long shot - someone willing to translate this?

Since Gilles' English skills are excellent and he has written texts in English, why don't you ask him to translate it himself? I'm pretty sure there is contact info on the Troploin website, but PM me if you can't find it.

The pamphlet was a 1969 reissue of a Spartacus pamphlet originally published in 1947. It contained the French translation of the Kautsky text, the original 1947 introduction by Otto Maschi (as 'Lucien Laurat') and two new afterwords, one of them the Jean Barrot text. The second was a longer text entitled 'Idéologie et lutte de classes' by Pierre Guillaume. It's an interesting piece but Guillaume's subsequent political trajectory has rendered him comprehensively persona non grata.

Before translating the Kautsky text it would be worth checking to see that it wasn't translated at the time for one of the English language Social Democratic journals. As the MIA have put more digitized journals on line it's quite remarkable to discover what they contain.

I could correct this e-translation, but it's pretty good:

Preface to the First Edition

On behalf of the Bremen Board of Education I held on 17 December of last year in Bremen, a lecture about Karl Marx. Bremer comrades who heard the lecture, I got the invitation to him to publish in print, because he is capable of widespread mistaken notions about what Marx has done and what does Marxism, to set the record straight. I am herewith comply with that request, but I will not forward to a mere repetition of the talk. I extended it several times for the pressure, especially in its first part.

It is not a eulogy to Karl Marx, I give here. They correspond to the proud little sense of the man whose motto was: Follow your path and let people talk. It would also be absurd to a time when his personal importance is recognized by all the world.

This is me rather to facilitate an understanding of what Marx has brought to the world. This is not so generally known, as it would be necessary in a period that is so violent in arguing for and against Marx. Many a well will find upon reading the following pages, that thoughts which have become too self-evident truths, to discover by Marx and Engels were laboriously. He will also find that ideas, which are now hailed as a surprising, new discoveries, by the "outdated" Marxism is to be overcome or trained, in fact represent nothing but the revival of beliefs and attitudes that were rampant before Marx and wore, and who has just overcome this, but before the new generations, which is foreign to the history of our movement, always show up again. So will this work be not merely a study of party history, but also contribute to the decision of current issues.

Friedenau, February 1908

K. Kautsky
Preface to the Third Edition

This document was first drafted in 1908, the 25th Death of our Master. Since then another 25 years elapsed, during which it came to the monstrous world war, to gigantic revolutions in Europe and Asia. But Marx's method, all great things, what Marx of thinking and brought to higher life forms struggling humanity, was in this period of upheaval is not overturned, but strengthened. In these days when everything shakes, challenging the bourgeois classes and parties at all, not least to himself, is from Marxism to all of us the only sure ground on which to build the building of a better community, build to .

Therefore, I can publish the present work the same, except for a few times. Marx's historical performance has been declining for the last quarter century in any way important. They dominated more than ever our age.

Vienna, February 1933

K. Kautsky

I. Introduction

On 14 March 1933, 50 years, that Karl Marx is dead, and there are already more than eight decades, that the Communist Manifesto was published, where her new teaching their first comprehensive expression. These are long periods of time for such a raschlebige, like ours, which changes their scientific and artistic ideas as fast as their fashions. Yet Karl Marx is still living among us in full force, and he dominated the thinking of our time more than ever, despite all the crises of Marxism, despite all the refutations of the catheters and over-turns down the bourgeois science.

This amazing and ever-growing influence would completely understand if it was not Marx succeeded in laying bare the roots of the capitalist society. Has he done that, then of course, so long this form of society, failing to win more new social Erkentnisse of fundamental importance beyond Marx, and then so long will the path he pointed, practically and theoretically far more fruitful than any other. The enormous and lasting influence of Marx on modern thought would also be understandable if he had not been able to mentally move beyond the territory of the capitalist mode of production, to identify trends that lead beyond them to a higher form of society, and our distant Sun to have goals that are getting closer by the progress of development, more tangible, and recognize the same extent, the size of a man can always huge, the first recorded these goals clear.

It is so rare blend of scientific depth with revolutionary boldness, causing Karl Marx today, half a century after his death, nearly three generations after the beginning of his public life, lives far more powerful among us as it was when he was still under the changed survivors.

Let us seek to be clear about the nature of the historical performance of this wonderful man, then they can perhaps best be characterized in that it identifies as the activity of the summary, the coordination of different, often seemingly contradictory areas to a higher unity, we have since mainly the combination of science and humanities, from English, French, German thinking, of working-class movement and socialism, between theory and practice. That it all managed to show that it is a universalism without the same all these areas not only knew, but up to the championship, dominated by it was Karl Marx's possible to accomplish his vast historical performance, the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of twentieth imposes its character.

II. The combination of natural and social sciences

The foundation of all ministry of Karl Marx is its theoretical performance. You need to consider before we all. But it offers just for the popular representation special difficulties. Hopefully we will be able to overcome it, but we must confine ourselves to some remarks. In any case, the issues we deal with after this will be easy to understand without further ado, the reader must, therefore, with some effort, which prepare the next pages, not to be deterred by the additional work.

It divides the sciences into two major areas: natural sciences, which seek the laws of motion to explore the inanimate and animate bodies, and the humanities, which are actually called with wrong way: Because as far as the ghost appears as a manifestation of a single body, He studied the natural sciences. The psychology, the psychology is entirely driven by scientific methods, and it never occurred to the humanities, to try to cure mental illness. The right of the science remains unchallenged to this area.

What we call the humanities is, in fact, social science, and discusses the relation of man to his fellow man. Only those mental activities and statements of people who come to be considered, studied by the humanities.

Within the humanities themselves but one can again distinguish two groups: some who study the human society as such on the basis of ground observations. These include the political economy, the science of the laws of social economy under the rule of commodity production, the ethnology, the study of various social conditions of the various nations, finally, the prehistory and early history, the study of social conditions at the time of the no written documents have survived.

The other group includes the humanities, sciences, so far emanated primarily from the individual who dealt with the position and effect of the individual in society: history, law and ethics or moral teaching.

This second group of humanities is ancient and has exercised the minds of the people has always been the greatest influence. The former group was opposed to the time when Marx was formed, young and only just come to scientific methods. She remained confined to specialists and had no influence on the general thought that was determined by the natural sciences and the humanities in the second group.

Between the latter two types of science was now a huge gap that was revealed in the present world views.

Natural science had revealed so many necessary, lawful relationships in nature, that is, tried so many times that the same causes produce also always produce like effects, that she was quite convinced of the requirement of a general regularity in nature, and the assumption of mysterious powers to intervene at will in all natural events, has been entirely banished from her. Modern man seeks not thereafter, such powers to agree favorably with prayers and sacrifices, but only after recognizing the legitimate relationships in nature, in order to achieve it through his intervention that effects may, of which he for his life or require his being.

Unlike mentioned in the humanities. These were still dominated by the assumption of freedom of the human will, subject to any legitimate need. The lawyers and ethicists felt forced to stick to this assumption, because otherwise they lose the ground under their feet. If the man is a product of circumstances, and will be doing the necessary effect of causes that are not dependent on his will, what would become of sin and punishment of good and evil, from the legal and moral condemnation?

This was of course only a motive, a motive of "practical reason", no argument. This yielded primarily the science of history, which was based essentially on nothing more than the collection of written documents of earlier times, have been reported in which the actions of individuals, including the Regent, either by themselves or by others. To discover any legitimate need in the individual deeds, seemed impossible. Unsuccessfully attempted scientific thinkers to figure out such a necessity. True, they were wary that the general laws of nature do not apply to the doing of the people should. The experience provided them with sufficient material to show that the human mind makes no exception in nature, that he always respond to specific causes to specific effects. However, it undeniably the easier for the mental operations could be established that the person has in common with the animals, for its complex operations, for the social ideas and ideals were the naturalists find no necessary causal connection, they could not fill this gap be filled . You could probably argue that the human mind is just a piece of nature and lie within their necessary connections, but they could not prove sufficient in all areas. Your materialistic monism remained incomplete and could not cope with the idealism and dualism.

Then came Marx and saw that the story and the acting in the history of ideas and ideals of people whose successes and failures are the result of class struggles. But he saw more. Class contradictions and class struggles they had seen him before in history, but they were mostly published as the work of folly and wickedness on the one hand, of magnanimity and education on the other hand, only Marx revealed its necessary connection with the economic conditions, the law can be recognized As Marx dartat best. The economic conditions themselves again in the final analysis, however, based on the nature and extent of man's dominion over nature, which arises from the recognition of natural laws.

Only under certain social conditions is the driving force of the history of class struggle, there is always a last line of the struggle against nature. May seem strange also to society compared to the rest of nature, here and there we find the same kind of movement and development through the struggle of opposites emerge again and again from nature itself, the dialectical development.

Promote social development in the context of the natural evolution was placed, was the human spirit in its most complex and highest manifestations, the established society, as a part of nature and proved the natural laws of his work in all areas of philosophical idealism and dualism the last base removed.

In this way, Marx was not merely circulated the history entirely, but also filled the gap between natural sciences and humanities, founded the unity of all human knowledge, and thus made philosophy superfluous, if carried out as special, outside of the sciences, and above them standing wisdom that establish uniformity of thinking about the world process sought, which was formerly not gained through the sciences.

It means a huge collection of science, what Marx led to his conception of history, all human thought and knowledge would thereby be fertilized in the most powerful - but strange: The bourgeois science was wholly negative, however, and only in opposition to it, as a special 'proletarian science was the new scientific conception of the struggle.

We have ridiculed the statement of the contradiction between bourgeois and proletarian science, as if giving it as a bourgeois and a proletarian chemistry or mathematics could! But the scoffers only prove that they do not know what it is.

The discovery of the materialist conception of history by Marx had two preconditions. Once a certain amount of science, but also a revolutionary point of view.

The laws of historical development could only be detected when the above-mentioned new humanities, political economy and had come back into their economic history, anthropology and prehistory, to a certain level. Only those studies excluded from the material of the individual from the outset was, which was premised from the start to Mass observations could, reveal the basic laws of social development and thus pave the way for the exploration of those flows are driven by which the individual at the surface of floating individuals and the traditional presentation of the history alone observed and recorded.

These new Humanities developed only with the capitalist mode of production and its world market, they could make significant only when the capital had come to power, but it had stopped and the bourgeoisie, to be a revolutionary class.

Only such a theory could, however, to accept the class struggle. A class that wants to take power in society, must also struggle for power want, they will easily understand its necessity. A class that has the power, will struggle to look at each as an unwelcome interference and hostile act against any teaching that dartut its necessity. She is to appear more on the other hand, if the doctrine of class struggle is a lesson of social development, as necessary hinstellt the conclusion of the present class struggle, the overcoming of the present masters of society.

But the doctrine that the human products of social relations to the extent snd, as the members of a particular form of society different from the people of other societies, this doctrine is a conservative class is not acceptable, because it as the only means by which people to modify the transformation of society itself appears. As long as the bourgeoisie was revolutionary, it also paid homage to the idea that humans are the products of the company, but unfortunately at that time were those studies are not sufficiently developed, from which one had the motive forces of social development may recognize. The French materialists of the 18th Century did not know the class struggle and did not pay attention to technical development. And so they knew that in order to change the people who would change society, but they did not know where the forces should now come to change the society would have. They saw in the omnipotence of individual extraordinary people, especially in the school of champions. Another objective was not the bourgeois materialism.

As soon as the bourgeoisie was conservative, it soon appeared the thought intolerable that the social conditions were the ones who wore the special evils of our time, and guilt must be amended. So far she thinks scientifically, it now seeks to prove that humans are by nature so and must be, as they are, that want to change society means nothing else than the natural order on its head. One must however be made only at a very scientific and the social conditions of our time have remained untouched in order to assert their inherent necessity of survival for all time. The majority of the bourgeoisie can not find the courage to do so, she seeks to console himself by denying the recognition of materialism and free will. Society does not make the people claiming it, but people make to society according to their will. This is imperfect, because those are. We need to improve society through social transformation, but the fact that we lift the individual above, instill in them a higher morality. The better people will then produce a much better society. Thus, the ethics and the recognition of free will to become the favorite doctrine of the modern bourgeoisie. It should express its good will to counter the social ills and commit it to any social change, on the contrary, each such ward.

Who is on the basis of bourgeois society, which are inaccessible from this point of all knowledge, which can be obtained on the basis of the unity of all science created by Marx. Only those who are existing Geseilschaft juxtaposes critical, can get to the understanding of these findings, ie, that only one who stands on the floor of the proletariat. In this respect one can distinguish between the proletarian and bourgeois science.

Of course, the contrast between the two most strongly expressed in the humanities, while the contrast between the Catholic and feudal or bourgeois most strikingly in the science. Science comes to light. But the mind of man always strives for uniformity, influence the different branches of knowledge to each other and therefore always look back on our society views our entire conception of the world. Thus the contrast between bourgeois and proletarian science argues finally in the natural sciences.

This can be traced already in Greek philosophy, which shows, among other things, an example of modern science, which is subject to our close relationship. I have noted before in another place, that the bourgeoisie, as long as it was revolutionary, even supposing that the natural evolution takes place by disasters. Since then she has become conservative, they want to know from disasters in nature any more. The development is taking place now in its opinion, in the slowest manner solely on the road quite imperceptible changes. Disasters appear to her as something abnormal, unnatural, nor is it appropriate only to disturb the natural development. And despite the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence, the bourgeois science strives with all his strength to make the concept of evolution seem synonymous with that of a very peaceful process.

For Marx, however, the class struggle was only a special form of general Entwickelungsgesetzes of nature that is far from peaceful way. The development is for him, as we already noted, a "dialectical" means that the product of a struggle between opposites, which necessarily occur. Every struggle of irreconcilable opposites but must eventually lead to overcoming of one of the combatants, thus leading to a catastrophe. The disaster can be prepared very slowly, imperceptibly, like the power increase of one of the combatants, the decrease of the other absolute or relative, finally, the collapse of one part inevitable - that is, inevitable result of the struggle and the growth of the power of one part, is not inevitable as an event that takes place by itself. Every day, at every turn we meet small disasters, both in nature and in society. Every death is a disaster. Any existing structure must again succumb to a superior force of opposites. This is true not only for plants and animals but also for entire societies, empires, all the heavenly bodies. They, too, for the continuation of the general process of development prepared by the gradual increase of resistance at times of disasters. No movement, no development without temporarily disasters. These form a necessary stage of development, evolution is impossible without temporarily revolutions.

In this view, we find also overcome the revolutionary bourgeois, which assumed that development was taking place exclusively by disasters, such as the conservative bourgeois who sees in the disaster are not the necessary crossing point of an often very slow and imperceptible process of development, but its interference and inhibition.

Another contrast between bourgeois and proletarian, or if one prefers, between conservative and revolutionary science, we refer to the critique of knowledge. A revolutionary class, which feels the power in themselves to take over the company, is also inclined to recognize no limit for their scientific conquests, to solve all the problems of their time to keep enabled. A conservative class, however, not only instinctively shy away from any progress on political and social, but also in the scientific field, because she feels that the deeper the understanding you will no longer be of much use, but may well harm infinite. She is inclined to belittle the faith in science.

The naive confidence that even the revolutionary thinkers of the 18th Century inspired, as they bore the solution to all world puzzles in his pocket when they are speaking on behalf of the absuluten reason can also share the boldest revolutionary any more. Today, no one will deny more, which of course also in the 18th Century, even in ancient times, some thinkers knew that all our knowledge is relative, that it is a relationship between man, the ego is, the wider world, shows us just this relationship, not the world itself all knowledge is thus relatively limited and limited, is absolute, eternal truths, it is not. But this means nothing else than that there is no end to our findings that the process of knowing one is infinite, unlimited, that it is foolish indeed, to make any finding as to the truth last conclusion, but no less foolish to any record as establish the extreme limit of wisdom, which could also come about, we never do. Rather, we know that there is still humanity have always managed to limit any of her knowledge, she became aware of their right to cross sooner or later, of course, only to find further behind borders of which they formerly had no idea. We have not the slightest reason to shy away from any particular problem that we are able to recognize, despondent before leaving the hands fall in her lap, and to mutter resignedly Ignorabimus, we will never know anything about it. This indicates despondency but the modern bourgeois thought. Instead of using all its might then seek to broaden and deepen our knowledge, it uses today's foremost power in there to find out certain limits of our knowledge will forever be drawn, and to discredit the security of scientific knowledge.

As long as the bourgeoisie was revolutionary, they passed on such tasks. Marx, too, had never left anything in return, much to the indignation of the present bourgeois philosophy.

III. Marx and Engels

It was his revolutionary, proletarian standpoint that allowed a mental giant like Marx, to establish the unity of all science. But when we speak of Marx, we must never forget that the same exploit achieved at the same time an equal thinker, Frederick Engels, and that without the intimate cooperation of both the new materialist conception of history and the new historical or dialectical world view is not all at once so complete and comprehensive could occur.

In other ways as Marx Engels came to this view. Marx was the son of a lawyer, first for the legal, then determines the academic career. He studied law, philosophy, history, and turned to economic studies until he felt the lack of economic knowledge bitterly.

In Paris he studied economics, history, revolution and socialism, and especially the great thinkers of Saint Simon seems to have affected him greatly. These studies then took him to the realization that not the law, not the government doing to society, but, conversely, that the economic process springing society the law makes the state according to their needs.

Engels, however, was born as the son of a manufacturer, not the school but the school gave him the first foundations of his knowledge, there he learned to think scientifically. He was a practical businessman, business economics practically and theoretically, in England, in Manchester, the center of British capitalism, where his father owned a factory. From Germany ago familiar with Hegel's philosophy, he knew how to deepen the economic knowledge, which he found in England, and his gaze was directed primarily to the economic history. Nowhere, however, was in the forties of the 19th Century, the proletarian class struggle was designed and its relationship to capitalist development as clear for days, as in England.

Thus Engels came simultaneously with Marx, but in another way, at the same level as the materialist conception of history. Came then the one on the way over the old humanities, law, ethics, history, the other on the au f the new, economy, economic history, Ethnologien, and the natural sciences. In the revolution under socialism they met. The conformity of their ideas was what brought them closer to each other instantly, as she came into personal contact, in 1844 in Paris. The conformity of ideas but was soon to say to complete the merger in a higher unity, in which it is impossible, has what and how much one or the other helped. More significant was probably the Marx of the two, and no one has the ungrudging, joyful indeed recognized, as Engels After Marx himself is also their way of thinking called the Marxist. But Marx would never be able to accomplish what he accomplished without Engels, from whom he learned a lot this year, vice - of course vice versa. Each of the two was lifted by the interaction with the other and became such a breadth of vision and a universality that he had for himself alone can not win. Marx would be no angel came to Marx, Engels, even without materialistic conception of history, but their development would be slower, passed through more mistakes and failures. Marx was the deeper thinker, angel of bolder. In Marx, the power of abstraction was more developed, the gift of discovering the confusing plethora of special effects, the General, in making the angel of deduction, the ability of individual features of the whole of a phenomenon in the mind. In Marx, the critical faculty was powerful, the self-criticism, which docked to the boldness of his thought, a bridle and cautious Vorschreiten and constant testing of the soil, warned during the Engels's spirit by the proud joy of tremendous insight, which he won easily wings and was flying over the greatest difficulties.

Among the many suggestions received from the Marx, Engels, is above all a grown significantly. Marx had been lifted enormously by the fact that he, the German way of thinking on one side overcame German and French fertilized by thought.

IV. The combination of German, French, English thought

Three nations in the 19th Century, the bearer of modern culture. Only those who had met with the spirit of all three, which dominated all three services was to provide armed with all the achievements of his century, who could only be the biggest thing was to do with the agents of this century.

The summary of the thinking of these three nations into a higher unity in which each of its one-sidedness was removed, forms the starting point of the historical performance of Marx and Engels.

England had, as already mentioned, capitalism in the first half of the 19th Century more advanced than any other country, thanks mainly to its geographical position, which allows him in the 18th Century made it possible to draw significant benefits from the colonial conquest and Plünderungspolitik, bled to death on the border with the Atlantic States of the European mainland. Thanks to its insular position it needed to hold no strong standing army, it could turn its full force of the fleet and gain control of the sea without exhaustion. His wealth of coal and iron allowed him then to apply by the colonial policy gained riches for the development of capitalist industry, which conquered again by the control of the sea the world market, open up the prior to the development of the railways for goods of mass consumption only on the waterways was.

Earlier than elsewhere in England could therefore study capitalism and its trends, but also, as already mentioned, the proletarian class struggle that called forth these tendencies. Nowhere was the knowledge of the laws of the capitalist mode of production, ie the political economy, further advanced than in England. Also, thanks to global trade, economic history and ethnology. Better than anywhere else could be seen in England, what the next time hid in her lap, you could also see through the new humanities, the laws governing the social development of all times, and thus establish the unity of nature and the humanities .

But Britain offered the best material for this purpose only, not the best research methods.

Precisely because capitalism developed earlier in England than elsewhere, where the bourgeoisie came to power in society, before feudalism politically, economically, spiritually ruined completely and had the bourgeoisie was in all respects come to full independence. The colonial policy itself, which promoted capitalism so also gave the new feudal forces.

Another factor was that from the above-mentioned reasons, the standing army in England did not reach a strong development. This prevented the re-emergence of a strong central government. The bureaucracy was weak, the self-government of the ruling classes kept by her great power. This meant that the class struggle is little centralized, is often fragmented.

All this meant that the spirit of compromise zwischem old and new throughout the life and thought penetrated. The thinkers and pioneers of the emerging classes turned not against Christianity, the aristocracy, the monarchy, not their parties featured on major programs. They did not seek to review their thoughts on the end, they went before it, to champion comprehensive programs in place, only certain, practically from the moment offered Einzelmaßregeln. Narrowness and conservatism, overestimating the detail work in politics as in science, rejecting any desire for obtaining a wide horizon permeated all classes.

Quite different was the situation in France. This country was economically more backward, his predominant capitalist industries mainly luxury industries, the petty bourgeoisie. But the tone was at the lower middle of a big city like Paris, and such cities with half a million inhabitants and more, there was until the introduction of the railways are few, and they played a different role than today. The armies could be only slightly before the advent of railroads, which allowed only rapid mass transport. They were scattered in the country, not to contract rapidly, their equipment against the masses not as defenseless as they are today. Especially since even the Parisians had always distinguished by special obstinacy, long before the great revolution has repeatedly into armed rebellion of the government wrested concessions.

Before the introduction of compulsory education, the improvement of postal services by railways and telegraphs, the distribution of daily newspapers in the country, but was also mentally the superiority of the urban population over the rest of the country and therefore their intellectual influence was enormous. Social intercourse then offered for the mass of the unlearned, the only way to make themselves, especially politically, but artistically, even scientifically. How much greater was the chance in the big city, as in country towns and villages! All you had in mind France urged to Paris to press him and develop. All that was active in Paris, was met by a higher spirit.

And now saw these critical, high-spirited, daring people an unprecedented collapse of state authority and the ruling classes.

The same causes which hindered the economic development in France-vetch treatment promoted the Abwirtschaften of feudalism and the state. Sun tasted especially the colonial policy of the state of infinite sacrifice, broke its military and financial power and accelerated the economic ruin of the farmers in particular, but also the aristocrats. State, nobility, clergy were politically, morally and, with the exception of the church, and financially bankrupt, but nevertheless knew their oppressive rule to maintain to the utmost, thanks to the violence that the government through the standing army and a vast bureaucracy in their hands centralization had, and the complete abolition of all thanks to the automatic organization of people.

This eventually led to that colossal disaster that we know as the Great French Revolution and in the time, the petty bourgeois and proletarians of Paris, then came to dominate the whole of France, across Europe to offer his forehead. But earlier, the increasing glaring contradiction between the needs of the led out by the liberal bourgeoisie and those in the mass of the people protected by the authorities of the aristocrats-clericalism and to overcome the most radical thinking of all that exists. All traditional authority has declared the war. Materialism and atheism, in England Hobbies mere luxury of a rundown nobility, which disappeared quickly with the victory of the bourgeoisie in France have been the way of thinking exactly the boldest reformers in emerging classes. And if nowhere more so than in England, the economic roots of class antagonisms and class struggles came to light, it was nowhere as clear as can be seen in France during the Revolution, the fact that all the class struggle is a struggle for political power is that the task of every major political party does not stop at one or the other reform, but must always retain the conquest of political power in the eye, and that this conquest, when it is performed by a previously subjugated class, always a change pulls the whole social mechanism by itself. Was in the first half of the 19th Century England, the economic, as in France on the highest political thinking developed. England was ruled by the spirit of compromise, of the France of radicalism; flourished in England, the organizational structure of the slow detail work, such as France, the revolutionary all with continued raging passion.

The radical and bold action was preceded by a radical, bold thinking, nothing was sacred, the fearless and ruthless all knowledge to its ultimate consequences followed, every thought thought over.

But so shiny and gorgeous, the results of that thinking and acting, were there also developed the error of his merits. To get impatient, equal to the last, outermost targets, it did not take the time to prepare them. Full of zeal, to storm the fortress of the state by revolutionary fervor, it missed the organizational groundwork of their siege. And penetrate the urge to the last and highest truths seduced, easily the most over-hasty conclusions based on a completely inadequate material, witty put in place of the patient, the pleasure in researching and surprising ideas. It grew out of addiction, the infinite fullness of life through a few simple formulas and slogans to master. British sobriety countered Gallic phrases noise.

Different again was the situation in Germany.

There, capitalism was far less developed than in France because it was the great highway of world trade in Europe, the Atlantic Ocean almost completely cut off and therefore only slowly recovered from the terrible devastation of the Thirty Years' War. Far more so than France, Germany was a petty-bourgeois country, yet a country without a strong central state power. Fragmented into numerous small states, it had no large capital exhibit, sectionalism and provincialism made his petty bourgeoisie limited, weak and cowardly. The eventual collapse of feudalism was not done by a survey from the inside, but by an invasion from outside. Non-German citizens, but French soldiers swept him out of the most important parts of Germany.

Probably attracted the greatest successes of the rising middle class in England and France, the German bourgeoisie. But the thirst of the most energetic and most intelligent of his ^ elements of each of the areas remained closed, which conquered the bourgeoisie of Western Europe. They could not justify large commercial and industrial enterprises, and conduct, not in parliament and a powerful intervention in the affairs of the state press, not to command fleets and armies. The reality was bleak for them, as they had no choice but turning away from reality in pure thought, and the transfiguration of reality through art. In these areas, they threw themselves with all their might, they created great here, here, towering over the German people, France and England. While they have a Pitt and Fox and Burke produced a Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, a Nelson and Napoleon, Germany brought forth a Schiller, a Goethe, Kant, Fichte and Hegel.

The thinking was the chief occupation of the great Germans, the idea proved to them as ruler of the world, the revolution of thought to the means to revolutionize the world. The more wretched and limited reality, the more sought the mind to rise above them to overcome their barriers to capture the entire infinity.

While the Englishman, the best methods for winning stuff their fleets and industries, the French invented the best ways to conquer their armies and their insurrections, the Germans devised the best ways to conquer the thinking and research.

But this triumph was as the French and English in the wake of its disadvantages, such as for the theory to practice. The shift away from reality produced unworldliness and an overestimation of the ideas to which they attributed life and power for themselves, regardless of people's minds, which they produced and they had to realize. They contented themselves with keeping in the theory of law and failed, to strive for power, to bring the theory to application. So deep that German philosophy, German science as thoroughly as the sentimental German idealism was so glorious, they created, including hid untold practical impotence and utter absence of any desire for power. The German ideals were far more sublime than the French or even English. But they did not move to get closer to them. You stated at the outset that the ideal is the unreachable.

As the English conservatism, the radical French phrase, the Germans were doing was hanging loose idealism for a long time. The large-scale industrial development has finally lifted him, even put in its place military decisiveness. Earlier but it was a reaction in the penetration of the French mind after the revolution. The mixture of French revolutionary thought with German philosophical method owes Germany some of its greatest minds - just think of Heinrich Heine and Ferdinand Lassalle.

But even more powerful was the result, as this mixture was fertilized with British economic knowledge. Whom we owe the power of Engels and Marx.

They realized how much cause economics and politics, organizational legwork and revolutionary storm and stress to each other, as the detailed work remains barren without much purpose in which they find their permanent guide and cheer, as this goal is in the air without detailed work, which only the necessary power to create his achievement. They recognized, however, that such a goal may not be born out of sheer necessity revolutionary, it should remain free of illusions and self-intoxication, that it is gaining through the conscientious application of the methods of scientific research, that there must always be consistent with the total of human knowledge. They further recognized that the economy is the foundation of social development that can be found in it the laws by which this evolution takes place is necessary.

England gave them the most effective economic material, the philosophy of Germany, the best method to infer from this material, the aim of the present social development, and the French Revolution finally showed them most clearly, as we are to achieve this power, especially political power, to have won.

So they created the modern scientific socialism by combining all that is great and fertile in English, French, German thinking to a higher unity.

V. The association of working-class movement and socialism

The materialist conception of history and of themselves mean quite a period. From its beginning a new era of science, despite all the reluctance of the bourgeois scholarship. But it does not merely an epoch in the history of thought, but also in the history of fighting for the progressive development of society, politics in the broadest and highest sense of the word. Because it was through the association of working-class movement and socialism completed and presented to the proletarian class struggle, the highest power of which he is capable.

Labor movement and socialism are not by nature one. The labor movement is created with a need for readily by itself as a resistance to industrial capitalism, wherever it occurs the dispossessed, the working masses, enslaves, but also in large industrial enterprises and cities crowded together and united. The urwüchsigste form of labor movement is purely economic, the struggle for wages and hours, the first assuming only the form of simple outbursts of despair, riots unprepared, but will soon be transformed into higher forms of trade union organizations. In addition, early in the political struggle occurs. The bourgeoisie itself requires in its struggles against feudalism and help the proletarian calling it for themselves. In this study, the workers soon appreciate the importance of political freedom and political power for their own purposes. Namely, universal suffrage is an early stage in England and France is the subject of the political aspirations of the proletariat, and it leads in England in the thirties already a proletarian party of the Chartists.

Earlier rises of socialism. But not in the proletariat. Well he is just like the labor movement is a product of capitalism, that arises from this as the urge to counteract the misery imposed by the capitalist exploitation of the working classes. Meanwhile, the defense of the proletariat arises in the labor movement everywhere of itself, where a numerous working population gathered, however, socialism is a profound insight into the nature of modern society requires. Each of socialism based on the recognition that not on the basis of bourgeois capitalist society can be brought to an end to misery, the misery that is based on private ownership of the means of production and will only disappear with him. This is all socialist systems are in agreement, they differ from each other only from the ways that they want to know hit, to achieve the lifting of this private property, and the ideas they have of the new social property that in its place will occur.

So naive at times might be the expectations and proposals of the Socialists, the knowledge on which they were based, required a knowledge society, as the proletariat in the first decades of the 19th Century was still completely inaccessible. Good knowledge of socialist could only get a man who was able to put down on the floor of the proletariat to the point of view of civil society. But it could also just be one that dominated the center of science, which at that time were far more than just the middle classes now available. So of course, and of course, the labor movement of the capitalist mode of production developed everywhere, where it reaches a certain height, socialism, in its decision-vetch treatment not only capitalism, but in addition have a meeting exceptional circumstances a condition that occurred only rarely. Everywhere, however, socialism could initially buy only from a middle-class milieu. In England, even, until recently, is still socialism mainly propagated by bourgeois elements were.

This cause appeared to be a contradiction to the Marxist theory of class struggle, it would be such, but only if the class of the bourgeoisie ever done anywhere in socialism as its own made, or if Marx had declared it impossible that some non-proletarian individuals for specific reasons could accept the position of the proletariat.

Marx has always just said that the only power that was capable of helping to break through to socialism, form the working class. In other words, the proletariat can free itself only on its own. This is not to say that he only proletarians would be able to point the way to it.

That socialism is nothing if it is not supported by a strong labor movement today needs no further proof. Not so clear is the light side of the coin, that the labor movement can only develop their full force when they have understood and accepted socialism.

Socialism is not the product of an outside time and space and all class differences related ethics, he is always basically nothing more than the science of society, from the standpoint of the proletariat. The science is not merely to appease our curiosity by finding new and the unknown, mysterious, but it also has an economic purpose, the power savings. It allows the people to cope in the real world easier, more appropriate to use his powers to avoid any useless effort, and at any time to make the maximum extent and to achieve, what to do under the circumstances and reach is. In their starting points, the science is directly aware of such use and the economy of effort. The more it grows and away from their starting point, the more intermediate links occur between the activities of its research and its practical effect. But the connection can thus only two concealed, but not be repealed.

This is also the social science des proletariat, socialism, serves the most appropriate application of its forces and thus to allow its highest development of power: they achieved this course more so the more perfect it is itself, the deeper the knowledge of reality, they opens up.

The Socialist theory is not the idle trifling of some bookworm, but a very practical thing for the struggling proletariat.

His main weapon is the summary of its mass in violent, independent, free from all influences civic organizations. That can not be achieved without a socialist theory, which alone is able to identify the common proletarian • Jnteresse in the colorful diversity of the various proletarian layers together and they are all separate from the bourgeois world sharply and permanently.

At this performance is that naive, any theory at face labor movement incapable of rising even among the working classes against the growing capitalism.

Consider, for example, the unions ah. There are professional associations that seek to safeguard the immediate interests of its members. But how different are these interests in their chosen fields, as very different from the sailors as the colliers, at the Droschkenkutschern as the typesetters! Without a socialist theory which they are able to recognize shared interests, not the individual proletarian layers are strangers to one another, sometimes even hostile towards.

But because the union represents only the immediate interests of its members, it is not easily compared to the whole bourgeois world, but at first only to the capitalists of their profession. There are now next to these capitalists a whole series of bourgeois elements who move well their existence directly or indirectly from the exploitation of the proletariat, therefore interested in the bourgeois social order, and any attempt to oppose, to make the proletarian end exploitation, but have absolutely no interest in that the working conditions in this or that profession, particularly unfavorable moment. Whether the spinners of Manchester 2 or 2 ½ shillings earned in the day, whether he worked for 10 or 12 hours a day, did a large landowner, a banker, a newspaper owner, a lawyer be very indifferent, when not spinning shares owned. This might have an interest to make certain concessions to the union in order for it to gain political counter services from them. Sun bought where the unions were not informed by a socialist theory, the possibility that they were made to serve purposes that were nothing less than proletarian.

But worse was possible and occurred. Not all proletarian layers are able to seize the trade union organization. It is located in the proletariat of the difference between organized and unorganized workers. Where are those filled with socialist thought, they are the more militant sections of the proletariat, the vanguard as a whole. Where they lack this kind of thinking, they are just too easy to aristocrats, who not only lose all interest in the unorganized workers, but often occur in contrast to them, an obstacle to the organization in order to monopolize its benefits. The unorganized laborers are to each battle, each unable to rise without the help of organized. They expire without whose support the more misery, the more they rise. Thus, the trade union movement to bring about even despite the strengthening of individual layers of a direct weakening of the entire proletariat, if it is not full of socialist spirit.

But the political organization of the proletariat can not be without this spirit have their full force. This clearly testifies to the first Labour Party, born in 1835 in England Chartism. Probably contained the single, very broad and far-sighted elements, but as a whole, he pursued but no definite socialist program, but only a few, practically achievable without further milestones, in particular, universal suffrage, which was certainly not an end in itself but a means to an end; But this was for the total mass of the Chartists again only in the closest single economic demands, especially the ten-hour normal working day.

The first had the disadvantage that the party was not a pure class party. Universal suffrage was one thing that interested in the petty bourgeoisie.

To many it may seem as an advantage if the petty bourgeoisie, as such, followed by the Labour Party. But this fact is not only numerous, more. The proletariat has its own interests and his own struggle methods that differ from those of all other classes. It is hampered by the union with the other, can not exert its full force. Lucky for us Social Democrats, the petty bourgeois and peasants are welcome if they want to join us. But only if they present themselves to the proletarian ground when they feel themselves as proletarians. That only middle-class and small-scale elements come to us ensures our socialist program. Such was missing the Chartists, and then joined her election campaign on a number of petty-bourgeois elements who did fight for the proletarian interests and methods as well as some understanding of addiction. The natural consequence was necessary lively internal struggles in the Chartist movement, which weakened him very much.

The defeat of the revolution of 1848 made it for a decade of political labor movement to an end. As the European proletariat stirred again, began in the English working class all over again the struggle for universal suffrage. One could now expect a revival of Chartism. But as the English bourgeoisie led a master stroke. They divided the English proletariat, granted the organized workers the right to vote, they broke off from the rest mass of the proletariat, and so bent against the revival of Chartism. Had a comprehensive program on the general / out of the right to vote do not. Once this requirement was fulfilled in a way that was enough for the able-bodied part of the workers, the ground for him was gone. Only at the end of the century, laboriously crawling along behind the workers on the European mainland, the British were getting back to form an independent labor Parte. But they are far from the practical meaning of socialism for the full development of power of the proletariat have understood and refused to accept a program for their party, because this could only be a socialist! They waited until the logic of the facts, it forced upon them.

Today, everywhere has the conditions for the much needed combination of working-class movement and socialism given. They were missing in the first decades of the 19th Century.

The workers were then thrown down by the first onslaught of capitalism so that they hardly knew his ward to. Enough that they are in a primitive way to defend themselves. Too deep, social studies, they lacked any way.

The bourgeois socialists therefore saw the misery, the spread of capitalism, only one side, the depressing, not the other, the rousing, the revolutionary rise of the proletariat inspiring. They believed that only one factor is there to enforce virtue of the liberation of the proletariat: the civic benevolence. They rated the bourgeoisie itself, are believed in it enough to be able to co-thinkers, to be able to carry out socialist measures.

Their socialist propaganda was also initially under the bourgeois philanthropists multiple appeal. The Bourgeois're not monsters, on average, the misery she comes, if they derive any benefit from it, they would like to rectify it. However, so soft it's true suffering of the proletariat, the fighting so hard. They feel that this shakes the roots of their existence. The proletariat enjoys begging their sympathy, which she indignantly demanding to savage hostility. So it felt very uncomfortable, the Socialists, the labor movement that threatened to deprive them of that factor on which they built the most: The sympathies of the "well-meaning middle class" for the dispossessed.

They looked even more in the labor movement a disturbing element, the lower their confidence in the proletariat was, at that time was in general still very low in the ground, and the clearer they recognized the inadequacy of the naive labor movement. So they were not rare then, is really to turn against the labor movement, for example, to prove how useless the unions were the only wanted to increase wages, rather than fight the wage system itself, the root of all evil.

Gradually, however, was preparing for a revolution.In the forties, the labor movement was so far to produce a number of highly gifted minds which took possession of socialism and recognized him as a proletarian science of society. These workers already knew from experience that they would not have to rely on the philanthropy of the bourgeoisie. They recognized that the proletariat to free itself must. In addition, even bourgeois Socialists came to the realization that the generosity of the bourgeoisie was not reliable. Of course, the proletariat, they won but no confidence. His motion to appear to them as a destructive force that threatened all culture. They believed that only middle-class intelligentsia could build a socialist society, the driving force behind this, but they saw no more in sympathy with the tolerating, but in the fear of attacking the proletariat. You already saw the immense power and understood that the labor movement necessarily apparent from the capitalist mode of production that they will grow in this production, more and more. They hoped that the fear of the growing labor movement, the intelligent middle class will cause you to take by socialist measures of their dangerousness.

That was a great step forward, however, the combination of socialism and the labor movement of this latter view still could not arise. The socialist workers despite all his brilliance but lacked some of them but the comprehensive knowledge, which was needed to create a new, higher, to justify the theory of socialism, in which he was connected with the labor movement organically. You could just the old bourgeois socialism, utopianism to take over and adapt it to their needs.

While most were those proletarian socialists, to Chartism or the French Revolution escalated. Especially the latter won in the history of socialism great importance. The great revolution had clearly shown the importance of which can win the conquest of state power for the liberation of a class. In this revolution, but was also due to peculiar circumstances, a powerful political organization, the Jacobin Club, reached the point of a reign of terror with proletarian elements greatly offset lower middle class all over Paris and throughout France by this rule. And even as the revolution itself Babeuf had already drawn the consequence of a purely proletarian sense, trying to conquer a conspiracy by the state authority for a communist organization and make it subservient.

The memory of it was dead in the French workers never. The conquest of state power was for the early proletarian socialists, the means by which they would gain the power to implement socialism. But given the weakness and immaturity of the proletariat, they knew no other way for the conquest of state power, the coup as a number of conspirators, who was to unleash a revolution. Among the exponents of this idea in France is most famous Blanqui become. Similar ideas represented in Germany Weitling.

Other French Socialists knüpften also to the revolution. But the coup appeared to them a bit of a suitable means to overthrow the rule of capital. Just as the above-mentioned direction, but also those expected on the strength of the labor movement. She helped herself by saying that they failed to see how much the petty bourgeoisie on the same basis of private ownership of the means of production is, like the capital, that they believed the proletariat would carry out their struggle with the capitalists, without disruption of the petty bourgeoisie, the "people" and even among its aid. It required only the republic and universal suffrage, to cause the state power to socialist measures.

This superstition of some Republicans, whose most distinguished representative of Louis Blanc, was found in Germany a counterpart in the monarchical superstitions of the social kingship, as he entertained a couple of professors and other ideologues, such Rodbertus.

This monarchical state socialism was always just a quirk here and there a demagogic phrase. Serious practical importance, he has never won. But that was with the view taken by Blanqui and Louis Blanc directions of the case. They acquired the power to dominate Paris in the days of the February Revolution of 1848.

In the person they bought a huge critic of Proudhon. He questioned how the state and the proletariat in the revolution. He knew well that the proletariat had to transcend himself, but he also saw that when it fought for its liberation, it would take up the struggle with the state power and the state power, because even the purely economic struggle depended on the state power on how the workers felt the time at every step in the lack of any freedom of association. Since Proudhon was now a struggle for state power to be hopeless, he advised the proletariat to refrain from any attempts at its emancipatory struggle and to seek only peaceful means the organization, such as exchange banks, insurance funds and similar institutions. For the unions, he had as little understanding how to politics.

Thus formed labor movement and socialism, and all attempts to bring the two in a closer relationship to each other, formed in the decade in which Marx and Engels, their position and their method, a chaos of diverse currents, which discovers each a piece of what is right had to embrace it completely could not, each had to sooner or later end in failure.

What these directions could not, that succeeded the materialist conception of history, so the addition to their importance for science won an equally large for the actual evolution of society. They facilitated the transformation of one or the other.

As the socialists of the time recognized by Marx and Engels, that the labor movement seems inadequate when it opposes socialism and asks which agent is appropriate to obtain for the proletariat a secure existence and termination of any exploitation, labor movement (trade unions, the fight for suffrage etc.) or socialism? But they also recognized that this question was asked quite wrong. Socialism and secure existence of the proletariat and the abolition of any exploitation are equivalent. The only question is: How come the proletariat for socialism? And since the doctrine of class struggle answered: the labor movement.

Well, at first unable to give the proletariat a secure existence and the abolition of all exploitation, but it is the indispensable means, not merely the individual proletarians to keep from sinking in misery, but also the entire class of rapidly increasing power supply intellectual, economic, political power, power that has grown increasingly, albeit at the same time increasing the exploitation of the proletariat. Not according to their importance for restricting exploitation, but according to their importance for the increase in power of the proletariat the working class movement should be measured. Not out of the conspiracy Blanqui, but not from the state socialism of Louis Blanc or Rodbertus, nor from the peaceful organization of Proudhon, but only from the class struggle, which for decades, so has generations to take a pass, rises to power, which the State possession in the form of a democratic republic and their socialism may finally bring a breakthrough and should be. To lead the economic and political class struggle to maintain his legwork again zealous, but they meet also with the idea of ​​a far-sighted socialism to summarize the organization and operations of the proletariat in a uniform and harmonious with a vast whole, which swells more irresistible - that's According to Marx and Engels the task of anyone who he may be proletarian or not, to the position of the proletariat represents and wishes to free it.

The growth of the power of the proletariat but based itself in the end against the displacement of pre-capitalist, bourgeois modes of production by the capitalist, the more the number of proletarians concentrated, they, their indispensability-sensitivity increases for the entire society, but also in the increasingly concentrated capital, the preconditions for the social organization of production creates the invent of the Utopians, not arbitrarily, but to develop out of capitalist reality.

By this argument, Marx and Engels laid the foundation upon which the Social Democracy, claims that the basis on which is more and more the fighting proletariat of the entire globe, starting from which it has taken up his glorious triumph.

This achievement was hardly possible, as long as socialism did not have its own, independent of the bourgeois science. The Socialists before Marx and Engels were mostly very well acquainted with the science of political economy, but they took this criticism in the form in which they were created by bourgeois thinkers, and differed from them only in that they other proletarians friendly conclusions drawn therefrom.

Only Marx has made the study of the capitalist mode of production completely independently and shown how much more deeply and clearly they can be detected if they are from the proletarian point of view, rather than viewed from the middle out. For the proletarian point of view is beyond and above her, not her. Only he who considers capitalism as a temporary form allows it to capture its special historic character fully.

This feat rendered Marx in Capital (1867), after he had set out with his new socialist standpoint Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848).

Thus the proletarian struggle for emancipation had received a scientific basis of a size and strength, as it has before him possessed no revolutionary class. But of course, also not such a gigantic task had fallen, as the modern proletariat, it has set right the world again, capitalism has brought out of their joints. There is fortunately no Hamlet, it is not welcomed this task with wailing. From their enormous size, it draws tremendous strength and confidence.

VI. The combination of theory and practice

The main benefits that Marx accomplished in association with Angel, we have now seen. But the image of their work would be incomplete, we have not reported on a side, it marks an outstanding degree: the connection between theory and practice.

The middle course, the thinking appears as a stain on the white shield their scientific greatness, who, however reluctantly, grumbling and understanding, must submit himself to civic learning. If they were mere theorists, scholars have facilities that were content to engage their theories in an incomprehensible language, and for ordinary people in inaccessible tomes, this would have to go there. But the fact that their science was born from the struggle, and again served the struggle, the struggle against the established order, which is said to have robbed them of their innocence and honesty clouded.

This miserable view can only imagine a fighter as lawyers, which his science is to serve no other purpose than to provide him with arguments to refute the opposing party. She has no idea that nobody has a greater need for truth, as a real fighter in a terrible struggle, he has only prospect to exist when he realizes his position, his tools, his prospects in full clarity. The judges who interpret the state laws can be deceived by the tricks of a legal science pettifoggers dominant. The necessity of natural laws in the other hand, can only detect bribe not to dupe not.

A fighter who is at this point is to draw from the fierceness of the struggle only increased urge to undisguised truth. But the urge to keep the truth is not won for themselves, but they share the struggle comrades.

And so, Engels wrote of the years between 1845 and 1848, in which he and Marx won their latest scientific results, that they had no intention, "confided in large books exclusively, learned" world "these results. She sat down immediately rather proletarian organizations in connection to these to make their views known and for its corresponding tactic propaganda. They succeeded as well, one of the most important of the then revolutionary proletarian organizations, the international "Communist League" to win for their principles, which were then a few weeks before the February Revolution of 1848 in the Communist Manifesto that expression of the "Guide" of the proletarian should be movement of all countries.

The revolution called Marx and Engels in Brussels, where she stayed, first to Paris, then to Germany where she now went up completely for some time in the revolutionary practice.

The decline of the revolution of 1850 forced them to, much against their will to devote himself entirely to the theory. But in the early sixties, revived the labor movement all over again, was Marx - Engels was initially hindered by personal relationships - once again from interfering with full force in the practical movement. He did this in the International Workingmen's Association, which was founded in 1864 and soon to become a nightmare for the whole of bourgeois Europe.

The ridiculous police spirit, with even the suspicion of bourgeois democracy, every proletarian movement, made the international seem like a vast conspiracy of society, which made the event of unrest and coups, the only task. In fact, she followed in full public view their own purposes: the summary of all proletarian forces for common action, but also to independent work, divorced from bourgeois politics and bourgeois thought, with the goal of Exproprierung of capital, the conquest of political and economic instruments of power the propertied classes, the proletariat. The most important and crucial step is the conquest of political power, but the economic emancipation of the working classes is the ultimate goal, "which has any political movement as a mere subordinate aids".

As their main tool of proletarian power, Marx regarded the development organization.

"One element of success have the proletarians," he said in the Inaugural Address: "The mass [numbers, usually" translates numbers, "which makes no sense], but the mass is only difficult in the balance, if a organization combined and a conscious objective is being led. "

Without any target organization. The common goal alone can unite the various individuals into a common organization. On the other hand, the diversity of objectives seems as divisive as the common goal of uniting.

Precisely because of the importance of the organization of the proletariat, everything depends on the type of target, which is given to him. This objective is of the greatest practical importance. Nothing seems so impractical as the realpolitik view, the movement is everything and the goal is nothing. Is the organization nothing and everything unorganized movement?

Even before Marx's socialist proletariat had set the targets. But this only provoked sectarianism were the proletarians split, since each of these socialists the main emphasis on the particular type of solution to put the social problem, which he had invented. So many solutions, so many sects.

Marx was no specific solution. He withstood all challenges, "positive" to explain in detail the measures by which is to emancipate the proletariat. He sat in the international organization, only the common goal of all proletarians could make our own, the economic emancipation of his class, and also the way there he was, was one that showed any proletarians have his class instinct of the economic political and class struggle.

Above all, it was the trade union form of organization that advocated by Marx in the International, they appeared to be the preferred form, the virtue most likely to unite large masses of the time. In the trade unions, he also saw the cadres of the Workers' Party.

Their performance with the spirit of class struggle and its pre-training to understand the conditions under which the expropriation of the capitalist class and the liberation of the proletariat was possible, he ran no less eager, as the extension of trade union organization itself

He had to overcome strong resistance here, especially with the most advanced workers who were not satisfied with the spirit of the old Socialist and looked down with contempt on the unions because they do not pay antasteten system. This appeared to them as a departure from the right road, they saw in the establishment of organizations in which the wage system was overcome directly, as in the production co. If, nevertheless, made the trade union organization on the continent of Europe since the second half of the sixties, rapid progress, it owes mainly to the International and the influence that Marx in it and practiced it.

But Marx was not the unions end in itself but a means to an end, the class struggle against the capitalist order. . Union leaders, the unions tried to make this perverted purposes - either for personal or limited nurgewerkschaftlichen intentions - which he opposed the most determined resistance. This was especially the British trade union officials, who began to cheat with the Liberals.

Anyway, so forgiving and tolerant of Marx to the proletarian masses was so severe against those who acted as their leader. This was primarily their theorists.

In the proletarian organization called Marx every proletarian welcome that came with the honest intention, To fight the class struggle, no matter what views the intervener worshiped otherwise, what theoretical Bewegründe drove him, what arguments he used, no matter if he was an atheist or a good Christian, if Proudhonianer, Blanquist, Weitlingers Lassalleans or whether he understood the theory of value or deemed totally unnecessary, etc.

Of course he was not indifferent to whether he was dealing with clear-headed or confused workers. He considered it an important task to educate them, but he would have thought it wrong to workers because they thought confused, repel and keep away from the organization. He put full faith in the power of class antagonisms and the Logic of the class struggle, the proletariat had to bring everyone on track as soon as he had once joined an organization that was a real proletarian class struggle.

But he behaved differently compared to people who came to the proletariat as a teacher, when they spread ideas, which were likely to interfere with the strength and consistency of the class struggle. Such elements over he had no tolerance •. As a relentless critic, he came to meet them, and their intentions might be the best, her work appeared fatal to him in any case - if it ever results zeitigte and not proved to be mere waste of energy.

Thanks to Marx's always been one of the most hated men; bestgehaßt not only of the bourgeoisie, of which he was afraid of her most dangerous enemy, but also from all sects, inventors, resulting confusion councils and similar elements in the socialist camp, his "intolerance," his "authoritarianism" and his "papacy", his "Inquisition" outraged the more vivid, more painfully they felt his criticism.

With his views, we have taken over by Marx and Marxists that position, and we are proud of it. Only he who feels himself to be the weaker one, complains about the "intolerance" of a purely literary criticism. No one is more sharper, malicious criticism, as Marx and Marxism. But so far it has not yet occurred to any Marxist, thereat to sing a dirge over the intolerance of our literary adversaries. For this we are sure of our cause.

We can not be indifferent, however, the resentment, which at times is heard in the proletarian masses on literary feuds, which are between Marxism and fought off his critics. That resentment speaks a very legitimate need: for uniformity of the class struggle, after pooling the proletarian elements into a large compact mass, the fear of divisions that could weaken the proletariat.

The workers know very well what they draw strength from their unity, it is higher than their theoretical clarity, and they curse theoretical discussions when these threaten to lead to divisions. And rightly so, because the quest for theoretical clarity would cause the opposite of what is expected to reach it, if it weakened the proletarian class struggle, rather than strengthened.

A Marxist, a theoretical difference of up to a split: would a proletarian fighting organization was continuing, however, not Marxist, not act in the spirit of the Marxist doctrine of class struggle, for every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs.

Your view of the position to be occupied by the Marxists in the proletarian organizations, Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto already explained in the section that is titled: Proletarians and Communists. The Communists, which was about the same, what is now called Marxists.

It is because:

"... In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working parties.

You do not separate from the interests of the proletariat as a whole.

They set up any sectarian principles, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only, that on the one hand, in the various national [d h restricted to the individual states. KK] struggles of the proletarians of the joint, they point out the nationality of independent interests of the entire proletariat, and bring to the other hand, the fact that in the various stages of development, which goes through the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie, always represent the interests of the entire movement.

The Communists are practically the most determined, pushes forward section of the working parties of all countries, theoretically, they have in front of the rest mass of the proletariat, the insight into the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented by this or that do-gooders or discovered. They are only general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, going on under our eyes a historical movement. "

In the eighty-five years since this was written, has many things changed, so that those records no longer be able to apply to each letter. In 1848, there were no large, unified socialist workers' parties with comprehensive programs, and in addition to the Marxist theory were numerous other, much more widespread socialist theories.

Today, the struggling proletariat, which is united in mass parties, only a socialist theory of life: the Marxist. Not all members of the working parties are Marxists, still less are all formed by Marxists. But those among them who do not accept the Marxist theory, have no theory. Either they deny the necessity of each theory and each program, or they brew from pieces of pre-Marxist thinking, which we have just learned, and which are not yet entirely disappeared, along with some Marxist chunks one Allerweltssozialismus that implements the advantage is that you leave him out of everything, what a currently does not has the stuff to include in it everything that appears to one currently used, which is so much more convenient than the consistent Marxism, but failed completely, where the theory on is most important. It is sufficient for the ordinary purposes of popular agitation, but fails when it comes their way in the reality in the face of new and unexpected phenomena. Precisely because of its pliability and softness, you can train him not building that defies the storms. But also a guide, he can not make that guides the seeker, as he himself is determined entirely by the personal needs of its instantaneous carrier.

Marxism has now become established on the proletariat, not against other socialist views. His critics do not come out against him with other theories, but only with the Anzweiflungen need either a theory at all, or at least a consistent theory. There are only phrases such as not of "dogmatism", "Orthodoxy" and the like, new closed systems, which are held against him in the proletarian movement.

But that is for us Marxists now only one more reason to report any attempt to form within the labor movement a particular Marxist sect will be who enters from the other layers of the struggling proletariat. As Marx also consider it our duty, we unite the entire proletariat into a fighting organism. Within this body but it will always be our goal, "the most decisive practical section which pushes forward part" to stay, has "in front of the rest mass of the proletariat, the insight into the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement," that is, we will always endeavor to provide energy to practical and theoretical knowledge of the highest that can be done with the given resources. Just the fact of the superiority of our services, which enables us the superiority of the Marxist standpoint, we want to occupy a special place in the whole organism of a class party organized proletariat, by the way, wherever met not conscious Marxism it already, by the logic of the facts is always more crowded in its tracks.

But it has also caused hardly a Marxist or a Marxist group differences due purely theoretical cleavage. Where there were divisions, there have always been practical, not theoretical, it was tactical or organizational differences that they brought about, and the only theory of the scapegoat, while all the sins were charged.

Even today the deep contrast between Communists and Social Democrats is not a theoretical but a practical one. That is why we discuss it here further. He is a tactical and organizational rather than the contrast between Marxism and anti-Marxism, but the great contrast between dictatorship and democracy. We must, however, social democrats are appointed with full right to Marx, who joined the party and the union for full democracy, and in the state for the Democratic Republic. [1]

Marx did not merely theoretically shown the way by which the proletariat most likely reached its ambitious goal, it is also practically progressed in this way. Through his work in the International, he has become a model for all our practical activity.

Not only as a thinker, but as an example, we have to celebrate Marx, or rather, what is more in his spirit, to study him. We take no less rich history of his personal profits from the effectiveness of how his theoretical arguments.

And he was exemplary in his actions not only by his knowledge, his superior intellect, but also by his boldness, his tireless, the mated with the greatest kindness and unselfishness, and the most imperturbable equanimity.

Who wants to know his audacity, according to his reading of the process, in Cologne on 9 Negotiated in February 1849 because of his call for armed resistance against him, which he outlined the need for a new revolution. For his kindness and selflessness demonstrated by the lively concern which he, even in the greatest misery of living operated, for his comrades to whom he always thought rather than on himself, so after the collapse of the revolution of 1848, after the fall of the Paris Commune of 1871.His whole life was finally an unbroken chain of tests that could establish only a man whose tireless and firmness of the ordinary level far exceeded.

From the beginning of his ministry in the Rheinische Zeitung (1842), he was hounded from country to country, and promised him the revolution of 1848 the beginning of a victorious pilot door men. Through his case, he found himself thrown back into political and personal misery that seemed so hopeless, because he in exile on the one hand, the bourgeois democracy boycotted, on the other side of the Communists themselves feuding because he does not revolutionary enough was, and was buried by the faithful in a number of Prussian fortresses for many years. Then finally came a ray of hope, the International, but after a few years, this was again obscured by the fall of the Paris Commune, which was soon followed by the dissolution of the International in inner confusion. Well they had fulfilled their task brilliantly, but in doing so, the proletarian movements of individual countries become more independent. The more they grew, the more was needed, the Internationale a more elastic form of organization that made the various national organizations more leeway. However, at the same time, as this was needed most, felt the British trade union leaders who wanted to go with the Liberals, hampered by the tendency of the class struggle, rebellion, however, in the Latin countries of Bakunin Anarchism against the participation of the workers involved in politics: phenomena that the General Council of the International at that time just to exercise his sharpest centralized powers urged the federal system as the organization was necessary than ever. On this appeal failed, the proud ship, whose control was in the hands of Karl Marx.

It was a bitter disappointment for Marx. Of course then came the brilliant rise of the German social democracy and the strengthening of the revolutionary movement in Russia. Meanwhile, the Socialist law that put an end to brilliant first ascent, and the Russian terrorism reached its climax in 1881st From there it went downhill fast with him.

Such was the political activity of Marx an unbroken chain of failures and disappointments. And no less his scientific activity. His life's work, the capital, on which he placed such high expectations, remained apparently unnoticed and ineffective. Even within his own party, it was understood until the early eighties, very little.

Marx died just at the threshold of time, in the ripe fruit should be the last, which he in the fiercest storms and sunless, gloomy time sown. He died when dawned the time of the proletarian movement all over Europe took and everywhere with his mind filled to its foundations are presented, and the very fact began a period of triumphant revival of the proletariat, which contrasts so brilliantly of that time, in the Marx as a lonely, little comprehended, but much hated fighters against a world of enemies to understand his ideas among the proletariat struggled.

So daunting, almost hopeless situation become that for any ordinary person would, Marx never robbed his serene equanimity, never his proud confidence. He towered above his contemporaries as much, saw so much over them, that he clearly saw the Promised Land, which the great mass of his contemporaries was not allowed to even guess. It was his scientific size, it was the depth of his theory from which he drew the best strength of his character, in the roots his imperturbability and his confidence that he freely gave of all variations and moods, restless from that sense of exuberance, the now sky high cheers and tomorrow is sorrowful even to death.

From this source we must draw, then we can be sure that we are in the large and heavy fighting our man of our time and develop the maximum force of which we are capable of. Then we may expect, sooner than would otherwise be possible to achieve our goal. The banner of the liberation of the proletariat, and thus the whole of humanity which Marx has unfolded, the more he advanced wore long as a generation to us, in ever-renewed onslaught, never languishing, never despairing, which are the fighters that he trained to victory implanting on the ruins of capitalist stronghold.
Notes to Editors

First In the issue of 1908 lacks this paragraph. Instead, it says;

"What is known, for example, for several years as part of the French Socialist battle against intolerance is Marxist, seen in the light of battle only a few writers and parliamentarians against the proletarian discipline, which they consider degrading. They merely require the discipline of the masses, but not to such an exalted beings like themselves the champions of proletarian discipline against it in France has always been the Marxists, and they have been found here as excellent students of their master. "- MIA .

No, there are too many garbled passages. It's best to translate it properly as a whole. Perhaps Railyon should do it.

Julian Besteiro announced the publication of a Spanish translation (La aportación histórica de Carlos Marx) but perhaps it got cancelled/destroyed or Spanish libraries are not that internet savvy.

I have a translation by Lucien Laurat of a text by Kautsky from the 1930s (in a footnote calling him our great master). I suspect also Maximilien Rubel had sympathies for Kautsky (he reviewed Kautsky's 1927 book on the materialist conception of history). But in the 1930s Laurat still worked with Chirik on a text on Luxemburg's economic theory. He also fell for Planism (contrary to Kautsky, who correctly regarded it as an authoritarian tendency).

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Thought about it, but Marxist stuff is just so damn hard to translate. At least that's what I remember from trying my hand at a GSP piece and I was like, what are these words I do not understand... or more like, the piece lost a lot of eloquence in the process.

I mean, I could try but it would take quite a long time because of the length of the piece. Angelus Novus seems to be a better candidate for this, as his English also seems to be better than mine anyway...

Kautsky's style is a lot clearer than some of the GSP texts and it doesn't have to be a perfect translation. Yes, it's a long time (2 weeks intensively perhaps), but you learn from it.