A comrade of May 1968

[ALB]

I don’t know if this was ever drawn to the attention of members. So, in case not, here for the record is Comrade Johnny Mercer‘s contribution to a panel discussion  in Chicago in 2018 on this:

Fifty years of 1968

[PartisanZ]

A good contribution from Johnny. How would you answer his question at the end?

Do ideas precede revolution, or does revolution give birth to ideas? And, of course, the answer is dialectical.

I am not great on dialectical riddles myself. I would say both.

[ALB]

Marx and Engels had a different opinion on this at the beginning and at end of their political lives.

In 1845 in some private notes written to clarify their ideas (not published until well after the death of both of them in 1935 under the title The German Ideology) they wrote:

”Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”

So Revolution precedes Ideas.

They still held this view during the bourgeois revolutionary wave in Europe in 1848-9 expecting as the Communist Manifesto stated that the coming bourgeois revolution in Germany would rapidly be followed by a proletarian one, ie could be turned into one.

In what can be called his political testament, as one if his last writings published in 1895 the year he died, Engels wrote an Introduction to a collection of Marx’s articles from the period The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850. In it he noted that all previous revolutions had been minority revolutions and that after the victory the minority split into two, one satisfied with what had been achieved while the other wanted to go further. Marx and himself he wrote had expected this to be repeated in 1848:

“All revolutions of modern times, beginning with the great English Revolution of the seventeenth century, showed these features, which appeared inseparable from every revolutionary struggle. They appeared applicable, also, to the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation; all the more applicable, since precisely in 1848 there were but a very few people who had any idea at all of the direction in which this emancipation was to be sought. The proletarian masses themselves, even in Paris, after the victory, were still absolutely in the dark as to the path to be taken. And yet the movement was there, instinctive, spontaneous, irrepressible. Was not this just the situation in which a revolution had to succeed, led, it is true, by a minority, though this time not in the interest of the minority, but in the finest interest of the majority? If, in all the longer revolutionary periods, it was so easy to win over the great masses of the people simply by the plausible false representations of the pressing minorities, why should they be less susceptible to ideas which were the truest reflection of their economic condition, which were none other than the clear, rational expression of their needs, of needs not yet understood but merely vaguely felt by them? To be sure, this revolutionary mood of the masses had almost always, and usually very speedily, given way to lassitude or even to a change to the opposite as soon as illusion evaporated and disappointment set in. But what was involved here were not false representations, but the implementation of the most vital interests of the great majority itself, interests which, it is true, were at that time by no means clear to this great majority, but which were bound to become clear to it as their practical implementation proceeded, by their convincing obviousness. And when, as Marx showed in his third article, in the spring of 1850, the development of the bourgeois republic that arose out of the “social” Revolution of 1848 had even concentrated real power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie — monarchistically inclined as it was into the bargain — and, on the other hand, had grouped all the other social classes, peasantry as well as petty bourgeoisie, around the proletariat, so that during and after the common victory, not they but the proletariat grown wise from experience had to become the decisive factor — was there not every prospect then of turning the revolution of the minority into a revolution of the majority?“

So, still Revolution precedes Ideas.

But here’s how Engels answered his question;

“History has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us.”

So, what did he conclude was now the right approach;

“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must  also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required.”

In other words, Ideas (thrown up by capitalism of course) must precede Revolution. Just what we have always argued.

Now you’ve had a preview of one of the articles in the November Socialist Standard that will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Engels. But it already existed as a ready-made answer to Johnny’s question.

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