1. Social Reform and Social Revolution

“Private ownership in the instruments of production, once the means of securing to the producer the ownership of his product, has to-day become the means of expropriating the farmer, the artisan, and the small trader, and of placing the non-producers – capitalists and landlords – in possession of the products of labor. Only the conversion of private ownership of the means of production – the land, mines, raw materials, tools, machines and the means of transportation and communication – into social ownership and the conversion of commodity production into socialist production, carried on for and by society, can production on a large scale and the ever-increasing productivity of social labor be changed from a source of misery and oppression for the exploited classes, into one of well-being and harmonious development.” – Article 5, Erfurter Program.

The productive forces that have been generated in capitalist society have become irreconcilable with the very system of property upon which it is built. The endeavor to uphold this system of property renders impossible all further social development, condemns society to stagnation and decay – a decay that is accompanied by the most painful convulsions.

Every further perfection in the powers of production increases the contradiction that exists between these and the present system of property. All attempts to remove this contradiction, or even to soften it down, without interfering with property, have proved vain, and must continue so to prove as often as attempted.

For the last hundred years thinkers and statesmen among the possessing classes have been trying to prevent the threatened downfall of the system of private property in the instruments of production, that is to say, to prevent revolution. Social reform is the name they give to their perpetual tinkerings with the industrial mechanism for the sake of removing this or that ill effect of private property in the means of production, at least of softening its edge, without touching private property itself. During the last hundred years manifold cures have been recommended and tried; it is now hardly possible to imagine any new recipe in this line. All the so-called “latest” panaceas of our social quacks which are to heal the old social evils quickly, without pain and without expense, are, upon closer inspection, discovered to be but a revival of old devices, all of which have been tried before in other places and found worthless. We pronounce these reforms inoperative in so far as they propose to remove the growing contradictions between the powers of production and the existing system of property and at the same time strive to uphold and confirm the latter. But we do not mean that the social revolution – the abolition of private property in the means of production – will be accomplished of itself, that the irresistible, inevitable course of evolution will do the work without the assistance of man; nor yet that all social reforms are worthless and that nothing is left to those who suffer from the contradiction between the modern powers of production and the system of property but idly to fold their arms and patiently to wait for its abolition.

When we speak of the irresistible and inevitable nature of the social revolution, we presuppose that men are men and not puppets; that they are beings endowed with certain wants and impulses, with certain physical and mental powers which they will seek to use in their own interest. Patiently to yield to what may seem unavoidable is not to allow the social revolution to take its course, but to bring it to a standstill.

When we declare the abolition of private property in the means of production to be unavoidable, we do not mean that some fine morning the exploited classes will find that, without their help, some good fairy has brought about the revolution. We consider the breakdown of the present social system to be unavoidable, because we know that the economic evolution inevitably brings on conditions that will compel the exploited classes to rise against this system of private ownership. We know that this system multiplies the number and the strength of the exploited, and diminishes the number and strength of the exploiting, classes, and that it will finally lead to such unbearable conditions for the mass of the population that they will have no choice but to go down into degradation or to overthrow the system of private property.

Such a revolution may assume many forms, according to the circumstances under which it takes place. It is by no means necessary that it be accompanied with violence and bloodshed. There are instances in history when the ruling classes were either so exceptionally clear-sighted or so particularly weak and cowardly that they submitted to the inevitable and voluntarily abdicated. Neither is it necessary that the social revolution be decided at one blow; such probably was never the case. Revolutions prepare themselves by years or decades of economic and political struggle; they are accomplished amidst constant ups and downs sustained by the conflicting classes and parties; not infrequently they are interrupted by long periods of reaction.

Nevertheless, however manifold the forms may be which a revolution may assume, never yet was any revolution accomplished without vigorous action on the part of those who suffered most under the existing conditions.

When, furthermore, we declare that those social reforms which stop short of the overthrow of the present system of property are unable to abolish the contradictions which the present economic development has produced, we by no means imply that all struggles on the part of the exploited against their present sufferings are useless within the framework of the existing social order. Nor do we claim that they should patiently endure all the ill-treatment and all the forms of exploitation which the capitalist system may decree to them, or that so long as they are at all exploited, it matters little how. What we do mean is that the exploited classes should not over-rate the social reforms, and should not imagine that through them the existing conditions can be rendered satisfactory. The exploited classes should carefully examine all the social reforms that are offered to them. Nine-tenths of the proposed reforms are not only useless, but positively injurious to the exploited classes. Most dangerous of all are those which, aiming at the salvation of the threatened social order, shut their eyes to the economic development of the last century. The working-men who take the field in favor of such schemes waste their energies in a senseless endeavor to revive the dead past.

Many are the ways in which the economic development may be influenced: it may be hastened and it may be retarded; its results may be made more, or less, painful; only one thing is impossible – to stop its course, or turn it back.

When, for instance, in the early stages of capitalism, the workers destroyed the machines, opposed woman’s labor, and so on, their efforts were useless, and could not be otherwise. They arrayed themselves against a development that nothing could resist. Since then they have hit upon better methods whereby to shield themselves as much as possible against the injurious effects of capitalist exploitation. With their trade-unions and their political activities, each supplementing the other, they have in all civilized countries met with more or less success. But each of their successes, be it the raising of wages, the shortening of hours, the prohibition of child labor, the establishment of sanitary regulations, gives a new impulse to the economic development. For example it may have caused the capitalist to replace the dearer labor with machinery, or it may have forced up his payroll and thereby rendered the competitive struggle harder for the small capitalist, shortened his economic existence and hastened the concentration of capital.

Accordingly, however justifiable, or even necessary, it may be for the workmen to establish labor organizations to better their condition by lowering the hours of work and securing other equally wholesome changes, it would be a profound error to imagine that such reforms could delay the social revolution. Equally mistaken is the notion that one cannot admit the usefulness of social reforms without admitting that it is necessary to preserve society upon its present basis. On the contrary, reforms may be supported from the revolutionary standpoint and because, as has been shown, they hasten the course of events and because, so far from doing away with the suicidal tendencies of the capitalist system, they rather strengthen them.

The turning of the people into proletarians. the concentration of capital in the hands of a few, who rule the whole economic life of capitalist nations, none of these cruel and revolting effects of the capitalist system can be checked by any reform that is based upon the existing system of property, however far-reaching such reform may be.