The revolutionary perspective and Social-Democracy
At the end of the last article in this series, we looked at
the principle danger posed to the social democratic parties operating at the
zenith of capitalism’s historical development: the divorce between the fight
for immediate reforms and the overall goal of communism. The growing success of
these parties both in winning ever increasing numbers of workers to their
cause, and in extracting concessions from the bourgeoisie through the
parliamentary and trade union struggles, was accompanied, and indeed partly
contributed to, the development of the ideologies of reformism...
This series has now reached the period that followed
the death of Karl Marx in 1883; coincidentally, the bulk of the material that
will be examined in the following two articles is located in the years between
Marx’s death and the passing of Engels, which took place 100 years ago this
year. The immensity of Marx’s contribution to the scientific understanding of
communism has meant that a considerable part of this series has been devoted to
the work of this one great figure in the workers’ movement...
As this series has developed, we have shown how Marx’s
revolutionary work went through different phases corresponding to the changing
conditions of bourgeois society, and of the class struggle in particular. The
last decade of his life, following the defeat of the Paris
Commune and the dissolution of the First International, was therefore, as in
the 1850s, primarily devoted to scientific research and theoretical reflection
rather than open militant activity.
Class consciousness is a living thing. The fact that a part
of the proletarian movement has attained a certain level of clarity does not
mean that the whole movement has attained it, and even the clearest fractions can,
in certain circumstances, fail to see all the implications of what they have
seen, and even lose their grip on a previously-reached level of understanding.
