Source: The New York Daily Call, September 21-23rd, 1909. Vol. 2, No. 226-228.
Public Domain: This work is free of any copyright restrictions.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, July, 2023.
MIA Editor’s Note: This article is an extended reply to an August 20th letter by reformist Edmond Kelly.
Kelly’s letter is available to read here.
The recent discussion in The Call as to the propriety of requiring applicants for membership in our party to subscribe to the doctrine of the class struggle leads me to some reflections as to the nature of that struggle, and the relation of a belief in it to the general body of Socialist doctrine.
The first question that suggests itself is “What do we mean when we say we believe in the class struggle?” Do we “preach” the class struggle as some think we do? Or, do we merely point to it as others say that we content ourselves with doing? Comrade [Edmond] Kelly, in commenting on the statements in The Call of Humphrey B. Campbell and Comrade [Robert] Hunter, respectively, says (The Call, August 20, 1909):
“Mr Campbell forgets that the class struggle is a fact, and Mr. Hunter wants to lift the class struggle into a principle. Comrade Hunter contends that the difference between Socialists on the one hand and the Fabians, [Aristide] Briand and [John] Burns, on the other, is that the former admit the class struggle, while the latter deny it. In this respect, I think Comrade Hunter is making a mistake. No man in his senses, much less such men as [Sidney] Webb, [George Bernard] Shaw, Briand and Burns, can deny the class struggle. I was myself long kept out of the party by the notion that it involved the fanning of hatred between class and class; but upon reading the declaration I was called upon to sign, I found no justification for this whatever. On the contrary, I was called upon to recognize the fact of the class struggle — a fact so obvious that no man can deny it unless he is paid to do so.”
It all seems so very simple. All you have to do is read what you are asked to sign. And yet, is it really so simple? Wherefrom did Comrade Kelly get his “notion that it involved the fanning of hatred between class and class” which kept him long out of the party, and which still keeps so many out of the party, according to the assurance of Mr. Campbell? Is it really true, as Comrade Kelly assures us, that “the Fabians keep out of the Socialist party not because they deny the class struggle, but because they believe themselves better fitted to the work of permeation and propaganda than to that of political organization?” Comrade Kelly himself tells us in the very next breath that “this, however, did not prevent their contributing to the organization of the Socialist Parliamentary party now doing such effective work in England.” The “effective work” that this party does is, of course, political work. So that the Fabians evidently do not consider themselves “out of politics.” Why, then, did they not join the Socialist party until the organization of the Socialist Parliamentary party, under which Comrade Kelly evidently means the Labor party? Does not the key to their action lie rather in the fact that the Labor party does not recognize the class struggle as part of its creed, whereas the Social Democratic party, the chief antagonist of the Fabians, which still keeps out of the “Socialist Parliamentary party,” makes the class struggle a prominent feature of its platform?
Evidently Comrade Kelly is wrong either when he says that the fact of the class struggle is not denied by any man in his senses, and cannot be denied by anybody unless he is paid to do so, or when he assumes that a mere recognition of the fact of the class struggle, such as that struggle receives from Webb, Shaw, Briand and Burns, according to his assurance, is sufficient to satisfy the Socialist parties. I personally believe that Comrade Kelly is wrong both ways.
It may surprise some of my comrades to hear me say so, but I must reluctantly confess that the fact of the class struggle, at least as I understand it, is not “so obvious that no man can deny it unless he is paid to do so.” That there are many who do not see this fact, or at least profess not to see it, cannot be denied. And that they all do it out of corrupt motives is so utterly unscientific and contrary to common experience, that the idea cannot be entertained for a moment. I am sure Comrade Kelly entertains no such idea. The explanation lies in the fact that Comrade Kelly and I understand entirely different things under the “fact” of the class struggle.
Again, the Socialist parties, at least those of them that keep consistently to the Marxian teachings, are not satisfied with a mere recognition of the fact of the class struggle, but demand its practical application to current events. Comrade Kelly is quite right when he says “Burns and Briand are no longer recognized by the Socialist party, not because they do not believe in the class struggle,” but because the party does not believe in their political policies and tactics. Marxists, contrary to common report, are the least dogmatic people imaginable. They do not care a rap about professions of faith. It all reduces itself to practical questions with them.
It is true that they put much value upon the recognition of certain doctrines, usually dubbed by their opponents as “articles of faith,” but only because recognition of these doctrines in theory, followed out to their logical consequences, leads to certain modes of action in practice. If they were sure of the practice, they would gladly leave the theoretical questions alone, as far as party politics are concerned, taking in them only the interest which people usually take in abstract theoretical matters propagated in the interest of scientific knowledge and logical thinking. It is only because they believe that usually one’s theoretical position influences his practical action, or is an indication of what road he is going to follow in practice, that they pay so much attention to platform declarations, and enter into those wordy wars which to the uninitiated sound like the theological discussion of the medieval schoolmen. And here is where Comrade Kelly misses the point in the Burns and Briand affairs. While it is true that these “statesmen” were not disavowed because they did not believe in the class struggle, but because of their practical policies and tactics, it is equally true that their policies and tactics were repudiated because they were incompatible with the policies and tactics imposed upon the leaders of the working class by a true understanding of the nature of the class struggle.
This brings us to the second question: What is the class struggle?
Of course, the class struggle is a struggle between or among classes. But what is a class? And what do classes struggle for? The answers to these questions are more obvious than the fact of the class struggle. In fact, in order to answer them properly we must go somewhat into history and make a little excursion into philosophy.
“In making their livelihood together,” says Marx,
“men enter into certain necessary involuntary relations with each other, industrial relations which correspond to whatever stage society has reached in the development of its material productive forces. The totality of these industrial relations constitute the economic structure of society, the real basis upon which the legal and political superstructure is built, and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The method of producing the material livelihood determines the social, political and intellectual life-process in general.”[a]
There was a time when the mode of producing the material livelihood was simple, and required the co-operation of nearly all the members of the small societies in which men then lived. They, therefore, lived in communistic groups to which private property, in our sense of the word, was unknown. Socially, there were no classes, and politically there were no rulers. Soon, however, the mode of producing the material livelihood changed, and private property was introduced. The introduction of private property led to the division of society into classes. To begin with, there were those who owned and those who did not own any property. Then there were those who owned different kinds of proeprty, owing to the development of the material productive forces of society. The division into classes led to struggles among them. The propertyless (slave, serfs, etc.) sometimes struggled against their masters, the property owners. These struggles, however, were only intermittent, and played no role historically for the reason that they did not aim to introduce any radical changes in the structure of society, economic or social. The main struggles are those between the classes who own different material productive forces, as these forces develop. It is through these class struggles that all historical progress has until now been made. As Marx puts it:
“At a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the old conditions of production, or, what is its legal express, with the old property relations under which these forces have hitherto been exerted. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters of production. Then begins an epoch of revolution. With the change of the economic basis the whole vast superstructure becomes slowly or rapidly revolutionized.”
At any given stage of the development of society based on private property, that social class which owns the tools of production then mostly in use dominates that society politically. When the methods of production have changed, new tools coming extensively into use, a new class has arisen in that society, which disputes the supremacy of the old dominating class. And when the development of those new forces has reached that stage when they come into serious conflict with the old conditions of production, the struggle between the two classes becomes one for life and death. In this struggle the new class always comes out victorious. In the revolution which follows the victory of the new class, the new material productive forces are unchained and are given free scope to assert themselves, the new class controlling these forces becomes politically supreme, and the process of evolution begins anew.
A typical example of the class struggle is the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism in Europe. This struggle, including such of its episodes as the great French Revolution, was not caused by the excessive “oppression” of the disinherited classes of society by the kings and barons, their rulers, but by the collision of the newly developed material productive forces represented by the bourgeoisie, with the old conditions of production, the feudal property relations. It was not because exploitation of the lower classes by barons and monarchs had become more general, that the latter revolted, but, on the contrary, because the lower classes had attained a comparatively high degree of economic power, and needed more political power to still further expand their economic interests. Nor was the cause of that struggle the more intense misery of some portions of the lower classes, which was undoubtedly the fact (as is always the case in periods of revolution in social forms of production), for this evil was not remedied, and the most exploited were not relieved by the revolution. This gave many a chance for some further declamation on the theme of the failure of this revolution to attain its object. This is, of course, silly. “Revolutions” never fail to attain their object. If the movement fails it is not a revolution. The fact is that relief from oppression and misery were not among the objects of the bourgeois revolution, except in so far as such oppression and misery were the result of the old conditions of production, property relations, with which the newly-developed material forces of production collided.
It is true that this struggle was conducted in the name of Justice and Liberty for all men, and that perhaps most of those who fought its pitched battles honestly believed themselves to be fighting for these high ideals without the slightest economic interest or motive. But what we consider Justice and Liberty is itself the result of “the method of producing our material livelihood.”
The bourgeoisie has now itself run its course. Affairs have reached a point where “the material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the old conditions of production,” the old property relations, when “from forms of development of the productive forces,” the capitalistic property relations have turned into “fetters of production.” This is due to two circumstances: First, because the system of diffused private property with unlimited competition upon which the bourgeois social order is based, does not permit the employment of the most economic, that is most productive technical and industrial machinery, which is based on stupendous aggregations of property under single control, so as to virtually abolish competition. Secondly, because the hunt for [profits] taken in connection with the laws of surplus value does not permit the employment of all the productive forces of society all the time, even where the most productive means of production are employed. This means the appearance of a new class ready to take over the job of adjusting property relations to the requirements of the productive forces of society, so that these have full and free play, and incidentally right the wrongs which resulted from the old order of things or its maladjustment. Such a class, historically fitted and ready for the job, and to fight for it, is the working class. Hence the struggle of the working class against capitalism.
So far there is no difference between this class struggle and any other class struggle that has preceded it. But there is a difference, and it is this: Unlike other classes which preceded it in the fight against old social forms which interfered with the free development of the social forces of production, the working class is not a propertied class. While it is in actual possession and control of the newly-developed productive forces, it is not so in a legal sense, that is, it has no property right therein. It cannot, therefore, change the property rights governing the relations of production. It must abolish them. It must substitute collective property for private property, and social control for private control of the productive process. The historic mission of the working class, the object of its struggle against the capitalist class, is, therefore, a double one: the expansion of the productive forces of society, and the abolition of private property, and with it the division of society into classes, thus putting an end to the class struggle.
From what we have said as to the nature of the class struggle, and the mission of the working class, follow a number of consequences as to the policies and tactics to be pursued by the organized proletariat in its struggle against the capitalist system. That the proper understanding of the class struggle is closely associated with the question of tactics, is inadvertently admitted by Comrade Kelly himself a couple of paragraphs below his categorical denial, when he says: “Let us be class conscious, if you will, but upon the understanding that the class to which we belong is eighty-nine millions strong.” It is upon this “understanding” that he gives us the practical advice “to explain to our outraged fellow citizens that the Socialist party offers them the only political opportunity for securing democratic legislation; and that while the wage earners will always stand as the old guard of the movement, there are millions of others equally interested in its success.” As we have been doing this explaining work all along (although with very poor success), and as this advice comes at the end of an attempt to prove that Marx’s “understanding” of the class struggle was incorrect, we must infer that Comrade Kelly is not satisfied with the way we have been doing our explaining until now. He does not say so, but it follows logically that he wants us either to throw the center of gravity of our agitation on this explaining to the “millions of others equally interested,” or, perhaps form some alliance with their political representatives on the basis of this common interest.
Now, I do not want to reproach Comrade Kelly for giving us such advice. If this “understanding” of the class struggle is correct, such advice would not be improper. Again, it may surprise many of my comrades to hear me say so, but I must make public avowal of the fact that I am not absolutely and unqualifiedly opposed to alliances, coalitions, etc., of the Socialist party with other political organizations. Nor am I opposed to sometimes throwing the entire force of our agitation upon some point short of the attainment of the Co-operative Commonwealth, and even apparently unrelated to the Co-operative Commonwealth, such as some point of purely political reform. Provided — and here is the rub — such action be dictated by my “understanding” of the nature of the class struggle and the mission of the working class, and such point be one that will bring us nearer to the ultimate goal of that struggle and the fulfilment of that mission.
For instance: No reform program could be formulated on the basis of which the Socialist party could co-operate with all those exploited by the trusts and the tariff — the eighty-nine million class of which Comrade Kelly wants us to be a part. That these eighty-nine millions are not a social class is self-evident. We are all consumers, including the one million exploiters. But this would not matter very much. The working class may make common cause with another class or sub-class, if there is a common cause to fight for. But is there? Let us see. Why does Comrade Kelly exclude from the consuming brotherhood the one million? Each of them is robbed by the others as a consumer, and ought therefore to join in the fight on those others. Evidently Comrade Kelly considers that the interest which each of them has in the general policy of exploitation on which his welfare as a producer and exploiter depends, will make him forget his grievances as a consumer and fight on the side of exploitation. Before, therefore, we can assert that the “millions of others” are “equally interested” with the working class, or even at all interested in the abolition of exploitation, their social-economic position as producers or traders, and not merely as consumers, should be considered, in order to find out whether they, also, are not on the other side. Had Comrade Kelly done that he would have come to entirely different results than his class “eighty-nine millions strong.”
Of course, many of these “millions of others” might join in a fight on the particular exploitation that hurts them, say the tariff. But no lasting alliance could be made on that basis, even assuming that the workingmen have to gain something in the long run by the removal of this particular exploitation, of which there is some doubt. For these “millions of others” would immediately join the other exploiters in throwing this burden again on the workers in the shape of taxation, as is abundantly proven by experience. The workingmen are, nevertheless, opposed to the tariff, and were their representatives in Congress they would certainly have voted against it, and not act the traitors that the representatives of these “millions of others” did. But to make a special issue of it and enter into an alliance with these tariff-aggrieved gentry is absurd for anybody who understands the class struggle and all that it implies.
Matters are even worse with respect to trusts. Considerations of space will not permit me to enter into a full discussion of the subject. I intend to treat it more exhaustively later on. Here I will merely say that, as a general proposition, the respective policies of the working class and the “millions of others” with reference to trusts, are not only far apart, but often diametrically opposed.
I do not want to be understood, however, as asserting that there is absolutely nothing that the working class and these “millions of others,” or at least some of them, might not fight for in common, under certain circumstances. Indeed, in my opinion there is much that they ought to fight for in common with the working class. And when they are willing to do so they will find that the working class is not bound by any dogmas which would prevent it from meeting an honest ally more than half way, least of all that portion of the working class which is most influenced by the Marxian teaching. But such objects, and the measures for their attainment, must be examined carefully and separately, as they present themselves, always bearing in mind the ultimate goal to be attained, and the conditions of the fight imposed upon us by the nature of the struggle.
Some of them will be considered in a series of articles on Problems of Reform and Reformers, which I propose to put before the readers of The Call in the not distant future.[b]
[a] This and the later quotes are from Marx’s famous preface to his 1859 work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, better known at the time as Zur Kritik. The translation here is Boudin’s own and not sourced from the first English translation by N.I. Stone published in 1904.
[b] A day-by-day search of the Daily Call going to the end of October 1909 could not find any article with this title. My hunch is that Boudin changed his proposed title to The Political Situation in the United States and the Socialist Party, which was published in the expanded Sunday Call of October 24th, 1909. As a separate subscription from the standard Call, the Sunday Call has not yet been scanned.
Last updated on 29 July 2023