Proletarian revolution

“ And when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat burst forth, Marx, in spite of the failure of that movement, in spite of its short life and its patent weakness, began to study what political forms it had disclosed.
The Commune was the form "discovered at last" by the proletarian revolution, under which the economic liberation of labor can proceed. The Commune was the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to break up the bourgeois State, and constitutes the political form, "discovered at last" which can and must take the place of the broken machine. ”

“ It is not proper to give the name of our precursors to those who followed ways which they later had to abandon, or to those who, to speak without metaphor, formulated doctrines and started movements, doubtless explicable by the times and circumstances of their birth, but which were later outgrown by the doctrine of critical communism, which is the theory of the proletarian revolution. ”

“ A year after the proletarian revolution in the capitals, and under its influence and with its assistance, the proletarian revolution began in the remote rural districts, and it has finally consolidated the power of the Soviets and Bolshevism, and has finally proved there is no force in the country that can withstand it. ”

“ And for such a struggle a strong, wide, well-constructed organisation is required, having at its disposal all the means of fighting. An organisation of this kind is the proletarian State, the power of the workers. The proletarian State, similar to other States, is an organisation of the dominant class (the dominating class is here the working class) , and an organisation of force over the bourgeoisie, as a means of putting an end to the bourgeoisie and getting rid of it. ”

“ The working class movement itself never is independent, never is of an exclusively proletarian character until all the different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodelled the State according to their wants. ”

“ In the ill-fated revolution of 1848 in Germany, the proletariat again emerged, as the left wing of the revolution, as the one aggressive force in the revolution, crushed by the betrayals and cowardice of the bourgeois liberals who united with the monarchic reaction. Again, in the French Revolution of 1848, in Paris, the proletariat emerged as the carrier of aggressive revolutionary action and a program of economic revolution, but crushed ruthlessly by the bourgeois reaction. ”

“ In this broad development of Marxism and in this increase of the proletarian movement in the limited forms of political action, has there not been, as some assert, an alteration from the militant [Pg 42] character of the original form of critical communism? Has there not been a passing from revolution to the self-styled evolution? ”

“ The revolutionary Socialists, on the contrary, represent the new facts of the labor movement, as determined by the epoch of Imperialism and the emergence to consciousness and action of the great industrial proletariat, the masses of unskilled labor. Imperialism, in its form of expression as State Capitalism, has united into one reactionary bloc all layers of the ruling class, including skilled labor; this unity has swept along with it the dominant Socialism, representing skilled labor and the small bourgeoisie. ”

“ The fusion of knowledge and action must be effected within the historical struggle itself, in such a way that each depends on the other for its validation. The proletarian class is formed into a subject in its process of organizing revolutionary struggles and in its reorganization of society at the moment of revolution — this is where the practical conditions of consciousness must exist, conditions in which the theory of praxis is confirmed by becoming practical theory. ”

“ Here the Writer challenges all philosophers, both bourgeois and pseudo-socialist, by claiming that—now and hereafter—Wherever it is possible for the bourgeosie to rule the proletariat, it is possible for that proletariat to accomplish its industrial freedom by revolution. ”

“ In the second place, when it had grown in power and importance, when hope and ambition were stirring in the hearts of the proletariat, when the different revolutionary factions of the bourgeoisie were exhausted or discredited by their internal dissensions, the working class tried to take possession of the revolution and turn it to its own uses, by a sort of coup de surprise. ”

“ This affirmation, that the proletariat is a necessary result of modern society, has for its mission to succeed the bourgeoisie, and to succeed it as the producing force of a new social order in which class antagonisms shall disappear, makes of the Manifesto a characteristic epoch in the general course of history. It is a revolution—but not in the sense of an apocalypse or a promised millennium. ”

“ We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class ”

“ Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and Proletarian Dictatorship. ”

“ The only two classes that really correspond to Marx’s theory, the two pure classes that the entire analysis of Capital brings to the fore, are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. These are also the only two revolutionary classes in history, but operating under very different conditions. The bourgeois revolution is done. ”

“ The forces of social evolution have thus already created, as far at least as this country is concerned, that other indispensable factor for the success of the impending Social Revolution. They have created that class, the proletariat, whose mission it is and which is strong enough to free itself and the whole of mankind from exploitation and oppression by the capitalists, the master class of our time. ”

“ In a modern democratic State, the conquest of the political power by the proletariat cannot be the result of a coup-de-main, but of a long and painful work of proletarian organization in the economic and the political fields, of the physical and moral regeneration of the laboring class, and of the gradual conquest of the municipalities and legislative assemblies. ”

“ Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. ”

“ When we speak of a workers’ government we have in view a government in which the working-class representatives dominate and lead. The proletariat, in order to consolidate its power, cannot but widen the base of the revolution. Many sections of the working masses, particularly in the countryside, will be drawn into the revolution and become politically organized only after the advance-guard of the revolution, the urban proletariat, stands at the helm of state. ”

“ Instead of spontaneous revolution, revolts, and barricades, after each of which the proletariat relapsed once more into its dull passiveness, there came the systematic daily struggle, the utilization of bourgeois parliamentarism, mass organization, the welding of the economic with the political struggle, of socialist ideals with the stubborn defense of most immediate interests. For the first time the cause of the proletariat and its emancipation were led by the guiding star of scientific knowledge. ”

“ Indeed, a vital feature of mass action is precisely that it places in the hands of the proletariat the power to overcome the fetters of these organizations, to act in spite of their conservatism, and through proletarian mass action emphasize antagonisms between workers and capitalists, and conquer power. ”

“ Just so much the more rapid the economic development, and therewith the proletarianization of the population proceeds, the more numerous the hordes that stream from the country to the city, from the East to the West, out of the ranks of the small possessors into the ranks of propertyless, just so much the more numerous within the ranks of the proletarians is the element that have not yet comprehended the significance of the social revolution, indeed that do not even understand the significance of the class antagonisms in our society. ”

“ Indeed, even among those who have become thoroughly conscious of the necessity of the proletarian class struggle, there are still plenty who cannot escape from the influence of present society, and who doubt or despair of the victory of the proletariat. ”

“ What Social-Democrat does not now that according to the theories of Marx and Engels, the class interest is the decisive factor in history, and, consequently, that the proletarian struggle for the defence of its economic interests must be of first-rate importance in its class development and struggle for emancipation? ”

“ They declare openly that their purpose can be obtained only by violent overthrow of all existing arrangements of society. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose in it but their chains; they have a world to win. ”

“ In the present revolution, the troops protecting the old order are not fighting under the insignia of the ruling class, but under the banner of a ‘social-democratic party.’ If the central question of revolution was posed openly and honestly — Capitalism or socialism? — the great mass of the proletariat would today have no doubts or hesitations. ”

“ That movement contained the true element of the proletarian and revolutionary spirit, the lack of which makes organized labor of to-day a ball in the hands of selfish aspirants, know-nothings and politicians. ”

“ It is possible to limit the scope of all the questions of the revolution by asserting that our revolution is bourgeois in its objective aims and therefore in its inevitable results, closing our eyes to the fact that the chief actor in this bourgeois revolution is the proletariat, which is being impelled towards power by the entire course of the revolution. ”

“ In the revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, the direct objective tasks of which are also bourgeois, there emerges as a near prospect the inevitable, or at least the probable, political domination of the proletariat. ”

“ By grouping the workers in considerable masses and multiplying their numbers it created the proletariat. By making the workers an immense State within the State it paved the way for their emancipation, and furnished them with the means of conquering power. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself."
"In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. ”

“ That was definitely a bourgeois revolution,—bourgeois, not in the sense that the bourgeoisie made the revolution, since the task was accomplished by the revolutionary action of the workers and peasants, but in the sense that the revolution materialized, immediately, in a bourgeois republic. The "freedoms" of bourgeois democracy were introduced; the capitalist class was politically ascendant: and the government was a bourgeois government operating in the interests of Capitalism, imperialistic Capitalism. ”

“ The social revolution will crystallize the class-conscious labor ranks. By whatever name they will be known-as industrial unions, revolutionary syndicalist bodies, cooperative associations, leagues of producers and consumers-they will represent the most enlightened and advanced part of labor, the organized workers aware of their aims and how to attain them. It is they who will be the moving spirit of the revolution. ”

“ The proletarian movement has grown in a colossal fashion during these last thirty years. In the midst of numberless difficulties, through gains and losses, it has little by little taken on a political form. ”

“ The most important consequence now for our question is this: the economic revolution finds its spontaneous expression in opposition and struggle of classes, the "modern social movement"—that is, the movement of the proletariat is nothing but the organisation of those elements of society which are called to break [96] the rule of the middle class and "to conquer the new social forces of production." ”

“ It absorbs enormous quantities of energy, prevents the bourgeoisie from playing a leading rôle, pushes its antagonist, the proletariat, to the front, gives the workingman decades' experience in a month, makes them the central figures in political struggles, and puts very tight reins into their hands. Strong, determined, knowing no doubts, the proletariat gives events a powerful twist. ”

“ The task of revolutionaries is two-fold: spread the anti-imperialist movement to the working class, and develop Marxist-Leninist cadre who can integrate with the most exploited sector of the working class, the industrial proletariat. ”