Conflict as a Process and the Conflict Helix 9. Opposition, Determinism, Inevitability, and Conflict Intentional Humanism Other Volumes Vol. This much, at least, we should have learnt from Hegel and Marx: we can only make a contribution to the understanding of consensus, conflict and power by approaching our subject matter critically. The point of departure taken by the Marxist theory is that surplus value, which the employer appropriates in its entirety at the expense of the worker, has its origin in the process of production.
From this fact follows the irreconcilable contradiction between the employer and the employee, the class contradiction between capitalist and wage worker. Profit springs not from the production of commodities but from their exchange. But, according to the theories of both the fascists and social-fascists, harmony prevails in the process of production as between the interests of the capitalists and the wage workers.
This the programme of the N. National Socialist Labour Party of Germany , expresses less scientifically than clearly by stating in its tenth paragraph:.
The activity of the individual may not infringe upon the interests of the community, but must be pursued within the framework of the entire body politic and must accrue to the advantage of all. Alfred Braunthal, one of the best-known economic theoreticians of social-democracy, propounds a theory in opposition to Marxism which is scientifically formulated, but whose content corresponds fully to the fascist programme. This theory is set forth in his Present-Day Economy and its Laws , and is intended for use as a text book.
There this disciple of Otto Bauer says:. And vice versa: the greater the productivity, the higher wages can, under certain circumstances, rise. In this respect the theory of productivity is undoubtedly superior to the Marxist theory. Therefore the worker is undoubtedly interested in the greatest possible increase in production.
What else is there left? Against whom is the social-democratic worker to fight in the opinion of his theoreticians, his political and trade union leaders? This discovery is nothing more or less than an attempt to parry the main blow of the revolutionary proletariat which, in the struggle for socialism, must necessarily be directed against the internal foe of the proletariat, against the social-democracy. The Otto Bauers,. They vociferate about the defence of the interests of the workers whom they have sold and sell every day of the year.
The sort of united front the social-democrats, who raise the hue and cry against the Communists, want is exemplified by the conference of the leaders of the national committee of German youth organisations which met on November 26th at which all tendencies were represented, social-democrats as well as national-socialists, with the sole exception of the Communist youth.
It is also noteworthy that in the concluding remarks by Prof. Flitner, as well as in various Press comments, the question was raised whether it was not time for the leaders of the youth organisations to endeavour to take a common and positive stand on concrete questions of the day. Naturally, the organ of the A. For where there is no essential difference of opinion in the main question of to-day: defence of capitalism or the shattering of capitalism, such a common attitude is not at all difficult to maintain.
There have been cases where the social-democrats have succeeded — in the interests of capitalism — in perverting the pressure of the proletariat for unity of action into a unity farce. There are still many proletarians, I am certain, who — under the influence of social-democracy and the reformist trade unions — still flail to differentiate between unity of action in the class struggle, and the unity farce that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.
The German bourgeoisie is thankful to them for this — through Hitler and Papen. The original rapprochement between Guesde and Lafargue, and Melon and Brousse could not be avoided, I suppose, on founding the party, but neither Marx nor I ever laboured under any illusions about the fact that this could not endure. The point in dispute is purely one of principle: whether the struggle is to be conducted as a class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, or is it to be permitted in good opportunist fashion or to translate it into socialist languageJpossibilist fashion to drop the class character of the movement and the programme wherever more votes, more followers, can be gained by doing so.
We in Germany are beyond the first phase of the internal struggle. Other struggles are still ahead of us. Unity is all right as long as it lasts, but some things take precedence over unity. This is the corroboratory judgment of and Engels concerning the theory that the blow of the revolutionary masses in the struggle against the main enemy, the bourgeoisie — must be directed against social-democracy.
This is the answer Marx and Engels have for political bankrupts who desire to manoeuvre their way out of the deadlock at the expense of the workers they have betrayed. This is the keynote for our activities to effect a real united front of the working class, a united front from below, in the daily struggles which must be led on to the decisive struggles for power. The insurrection of the forces of production against private property in the means of production, against the capitalist production relationships which are the life springs of the bourgeoisie and its domination, has won greater vigour by the economically and politically decisive fact that the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics exists and is victorious, while the capitalist world has approached the point where the dynamiting of Marx main the capitalist relations of production commences.
In its own countries it contemplates the crisis with despair as it breaks out with ever-renewed fury. It founds its domination more and more upon open terror against its wage slaves, whose millions lack the absolute minimum of existence.
But in the country where Socialism has become a fact , in the Soviet Union, it is daily proven that the working class, freed from its exploiters and oppressors, now its own master and ruling in its own right in the Soviets, develops the socialised forces of production at a tempo that staggers imagination, while at the same time appropriating socially the social product of labour.
The general crisis of the capitalist system means also a crisis for the material power of society, the power of the ruling class, especially in view of the simultaneous triumphal march of socialism in the Soviet Union. This crisis for the material power evokes at the same time a crisis of the ruling intellectual power , of the prevailing bourgeois ideology.
The period of the intensification of the general economic crisis is at the same time a period of crisis of all bourgeois ideologies which also figure as a means whereby the bourgeoisie may keep exploited and oppressed masses in check. Words like dislocation, disintegration, internecine struggle, cataclysm, ruin and chaos are now in very common usage not only in the sphere of science but also of ideology.
Is that which we are living through today the result and the aim of a development which has devoured untold sacrifice and which has shaken man from head to foot? Is this the end? But also in the victor countries , in France, in England, in the United States, the words written by Hegel in his Philosophy of History concerning the wars of Napoleon are more than applicable to their economy as well as to their ideology:.
The nationalism rampant in the countries of victor and vanquished alike is an expression of the impotence that has seized the world after the repartition of the world by the Versailles Peace Treaty and the Washington Convention had tenfold increased the number of potential startingpoints of war to-day.
On the other hand, it is also the consequence of the impotence of the bourgeoisie in the province of home policy, an expression of the fact, that as a result of the crisis, it feels itself more and more constricted in the application of its ideology of social reforms and is constrained to have recourse almost exclusively to what is the sheerest national damagogy.
Pacifism — that falsification of the honest will of the workers to peace, first omen of instinctive protest against imperialist war and of the awareness of a reactionary character in the clandestine preparations of imperialist war and military intervention against the Soviet Union is undergoing a profound crisis.
The bourgeoisie becomes less and less capable of concealing the fact that the cause of war lies in imperialist capitalism itself; that capitalism and war are inseparable.
Those who used to be pacifists by honest conviction are experiencing a change of heart. They are forsaking pacifism and drawing nearer to the idea of revolutionary struggle against capitalism as the cause of war.
This was one lesson taught by the Amsterdam Anti-War Congress. Those, on the other hand, who were not the deceived but the deceivers in the pacifist movements are now revealing themselves more and more to the masses as the pacifist agents in this work of preparation for imperialist war and intervention. Optimists are scarce.
But their optimism is no less impotent than the gloomy forebodings of the pessimists. The accentuated crisis of capitalist economy surely greets this inane prattle with derisive laughter. How long they will suffice to stem the rising tide of the proletariat beating against the capitalist system, against the bourgeoisie, is to-day the greatest worry of the capitalists and their ideology manufacturers.
Schmalenbaeh, a most prominent bourgeois theoretician of industrial economy, has said with resignation:. The following is perhaps less self-evident but none the less much more characteristic: the turning of the bourgeoisie , in its period of decline, away from everything it had created during its period of ascent.
The elabortion of scientific socialism , of Communism , by Marx and Engels, proceeded theoretically in the form of a critique of these doctrines, i. All that transcended in these systems the limited borders of bourgeois thinking was rescued by Marx and Engels and given over to the proletariat.
The putrescent bourgeoisie in the period of its decline repudiates even the remnants of those intellectual products produced in the heyday of its development as a class.
Hugo Schulz, a bourgeois economist, recently confessed that the bourgeoisie had to abandon the classical theory of political economy as it could not combat Marxism from the standpoint of this theory. The period of the present crisis is the period of a revival of vulgar economy in the camp of bourgeois science to an extent never witnessed before.
A refutation of all law in economy, and the rejection of every theory, is the main trait of these hirelings of bourgeois economy. German classical philosophy , which translated the great French revolution into the field of philosophy for the cowardly German bourgeoisie, is to-day as dead as a door nail as far as it the German bourgeoisie is concerned. They stripped dialectics of their mystical covering of Hegelian idealism. The bourgeoisie in the period of its crisis had to repudiate Hegel since his dialectics were intolerable for it even in their idealistic covering.
Hegelian dialectics preclude precisely that which is most necessary for the idealogists of the bourgeoisie in the course of the crisis: the contemplation of the existing, of the existing order of society, as something endowed with finality. The one takes refuge in religion — not only Christian religions, but also the ancient heathen religions, as certain fascist tendencies in Germany do, in oriental religions, in Buddhism, like the English theosophists.
Within the bourgeoisie multifarious schools of philosophical mysticism prosper. It is the religion of the refined bourgeoisie, which has lost faith in the Christian as well as in the Jewish god, inasmuch as the Jewish god in his unity and the Christian god in all his trinity have proved themselves incapable of preserving capitalism from the crisis. Not even the youth is spared this flight from the truth. Religious socialists find more favour in the social-democratic parties than radical free-thinkers.
Sollmann, a German social-democratic leader, professes positive Catholicism. The worst kinds of inane idealism have replaced the old French materialism and even the idealism of classical German philosophy. In France the various radical-socialist tendencies — which in a certain sense consider themselves heirs of the French Revolution and French socialism — have discarded all semblance of kinship with the great utopians of French socialism and the great French Revolution.
The socialism of the great utopians sallied forth from the traditions of the French Revolution to the watchwords: liberty, equality, fraternity. For these watchwords the radical-socialist groups in France have substituted the trinity: Panama-scandal-corruption. The bourgeoisie not only holds on to its positions in the process of production; retains its hold on capitalist private property with all possible tenacity, with all the power of its material force up to and even after its overthrow, but also insists upon the propagation of its ideology no matter how low it is laid by the crisis.
It does this the more in view of the fact that this ideology also represents a measure of power which helps it to maintain its shaken domination. Fascism it is which, as a method of government having recourse openly to armed force, to terror, and as an ideology which is being applied wherever and whenever social-democracy alone is not adequate to act as intermediary in bringing bourgeois influence into the working class to keep the indignant proletariat in check, is the expression of this tenacious, desperate life-and-death struggle of capitalism for its domination , for its very existence.
To free the workers won by fascism, especially the young workers, from the ideology of despair that drove them to fascism is possible only in a persevering struggle conducted with the weapons of Marxist-Leninist theory.
This, of course, refers no less to the masses of workers and young workers which directly or indirectly, under the influence of social-democracy, are unwilling props in the main support of bourgeois dictatorship. The superiority of Marxism-Leninism as the consciousness of the working class over fascism and social-fascism cannot be doubted. Here the question is, on the one hand, only this: that our practice in the political-economic struggle has not been sufficiently pervaded by this theory; on the other hand, that our theoretical struggle lags far behind the requirements necessary to destroy the ideological-political influence of social-democracy and fascism in the working class.
Let us be honest with ourselves, comrades. Let each one take stock of himself and confess how often he remembers that the historical struggle of the proletariat does not proceed only in two forms of struggle. How often are we mindful of what Engels wrote and what Lenin and Stalin always emphasised — that the historical struggle for the liberation of the proletariat must proceed not only in two forms, in the form of the political and economic struggle, but in three forms: in the form of the political, economic and theoretical struggle, if the proletariat is to attain victory.
I have no doubt but that especially the neglect of the economic front of the class struggle, the boycotting of trade union work on the part of many revolutionists which is customary in the Communist Parties — to-day rather covert but none the less existent — is the consequence of the inadequate theoretical insight into the conditions and methods of the revolutionary class struggle, the consequence of the lack of knowledge of Marxist-Leninist theory.
I now put another question, comrades: How often are we mindful of the facts recorded by Engels back in , the beginning of the socialist mass movement, when he stated that:. Translate this, English, French, Spanish and Italian comrades, into the language of the present-day movement in your respective countries.
Think of French syndicalism which exhibits many essential reactionary traces of petty-bourgeois Proudhonist anarchism; think of the reformist syndicalists, of the Minoritaries within and without the C. Think of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists who were and are the props of bourgeois counter-revolution in Spain and who with their caricature revolutionism mislead many good revolutionary workers and keep them back from the struggle for the advancing of the bourgeois democratic revolution into the stage of proletarian revolution.
And you, young Communists of Germany! Remember what Engels wrote concerning the German working class in whose ranks Marx fought his first battles:. For the first time since a labour movement has been in existence is the struggle being conducted harmoniously, co-ordinatedly and planfully on all its three fronts, the theoretical, the political and the practical-economic resistance against the capitalists.
Precisely in this what may be called concentrated attack lies the strength and invincibility of the German movement. Remember that in your victories also this good tradition of the German labour movement is and will continue to be effective; but reflect also whether the degree of concentration of the struggle to-day does not leave much to be desired in many instances.
No doubt the fact that we have been unable to enlarge our mass influence at the expense of Social-Democracy in all countries, of the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain and South America, of the reformist trade union leaders in the entire world, to the extent that this may have been possible in the given objective situation, is largely due to our failure to conduct our agitational and propaganda work among the masses sufficiently on principle, with an adequate Marxist-Leninist basis.
To-day when everything — the crisis, the revolutionary upsurge, the end of capitalist stabilisation, the great fundamental questions, questions of principle, of the struggle for and the way to socialism, the question Dictatorship or Democracy? These attempts to mislead the workers through these pseudo-Marxist phrases can be combatted successfully only by unfolding a thorough propaganda of Marxism-Leninism and by basing our day-to-day policy on a broad footing upon basic principles.
Likewise dryness, pedanticism, bureaucracy, these poisonous weeds that often take root in our mass work and which youth can bear least — these too can be fought with no better means than by imbuing our day-to-day work with the revolutionary spirit and ardour of Marxism-Leninism. Nor let us forget the problem of cadres , a question that is in as bad shape as our mass work. How can we burrow deep enough if in dealing with this question we do not act on the directions given by Engels:.
The point will be to disseminate with steadily mounting zeal among the workers the increasingly clarified discernment thus gained, to weld the organisations of the Party as well as of the trade union associations ever closer together.
One should not seek comfort in the belief that youth has no Social-Democratic traditions like their elders. Unfortunately the fact is that neither age nor youth guard against folly. Social-Democratic conceptions percolate into the Communist movement not only via custom and traditions. The strenuous efforts of the petty-bourgeoisie seeking to maintain its existence finds expression also in the ideological pressure which this moribund medial stratum of society incapable itself of conducting any independent policy , steadily exerts upon the working class.
The strength of the labour aristocracy consists not so much in its numbers as in its key position in production — especially to-day in the period of the crisis — and it is precisely this position which is utilised as a conduit to pump bourgeois ideology into the broad masses of the workers. Social-Democracy is nothing more or less than the bourgeois poison that is innoculated through the petty-bourgeoisie, through the labour aristocracy, day by day into the heads of the workers.
The sole and exclusive antidote in the Marxist-Leninist enlightenment of the workers through cadres trained for that purpose.
It would be a denial of Marxism-Leninism, which is the revolutionary consciousness of the working class, an anti-Bolshevik deference to spontaneity, to think that without a thorough Marxist-Leninist education the officials of our Party and youth organisation can be made into leading Bolshevik cadres free from petty-bourgeois social-democratic inhibitions, into cadres that understand politics — the art of figuring with millions, the art of leading millions — who, in the coming war will do their bit without any hesitancy, who can lead the proletariat to victory!
Look at the Party of the Bolsheviks, hardened and steeled in three revolutions, in civil wars and last but not least in splits and in the struggle for the erection of the united front of the working class! Consider our two greatest and most victorious leaders: Lenin, the greatest theoretician and tactician of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat — and the perpetuator of his work, Stalin, the theoretician and tactician of socialist construction.
It was and is their greatest source of strength, and at the same time their greatest pride, that they were and are the best disciples of Marx and Engels who devoted a major portion of their knowledge and their revolutionary fighting energy to the struggle on the theoretical front, to the defence of Marxism-Leninism against every counterfeit.
It is mainly concerned with the battle between the working class and the ownership class and favors communism and socialism over capitalism. Marx thought that the capitalistic system would inevitably destroy itself. The oppressed workers would become alienated and ultimately overthrow the owners to take control of the means of production themselves, ushering in a classless society.
Not so far. Some countries, such as the former Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, have attempted to create a communist society, but they were or have been unable to entirely eliminate personal property, money, and class systems. In , capitalism, in its various forms, remains the dominant economic system.
American Journal of Public Health. Marxists Internet Archive. The Library of Economics and Liberty. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
I Accept Show Purposes. Your Money. Personal Finance. Your Practice. Popular Courses. Economy Economics. Table of Contents Expand. What Is Marxism? Understanding Marxism. Criticism of Marxism. What Kind of Philosophy Is Marxism? What Did Marx Predict for the Future? Was Marx Right? Key Takeaways Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx that focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.
Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.
He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy. Karl Marx believed that the proletariat would overthrow capitalism in a violent revolution.
0コメント