since Lassalle's death there has asserted itself in our Party the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be, namely the value, or price, of labour, but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labour power. Thereby the whole bourgeois conception of wages hitherto, as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this conception, was thrown overboard once for all and it was made clear that the wage-worker has permission to work for his own subsistence, that is, to live only insofar as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter's co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns on increasing this gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labour power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. And after this understanding has gained more and more ground in our Party, one returns to Lassalle's dogmas although one must have known that Lassalle did not know what wages were, but following in the wake of the bourgeois economists took the appearance for the essence of the matter.
It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the programme of the rebellion: Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum!
Does not the mere fact that the representatives of our Party were capable of perpetrating such a monstrous attack on the understanding that has spread among the mass of our Party prove by itself with what criminal levity and with what lack of conscience they set to work in drawing up this compromise programme!
Instead of the indefinite concluding phrase of the paragraph, "the elimination of all social and political inequality", it ought to have been said that with the abolition of class distinctions all social and political inequality arising from them would disappear of itself.
III
"The German workers' party, in order to pave the way for the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers' cooperative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the working people. The producers' co-operative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organisation of the total labour will arise from them."
After the Lassallean "iron law of wages", the panacea of the prophet. The way for it is "paved" in worthy fashion. In place of the existing class struggle appears a newspaper scribbler's phrase: "the social question", for the "solution" of which one "paves the way". Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of the transformation of society, the "socialist organisation of the total labour" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies which the state, not the worker, "calls into being". It is worthy of Lassalle's imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway![115]
From the remnants of a sense of shame, "state aid" has been put—"under the democratic control of the working people".
In the first place, the "working people" in Germany consist in their majority of peasants, and not of proletarians.
Secondly, "democratic" means in German "volksherrschaftlich" ["by the rule of the people"]. But what does "control of the working people by the rule of the people" mean? And particularly in the case of working people who, through these demands that they put to the state, express their full consciousness that they neither rule nor are ripe for rule!
It would be superfluous to deal here with the criticism of the recipe prescribed by Bûchez in the reign of Louis Philippe in opposition to the French Socialists and accepted by the reactionary workers of the Atelier. The chief offence does not lie in having inscribed this specific nostrum in the programme, but in taking a retrograde step at all from the standpoint of a class movement to that of a sectarian movement.
That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to transform the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois.
IV
I come now to the democratic section.
A. "The free basis of the state."
First of all, according to II, the German workers' party strives for "the free state".(1)
Free state — what is it? It is by no means the purpose of the workers, who have got rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state "free". In the German Empire the "state" is almost as "free" as in Russia. Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superim-posed upon society into one completely subordinate to it, and even today forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state".
The German workers' party — at least if it adopts the programme — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep, in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own "intellectual, ethical and libertarian bases".
And what of the wild abuse which the programme makes of the words "present-day state", "present-day society", and of the still more riotous misconception it creates in regard to the state to which it addresses its demands?
"Present-day society" is capitalist society, which exists in all civilised countries, more or less free from medieval admixture, more or less modified by the particular historical development of each country, more or less developed. On the other hand, the "present-day state" changes with a country's frontier. It is different in the Prusso-German Empire from that in Switzerland, and different in England from that in the United States. "The present-day state" is, therefore, a fiction.
Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilised countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common that they are based on modern bourgeois society, more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common. In this sense it is possible to speak of the "present-day state", in contrast with the future, in which its present root, bourgeois society, will have died off.
The question then arises: what transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word people with the word state.
Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Now the programme deals neither with this nor with the future state of communist society.
Its political demands contain nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people's militia, etc. They are a mere echo of the bourgeois People's Party, of the League of Peace and Freedom. They are all demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic presentation, have already been implemented. Only the state to which they belong does not lie within the borders of the German Empire, but in Switzerland, the United States, etc. This sort of "state of the future" is a present-day state, although existing outside the "framework" of the German Empire.
But one thing has been forgotten. Since the German workers' party expressly declares that it acts within "the present-day national state", hence within its own state, the Prusso-German Empire — its demands would indeed otherwise be largely meaning-less, since one only demands what one has not yet got — it should not have forgotten the chief thing, namely that all those pretty little gewgaws rest on the recognition of what is called sovereignty of the people and hence are appropriate only in a democratic republic.
Since one has not the courage — and wisely so, for the circumstances demand caution — to demand the democratic republic, as the French workers' programmes under Louis Philippe and under Louis Napoleon did, one should not have resorted to the subterfuge, neither "honest"(2) nor decent, of demanding things which have meaning only in a democratic republic from a state which is nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with a feudal admixture and at the same time already influenced by the bourgeoisie, and bureaucratically carpentered, and then assuring this state into the bargain that one imagines one will be able to force such things upon it "by legal means".
Even vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium in the democratic republic and has no suspicion that it is precisely in this last form of state of bourgeois society that the class struggle has to be fought out to a conclusion — even it towers mountains above this kind of democratism which keeps within the limits of what is permitted by the police and not permitted by logic.
That, in fact, by the word "state" is meant the government machine or the state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society through division of labour, is shown alone by the words
"the German workers' party demands as the economic basis of the state: a single progressive income tax," etc.
Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of nothing else. In the state of the future existing in Switzerland, this demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist society. It is, therefore, nothing remarkable that the Liverpool FINANCIAL REFORMERS, bourgeois headed by Gladstone's brother,(3) are putting forward the same demand as the programme.[116]
B. "The German workers' party demands as the intellectual and ethical basis of the state:
1. "Universal and equal education of the people by the state. Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction."
Equal education of the people? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this that one is dealing) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — the elementary school— that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage labourers but of the peasants as well?
"Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction". The former exists even in Germany, the latter in Switzerland and in the United States in the case of elementary schools. If in some states of the latter country "upper" educational institutions are also "free", that only means in fact defraying the cost of the education of the upper classes from the general tax receipts. Incidentally, the same holds good for "free administration of justice" demanded under A, 5. The administration of criminal justice is to be had free everywhere; that of civil justice is concerned almost exclusively with conflicts over property and hence affects almost exclusively the propertied classes. Are they to carry on their litigation at the expense of the national coffers?
The paragraph on the schools should at least have demanded technical schools (theoretical and practical) in combination with the elementary school.
"Education of the people by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the subjects of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfilment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and Church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.
But the whole programme, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles, or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.
"Freedom of science" says a paragraph, of the Prussian Constitution.[3] Why, then, here?
"Freedom of conscience"! If one desired at this time of the Kulturkampf(4) to remind liberalism of its old catchwords, it surely could have been done only in the following form: Everyone should be able to attend to his religious as well as his bodily needs without the police sticking their noses in. But the workers' party ought at any rate in this connection to have expressed its awareness of the fact that bourgeois "freedom of conscience" is nothing but the toleration of all possible kinds of religious unfreedom of conscience, and that for its part it endeavours rather to liberate the conscience from the witchery of religion. But one chooses not to transgress the "bourgeois" level.
I have now come to the end, for the appendix that now follows in the programme does not constitute a characteristic component part of it. Hence I can be very brief here.
2. "Normal working day."
In no other country has the workers' party limited itself to such a vague demand, but has always fixed the length of the working day that it considers normal under the given circumstances.
3. "Restriction of female labour and prohibition of child labour." The standardisation of the working day must include the restriction of female labour, insofar as it relates to the duration, breaks, etc., of the working day; otherwise it could only mean the exclusion of female labour from branches of industry that are especially unhealthy for the female body or are morally objectionable to the female sex. If that is what was meant, it should have been said.
"Prohibition of child labour"! Here it is absolutely essential to state the age limit
A general prohibition of child labour is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish.
Its implementation — if it were possible — would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other precautionary stipulations for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labour with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.
by a court of law; that any worker can have them prosecuted for neglect of duty; that they must belong to the medical profession.
5. "Regulation of prison labour."
A petty demand in a general workers' programme. In any case, it should have been clearly stated that there is no intention from fear of competition to allow ordinary criminals to be treated like beasts, and especially that there is no desire to deprive them of their sole means of betterment, productive labour. This was surely the least one might have expected from Socialists.
6. "An effective liability law."
It should have been stated what is meant by an "effective" liability law.
Let it be noted, incidentally, that in speaking of the normal working day the part of factory legislation that deals with health regulations and safety measures, etc., has been overlooked. The liability law only comes into operation when these regulations are infringed.
In short, this appendix too is distinguished by slovenly editing. Dixi et salvavi animam meam.*
Endnotes
[109] Marx is referring to the following passage in the Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association: "That the economical subjection of the man of labour to the monopoliser of the means of labour, 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" (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 441).
[110] 110 An allusion to Lassalle's secret contacts with the Bismarck government (mid-May 1863-February 1864). He promised support to the Prussian government in its struggle against the liberal bourgeoisie in exchange for the introduction of universal suffrage in the country.
[111] 111 The reference is to the address "An die Parteigenossen!" (Der Volksstaat, No. 105, October 31, 1873) issued by the leadership of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party before the elections to the German Reichstag on January 10, 1874.
[112] 112 An ironical reference to Hasselmann, the editor-in-chief of the Neuer Social-Demokrat
[113] 113 In its editorial article (the "Politischer Tagesbericht" section) the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 67, March 20, 1875, wrote in connection with the draft programme of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany that "the Social-Democratic propaganda has become cautious in some ways: it has disavowed internationalism".
[114] 114 See Note 103.
[115] See Note 96.
[116] H6 The Liverpool Financial Reform Association was founded in 1848, and for a long time Robertson Gladstone was its President. Its aim was to "advocate the adoption of a simple and equitable system of direct taxation, fairly levied upon property and income, in lieu of the present unequal, complicated, and expensively-collected duties upon commodities" ( Tracts of the Liverpool Financial Reform Association, Liverpool, 1851, p. VII).
[3] 3 A reference to the assassination attempt on the Russian Emperor Alexander II made by Antoni Berezowski in Paris in 1867. Berezowski was sentenced to twenty years of hard labour.