Karl Johann Kautsky

“ The labor movement, which had almost ceased to exist upon the continent, after the blows of 1848–49, began in the middle of the sixties to stir on all sides, not only in Germany, but in France, Belgium and England. Even in Spain and Italy the laboring class began to move. To turn all these confused and unclear movements into one uniform, clear, conscious movement was the task which the International, founded in London in 1864, set before itself. This was a society for organization and propaganda among the proletariat of all lands, not an oath-bound association, as is many times asserted. ”

“ Engels saw in misery not merely the misery, as did the socialists of his time, but the germ of a higher form of society which it bore in its bosom. We who have grown up in the circle of modern socialistic thought can scarcely realize what a task was accomplished by the twenty-four-year-old Engels in his book, at a time when the miseries of the working class were either denied or bemoaned, but were never viewed as a portion of historical development. ”

“ Most of our friends, as soon as they recognize that socialism is not a matter of sympathy but of science, at once throw themselves with fiery energy upon "Capital," break out their teeth on the theory of value, and then drop everything. The result would be entirely different if they first took up Engels' pamphlets, and only after they had thoroughly studied these betook themselves to "Capital." ”

“ The great achievement of Marx and Engels lay in their bridging over the chasm between the theoretical socialism and the practical, political labor movement. They sought to utilize every power of the struggling proletariat to bring in the new society. In place of the exertions of individuals they substituted the power of the whole laboring class; for the good will of "friends of humanity" they substituted natural necessity, which forced the laboring class on pain of destruction to oppose the capitalist oppression. ”

“ The Social Democracy was the rising sun, and not only the proletariat turned toward it, but the whole mass of discontented elements within the possessing class—unappreciated geniuses who hoped to find among the laborers the recognition the bourgeois denied them, anti-vaccinationists, nature healers, writers of all kinds. ”

“ Suffice to say, at no other period of their lives have Marx and Engels given a better example of the characteristics previously referred to than at that time: the intimate union of practical and theoretical work, the combination of the scholar and the statesman, of the fighter and the critic. In the revolutionary struggle no one took a more decided part than they, and no one in that fight kept themselves freer from illusions. ”

“ It was altogether different with "The Condition of the Laboring Class in England." Engels was in an attitude of hostile criticism to both Chartism and Owenism, and demanded that both should unite upon a higher plane; the labor movement must be the power to bring Socialism into birth; Socialism must be the goal the labor movement sets before itself.
The English Utopian Socialism—Owenism—knew nothing of the labor movement in general—nothing of strikes, of trades unions or of political activity. The labor movement again—Chartism—acted wholly within the bounds of the existing wage system. ”

“ The present German economic "Science" only lives as it similtaneously plunders, snarls at or pretends to refute Marx and Engels. And the more one has secretly plundered the louder he snarls.
We have gone somewhat into details concerning the "Condition," partly because it is the first book of scientific socialism and partly because the edition is exhausted, and it is no longer accessible to the greater number of our comrades. We need not linger so long with the other writings of Engels. ”

“ It was shown that by every circulation the capitalist sold the produced value and surplus value, in order with the proceeds—after the deduction of what he consumed—to again buy means of production, and labor power, and to allow the production of new value and surplus value. ”

“ All those who believed that nothing is necessary for a revolution but a proper amount of enthusiasm, and that a revolution can be made at will whenever there is a desire for it—in short, the great majority of the revolutionary fugitives in England, who at that time represented the radical industrial opposition to the European reaction—rose up against Marx and Engels. ”

“ He showed how the revolution in the art of warfare had made the old form of struggle impossible, while a new weapon had been provided for the laboring class in the new political rights, especially the right of suffrage, against which the ruling class were helpless. "The irony of the world's history," says Engels, "places everything upon its head. We the 'revolutionaries,' the 'overturners,' we succeed better with the legal means than with illegality and force. ”

“ He has not undervalued the early socialists, as so many have done who have merely tasted scientific socialism. No one has spoken with greater modesty than he of his own learning, of which he created so brilliant a monument in his "Anti-Duhring."
Engels has always succeeded in keeping himself free from illusions. This he can do because behind him lies the experience of half a hundred years, in which the world has changed more than in any previous hundred years. ”

“ Opposed to individual efforts on a small scale they maintained that the new form of industry could only be secured through the common united efforts of the class-conscious proletariat of all lands. They pointed out that the new manner of production could not arise from individual autonomous associations, colonies or communities, but could only come through the appropriation of the means of production and the systematic organization of labor in the united nations of present capitalistic civilization. ”

“ In opposition to this Engels declared: "Socialism in its present form can never accomplish anything for the laboring class; it would never lower itself enough to stand for an instant on the basis of Chartism. The union of this Owenism with Chartism, the reproduction in an English form of the French communism, must be the next step, and has already in part begun. When this is accomplished the laboring class movement will have become for the first time a power in England." This union of socialism with the labor movement created modern scientific socialism. ”

“ The intellectual leadership of the League naturally fell upon Marx, although, as might be expected, Engels lent his assistance. He was able to devote his whole strength to the task since he had withdrawn from business and had settled in the neighborhood of London. He came just in the nick of time, for the great struggle of the Franco-German war had just begun. At that time the greatest demands were made upon the strength of the International, and it could dispense with no one.
The year 1870 brought a revolution, which in its acts of violence would well compare with any previous revolution. ”

“ Such a revolution is only possible in a period when these two factors—the modern productive powers and the bourgeois form of production—come into conflict. The various quarrels into which the representatives of the different Continental factions are now engaged, so far from giving rise to new revolutions, are themselves only possible because of the security of the immediate relations, and further—which the reaction does not know—just because these relations are so bourgeois. ”

“ What in reality did suffer shipwreck were the illusions which the existing struggle between the main contending parties concealed, and which made the people believe that laborers, manufacturers and artisans were brothers with common interests and a common goal. In reality they were only united in their struggle against the existing absolutism. The revolution revealed the opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and at the same time showed the political incompetency of the small property owners. ”

“ They advocated abstinence from all political action, and every class struggle, in order, through isolated "Propaganda of the Deed" by certain advanced individuals, to convince the mass of the people of the necessity and utility of socialism. These socialists were very peaceable people, who saw only misfortune in the necessary conflict between the laboring class and capitalists and not a lever of historical advance. They hoped to avoid this antagonism by educating the capitalist class concerning its true interests. ”

“ It became necessary to impose a rule upon the bourgeois-ideological elements that began to have an influence in the Social Democracy. One of the most prominent and gifted of these salon-socialists was unquestionably the Berlin privat-docent, Eugene Duhring, a man of great intellectual powers, who would have been of great significance had he possessed something more of the Marx-Engels power of self-criticism and less of the delusions and froth of the German literary world. ”

“ If we are not so foolish as to please them by allowing ourselves to be led into street fights, there remains nothing for them save to be broken to pieces upon this fatal legality." At its close Engels pointed out in his witty way how 1,600 years before, in the Roman Empire, a dangerous revolutionary party, the Christians, in spite of pursuits and "laws of exception" of all forms, grew into a host that became an army unconquerable by force, and finally "revolutionized" the Roman Empire itself. ”

“ If the conquerors and their friends viewed the revolution from above, the conquered naturally saw it from below. The Empire was swept away in France, and when the royalists, after the conclusion of peace attempted to betray the Republic, Paris arose in defense of its threatened freedom. ”

“ A second edition with the polemic portions omitted appeared in a few years under the title "The Developement of Socialism from Utopia to Science."
The occasion for the "Anti-Duhring" has been long forgotten. Not only is Duhring a thing of the past for the Social Democracy, but the whole throng of academic and platonic socialists have been frightened away by the anti-socialist legislation, which at least had the one good effect to show where the reliable supports of our movement are to be found. In spite of the change of conditions the book has not lest one iota of its significance to-day. ”

“ No one realizes better than he the possibilities of youth. No one is more indulgent of youthful mistakes. He is equally opposed to Utopianism and place-seeking and to undue regard for respectability. He objects quite as much to every assertive impotence that feels itself called upon to rescue humanity, and presses forward to a task for which it is not fitted, causing irreparable injury, and which, in its good nature, seeks to justify every foolishness. ”

“ It was difficult to distinguish these people from those industrial elements who came to us because of an actual interest in the proletariat, and not merely out of envy of the bourgeoisie. The younger and more inexperienced of the comrades welcomed these new-comers. It must be true that victory was not far away when doctors and professors betook themselves to the Social Democracy. ”

“ To follow out the method laid down in the first book, which dealt with the process of production in a masterly analysis of the process of circulation of capital, and develop from the material left behind the further course of surplus value, the division of profit into rent and entrepreneur wage, and the doctrine of ground rent, was a task that not only required the highest physical exertion, but a brain power not inferior to that of the original composer. ”

“ The complete freedom of contract, the right of suffrage, the normal labor day, or perchance the small agricultural holdings, were for the majority of the Chartists not weapons with which to overthrow the existing social order, but only a means to make the condition of the masses more endurable. ”

“ We cannot wish anything better, said Engels, than that existing relations be allowed to develop further in their present direction. Then our victory is certain within a reasonable time. The worst to happen would be a leap into uncertainty, which, while having the appearance of an advance, would in reality set us still further back; or that some event should put the Social Democracy to an extreme test before its strength were sufficiently developed ”

“ However disagreeable this knowledge was, Marx and Engels determined not only to accept it themselves but they had the courage to publish it, as they held it to be their task to destroy illusions, not to nourish them.
In their review of the events from May to October, written November 1st, 1850, they demonstrated that in trade and industry general prosperity ruled. "In the midst of this general prosperity," they wrote, "here the productive powers of the bourgeois society are developing as luxuriantly as is possible within bourgeois relations, it is impossible to talk of an economic revolution. ”

“ But whoever, like myself, has been active in this movement for over fifty years considers the labor springing out of such a movement an unavoidable immediate duty to be fulfilled. As in the sixteenth century, so in this agitated time there are those on the side of the reaction who are merely theorizers, and for this very reason such persons are not true theorists, but simply apologists for the reaction. ”

“ The shallow, fantastic, literary and academic world of our time, which studies socialism less in the works of its scientific defenders than in the police reports, found nothing in the "Condition" that suited its purposes except the prophecy of an early outbreak of an English revolution, and with much satisfaction pointed out the non-fulfillment of this prophecy. ”