Spirit and Mass

The red tide rises ever more threateningly. With all their efforts, the bourgeoisie are able to bring it to a halt for a moment in a special stroke of luck, but then it continues unstoppably. What is the propertied class thinking? Of course they cannot simply give up their cause and believe in the victory of socialism; that would mean throwing in the towel and giving up the fight. But it cannot give up the struggle; it must continue to fight for capitalism, for its property, its surplus value; but then it also needs a theory, an explanation that gives it hope that its cause is not yet lost. Such a theory, which it adopts, is also of interest to us; it reveals to us the deepest thought content of the enemy class and from it we can deduce the tactics which it will generally follow and which lie behind all individual political measures and attempts. Of course, the mass of the bourgeoisie is not aware of them; for these theories we must turn to the best minds among the bourgeois scholars, who are earnestly endeavoring to arrive at a clear insight.

It was therefore no coincidence that on January 27, at the Kaiser's birthday celebrations, Professor Hans Delbrück gave a speech at Berlin University on "Spirit and Mass in History". It was, as it were, a response to January 12, to the great election victory of social democracy, albeit without mentioning it — the response of the spokesmen of the official bourgeois intellect, the group of scholars who for forty years have proudly called themselves the intellectual bodyguard of the Hohenzollern dynasty. It was not just a random phrase, as we so often hear at this time, but a statement by a serious scholar based on thorough scientific research, and therefore all the more suitable as a sedative for the propertied class. It presented in a new form the same views that the speaker had already arrived at as the results of his research in his famous "History of the Art of War".

One of Delbrück's most important achievements in this work is that he has thoroughly dispelled all historical sources about the mass armies of the Barbarians. The army of millions that the Persian king sent to Greece belongs as much to the realm of fable as the countless Germanic hosts that flooded the Roman Empire. This is demonstrated in detail in a critical examination of each individual battle. Large armies are impossible for barbarian tribesmen; they are a product of civilization. The provisioning and unified command of large masses of men presents such enormous tasks that they cannot be solved by primitive peoples with their limited resources; only the artful mechanism of a detailed organization, which can itself be the product of a higher culture, is capable of this. It is a product of the spirit; only the leading organizing spirit can turn the dead masses into a living organism and unite their combined power through the unified will of a giant power. Delbrück expressed this in Berlin in these words:

"The masses in themselves are powerless, they only become strong through the form into which they are brought and which makes it possible to give them a unified will, to direct them towards a conscious goal. This fort is a spiritual product, is spirit."

"The mass that appears in the history of war is spirit, because it is an organized mass, and it must also have a certain spirit, that is, each individual must be filled with a certain attitude. The barbarians can also have this spirit, and often have it to a greater degree than the cultural elves; but they cannot have the objectified spirit, the comprehensive and at the same time fine organization."

At first sight it may seem strange that such statements can offer any reassurance to the bourgeoisie; after all, the social democratic labor movement is, as it were, the practical application of this theory of masses and spirit. For what else does social democracy do but create the organization of the masses, fill them with a unified will and direct them to a conscious goal? In fact, the truth contained in the above sentences does not touch the foundations of social democracy, but rather strengthens them. It can only be used against Social-Democracy by connecting it with a deep-rooted prejudice of the ruling class, which did not need to be expressed because it was self-evident, namely, the prejudice that the mind can only be the monopoly of a ruling class.

The masses themselves are powerless, only the spirit that leads them makes them strong — that is the emphasis of the professor's speech, that is what made it timely, to reassure the ruling class about the four million victory of the rebellious masses. Not in the sense that its present forms of domination and exploitation will all remain exactly the same; it goes without saying that it will have to give in a little, sacrifice some privileges, leave a part of the surplus value. But a ruling class will remain in some form or other; the socialist's unimaginable feverish fantasy of a world of equal men, without rulers, without leaders, will at least never become a reality; for without spiritual leadership the masses cannot manage, they are powerless. Every organization needs capable men at the helm. Spiritually, only a minority ever rises above the masses; spirit and masses are opposites, the masses are only the object of the spiritual forces that rule the world. Spirit is a quality of the few; therefore a minority will always dominate and direct the great masses.

This shows how the bourgeoisie, in its most capable minds, is reconciled to the unstoppable rise of the proletariat. It cannot count on overthrowing it, but it sees the possibility of making terms with it. It waits, without too much alarm, because it believes it has already noticed the development within social democracy that fits in with the general theory just expounded. The revolutionary fire has been extinguished, it rejoices. Instead of the raw masses, who threatened to destroy all order, as their frightened imagination used to paint them, they are confronted by politicians and officials with polite, educated forms, people with whom it is possible to talk, who have nothing dishonest about them. Anyone who has seen the Social Democrats at work, as Posadowsky recently said in an election speech in Bielefeld, knows that they are human beings like us; they also fight with water! The working-class masses are organized masses; here, too, the spirit is directed, for the organizations are led by leaders who direct and control the masses. Today's class struggle therefore seems to amount to nothing more than a new minority class rising up from the people and advancing at the head of the masses against the present ruling class. Whatever form the struggle takes, whether it ends in a compromise or a revolution, the result will in any case be that the new leadership will more or less share power with the old authorities, who will have to give up some of their old prerogatives. Instead of mass rule, the result will be that even then a leading minority will lead and govern the masses.

Of course, it is true that we also boil with water, because we are neither magicians nor utopians. But bourgeois politicians have never realized what we are cooking because they do not know the material basis of social development. They envision the future revolution following the example of all previous revolutions, each time with a new minority coming to power. For they do not know that, as a result of the extraordinary increase in the productivity of labor, a society without exploitation has for the first time become possible and therefore necessary. But where exploitation is absent, the rule of an exploiting class is also absent; the monopoly of intellectual education which it acquired is also absent. The rise of the proletariat, its class struggle, its organization, signifies precisely the abolition of this monopoly; the masses' own will, their own self-recognized interest, asserts itself and commands the actions of the "leaders". And so there is no pacting, only surrender. Let the ruling class reassure itself with its theory. But we know that the struggle and the victory of the proletariat mean something else. The masses and the spirit cease to be opposites; they merge into one. The masses are no longer objects, but subjects, bearers of the spirit. The spirit becomes a possession of the masses, an organ of the masses themselves.