(c) The Counter-Revolution

Fortunately for our cause, in addition to the one we have just considered, there is a further distinction between the Middle Class and the Labour Revolution.

In the former case, the bitter internecine strife among the revolutionaries after the overthrow of absolutism was inevitable, as this overthrow was the result of the co-operation of various classes. With their newly won freedom, these classes immediately became conscious of their antagonisms, in pursuance of which they were bound to fight.

The Labour Revolution, on the other hand, is the work of a single class, although this class is divided into various sections which have reached different stages of development. These sections may into conflict during the Revolution, but they are not bound to do so.

The tendency to conflict will be lessened to the extent that the trained and organized elements preponderate amongst the workers and prior to the Revolution have championed the interests of their weaker and unorganized brothers, winning their confidence by this means. Finally, the wealthier the nation is amongst which the Revolution takes place, the more highly developed will its productive machinery be and the more intensely will the latter operate. It will be all the easier for the victorious working class to proceed at once to alleviate at least the worst poverty existing in society, thus removing the stimulus for any rash action on the part of revolutionaries.

If the most recent revolutions show us a different picture, the fact is to be ascribed to a series of peculiar circumstances which flow from the terrible world war and its abnormal consequences, a knowledge of which we take for granted. All these circumstances, however, are of an exceptional kind, and will hardly be repeated, whatever form the future might assume

The disastrous division into three camps of the fighting portion of the German working class will soon be a thing of the past. Hungry, even starving, Russia will also no longer fascinate those credulous simpletons who look longingly for the advent of a Messiah to redeem them.

If democracy succeeds in maintaining itself in Germany, which we have every reason to expect, united Social Democracy, as Marx and Engels anticipated in the case of England, will also conquer political power in Germany by peaceful means so soon as the majority of the nation is behind it. By that time we shall have passed through the present desperate period of insufficient production and congested world markets, and the social sources of wealth will flow so copiously that they may be drawn upon abundantly. Then it will be possible for Social Democracy, having arrived at power, to effect a big improvement in the position of the poorest without prejudice to the general level of civilization, even while raising it and increasing the productive forces at the same time.

If the workers come to political power under these circumstances – and they are normal for the Labour Revolution – there will not be the slightest reason for the untrained and inexperienced members of the working class to turn against their more progressive comrades in destructive fury, in order to force the pace of the Revolution – really to ruin it. For we have every prospect that the backward section of the working class will in all confidence follow its vanguard, that is, its great organizations, and together with them will carry out the Revolution to the extent permitted by the relative political strength of classes and the objective economic conditions.

Amongst the socialistic working class there can only be a difference of opinion regarding the pace of the progress of the Revolution. This difference will not become so acute as to endanger the organized unity of Social Democracy.

The great political and trade union organizations of the working class will be able to co-ordinate the revolutionary activities of the whole class all the more easily if hitherto the progressive workers have aided their weaker brethren.

If the coming Labour Revolution is accomplished in this way, it will be preserved from the fate which befalls every middle class revolution, viz., the counter-revolution.

In her book from which we have already quoted, Rosa Luxemburg is of opinion that it is a law of life of every great revolution to press onward rapidly, bringing ever more extreme elements to the front, as otherwise it will be crushed by the counter-revolution.

But the facts show that every middle class revolution moves on these lines, only to be eventually crushed by the counter-revolution. And this was no accident, but as much a necessity of nature as the feverish march of events following from the antagonisms of the classes which had acted in concert at the outbreak of the Revolution. It was inevitable that the propertyless classes should attempt the impossible. With their collapse, the Revolution lost its most energetic and faithful supporters, and was fated to succumb to the counter-revolution.

Upon this point Engels remarks in his introduction to Socialism, Utopian and Scientific:

“Upon this excess of revolutionary activity there necessarily followed the inevitable reaction, which in its turn went beyond the point where it might have maintained itself.”

Immediately before this he had said, after illustrating this process by the example of the English Revolution of the eighteenth century:

“This seems in fact to be one of the laws of evolution of the bourgeois Revolution.”

Yes, of the bourgeois, but not of the Labour Revolution, which is carried out under quite different conditions.

Unlike the Middle Class Revolution, the Labour Revolution is not made by a variety of classes, but by a single class. Behind it is no other class which might attempt to force the pace of development, and, whilst unable to establish a political order on its own account, might cause the collapse of the whole Revolution.

Where the Labour Revolution is accompanied by the internecine strife of the revolutionaries, and is therefore followed by the counter-revolution, this does not spring from a necessary “law of evolution,” but from exceptional circumstances, which tend to become rarer, as they mostly arise from the survival of feudal conditions in middle class society.

Although the last political upheaval in Germany was not a Labour revolution in the proper meaning of the word, as it only brought temporary power to the working class, and although in this case, for reasons which are ultimately to be traced to the war and not to the Revolution, the working class became involved in fratricidal conflict, and thereby cleared the path for the counter-revolution, the latter has not yet assumed the proportions usual in middle class revolutions, and we may expect that the momentary reaction will soon reach its high-water mark.

After the great French Revolution, the peace of the grave reigned in France; there was complete absence of freedom of movement, and for a long time the masses felt no need for movement. This lasted a generation, until 1830. After the suppression of the rising of 1848, a dozen years elapsed before there were again signs of life in middle class and Labour democracy. Complete political stagnation characterized the interval from 1849 to 1860.

In present-day Germany, on the other hand, we can detect a subsidence of political interest on the part of the masses, and consequently a decrease in the socialist vote as compared with the middle class vote. But this phenomenon is not general, and is so insignificant that so far it has not effected any alteration in the relative strength of classes.

A real counter-revolution is only to be found in extremely backward countries, such as Hungary, where an illiterate population falls under Communist leadership, and even the trained section of the working class is swept off its feet.

As in other things, Russia is also peculiar in this respect. As her revolution is in essentials a middle class revolution, it follows that “the law of development of middle class society” and the “excess of revolutionary activity” is followed by “the inevitable reaction,” which overshoots the mark.

Whereas this process has hitherto been carried out in every country in the world through the agency of one party which overthrows another, it has been reserved for the Bolshevists themselves to carry out the transition from the revolution to the reaction. Astonishment is expressed at the vitality of their regime, but this does not depend upon the vitality of the revolution which they introduced, but upon the fact that, as soon as they saw the end of the revolution approaching, they thoughtlessly took over the functions of the counter-revolution themselves.

The Vicar of Bray was ready to serve any Government, revolutionary or reactionary, with equal devotion. Lenin beat the Vicar, inasmuch as he himself formed both revolutionary and the reactionary regimes.

We have every reason to expect that the coming Labour Revolution, that is the conquest of political power, will be achieved on the basis of democracy, and therefore peaceably; that it will not lead to internecine strife, and consequently will not be followed by counter-revolution. It will lack the impetuous progress which characterizes the Middle Class Revolution, but its progress will be all the surer, inasmuch as it will not be checked by serious reactions and setbacks.

Wild-eyed revolutionaries may object to this interpretation. For them a revolution without massacre and terror is not a proper revolution, but merely milk and water reformism. Their notions of the revolution only prove how conservative their minds are, in spite of all their revolutionary utterances. They cannot conceive of a revolution except on the lines of the middle class revolutions of the past. Whatever one may think about the Labour Revolution of the future, one thing is certain it will assume quite a different form, because it will be accomplished under quite different conditions, from those of the middle class revolutions, whose history has hitherto supplied us with our knowledge and ideas of revolutions in general.

If we regard the political revolution as the conquest of political power by a class (or a coalition of classes) hitherto excluded from State power, we may detect many differences between the Middle Class and the Labour Revolutions from this standpoint.

At this stage we need only examine one of these.