I.4. Tariff Policy and Militarism

Ed. Bernstein’s second precondition for the gradual introduction of socialism is the evolution of the state into society. It has already become a commonplace that the present-day state is a class state. In our opinion, however, this proposition too, like everything that relates to capitalist society, ought to be understood not as having a rigid, absolute validity but as part of a fluid development.

With the political victory of the bourgeoisie the state became a capitalist state. Admittedly, capitalist development itself changes the nature of the state substantially, by continually widening the sphere of its action, assigning it ever new functions, especially in relation to economic life, and making its intervention in and control over that life ever more necessary. To that extent the future fusion of the state with society is gradually being prepared, the return, so to speak, of the state’s functions to society. In this direction one can also speak of an evolution of the capitalist state into society, and it is undoubtedly in this sense that Marx says that the protection of labour is the first conscious intervention of “society” in its social life-process, a proposition on which Bernstein relies.

On the other hand, however, the same capitalist development brings about another change in the nature of the state. To begin with, the present state is — an organisation of the ruling capitalist class. If it takes on various functions of general interest in the interest of social development, it does so only because and in so far as these interests and social development coincide, in general, with the interests of the ruling class. The protection of labour, for example, is as much in the immediate interest of the capitalists as a class as of society as a whole. But this harmony lasts only up to a certain point in capitalist development. Once that development has reached a certain height, the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class and those of economic progress, even in the capitalist sense, begin to diverge. We believe that this phase has already arrived, and it shows itself in the two most important phenomena of present-day social life: in tariff policy and in militarism. Both — tariff policy and militarism alike — have played their indispensable and to that extent progressive, revolutionary part in the history of capitalism. Without the protection of tariffs the rise of large-scale industry in the various countries would hardly have been possible. Today, however, things are different. Today protective tariffs serve not to bring up young industries but to preserve outdated forms of production artificially. From the standpoint of capitalist development, that is, from the standpoint of the world economy, it is today a matter of complete indifference whether Germany exports more goods to England or England more to Germany. From the standpoint of that development, then, the Moor has done his work and could go. Indeed, he ought to go. With the present interdependence of the various branches of industry, protective tariffs on any goods must make the production of other goods at home dearer, that is, must again hamper industry. Not so, however, from the standpoint of the interests of the capitalist class. Industry does not need tariff protection for its development, but the employers need it to protect their sales. That is to say, tariffs today no longer serve as a means of protecting a rising capitalist production against a more mature one, but as a weapon of one national group of capitalists against another. Tariffs are, further, no longer needed as a means of protecting industry so as to form and conquer a home market, but they are an indispensable means for the cartelisation of industry, that is, for the struggle of the capitalist producers against consuming society. Finally, what marks most glaringly the specific character of present-day tariff policy is the fact that everywhere the decisive part in it is now played not by industry at all but by agriculture; that is, tariff policy has in fact become a means of pouring feudal interests into capitalist form and giving them expression.

The same change has taken place with militarism. If we look at history not as it could or should have been but as it actually was, we must state that war was the indispensable factor of capitalist development. The United States of North America and Germany, Italy and the Balkan states, Russia and Poland, all of them owe the conditions of, or the impulse to, capitalist development to wars, whether in victory or in defeat. As long as there were countries whose internal fragmentation or whose isolation as natural economies had to be overcome, militarism too played a revolutionary part in the capitalist sense. Today here too things are different. If world politics has become the theatre of threatening conflicts, the issue is not so much the opening of new countries to capitalism as ready-made European antagonisms that have been transplanted to the other continents and break out there. What confronts each other today weapon in hand, whether in Europe or in other parts of the world, is not capitalist countries on the one side and countries of natural economy on the other, but states driven to conflict precisely by the similarity of their high capitalist development. For this development itself, admittedly, the conflict, if it breaks out, can under these circumstances only be fatal, since it will bring about the deepest shock and upheaval of economic life in all capitalist countries. Matters look different, however, from the standpoint of the capitalist class. For it, militarism has today become indispensable in three respects: first, as a weapon for competing “national” interests against other national groups; secondly, as the most important field of investment, for financial as much as for industrial capital; and thirdly, as an instrument of class rule at home over the working people — all interests that have in themselves nothing in common with the progress of the capitalist mode of production. And what once again best betrays this specific character of present-day militarism is, first, its general growth in all countries in competition with one another, driven, so to speak, by its own inner mechanical motive force, a phenomenon that was quite unknown only a few decades ago; and further, the inevitability, the fatality of the approaching explosion, combined with complete uncertainty about its occasion, the states first concerned, the object of dispute and all other circumstances. From a motive force of capitalist development, militarism too has become a capitalist disease.

In the conflict we have described between social development and the ruling class interests, the state takes the side of the latter. In its policy it sets itself, like the bourgeoisie, in opposition to social development; it thus loses more and more its character as representative of society as a whole, and to the same degree becomes more and more a pure class state. Or, to put it more correctly, these two qualities of the state separate from each other and sharpen into a contradiction within the very nature of the state. And this contradiction grows sharper every day. For on the one hand the functions of the state of a general character grow, its intervention in social life, its “control” over it. On the other hand, however, its class character compels it more and more to shift the centre of gravity of its activity and its instruments of power to fields that are of use only to the class interest of the bourgeoisie and of merely negative significance for society: militarism, tariff policy and colonial policy. Secondly, its “social control” too is thereby more and more permeated and dominated by its class character (see the way the protection of labour is administered in every country).

The development of democracy, in which Bernstein likewise sees the means of introducing socialism step by step, does not contradict the change we have described in the nature of the state but corresponds to it completely.

As Konrad Schmidt explains, the winning of a Social-Democratic majority in parliament is even to be the direct road to this step-by-step socialisation of society. Now the democratic forms of political life are undoubtedly a phenomenon that expresses most strongly the evolution of the state into society, and to that extent they form a stage on the way to the socialist transformation. But the conflict in the nature of the capitalist state that we have characterised comes to light all the more glaringly in modern parliamentarism. In form, it is true, parliamentarism serves to express the interests of society as a whole in the organisation of the state. On the other hand, however, it is only capitalist society, that is, a society in which capitalist interests are decisive, that it expresses. Institutions that are democratic in form thus become in content instruments of the ruling class interests. This comes to light tangibly in the fact that as soon as democracy shows a tendency to deny its class character and to turn into an instrument of the real interests of the people, the democratic forms themselves are sacrificed by the bourgeoisie and its representatives in the state. In view of this, the idea of a Social-Democratic parliamentary majority appears as a calculation that, wholly in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism, reckons only with the one, formal side of democracy and leaves the other side, its real content, entirely out of account. And parliamentarism as a whole appears not as an immediately socialist element gradually permeating capitalist society, as Bernstein supposes, but on the contrary as a specific means by which the bourgeois class state brings the capitalist antagonisms to maturity and full development.

In view of this objective development of the state, Bernstein’s and Konrad Schmidt’s proposition that a growing “social control” will bring about socialism directly turns into a phrase that contradicts reality more with every day.

The theory of the step-by-step introduction of socialism comes down to a gradual reform of capitalist property and of the capitalist state in a socialist direction. By virtue of the objective processes of present-day society, however, both develop in exactly the opposite direction. The process of production becomes more and more socialised, and the intervention, the control of the state over this process of production becomes ever wider. But at the same time private property becomes more and more the form of naked capitalist exploitation of the labour of others, and state control becomes more and more permeated by exclusive class interests. Since the state, that is, the political organisation, and the property relations, that is, the legal organisation of capitalism, thus become with development ever more capitalist and not ever more socialist, they set two insurmountable difficulties in the way of the theory of the gradual introduction of socialism.

Fourier’s idea of turning all the sea-water of the earth into lemonade by means of the phalanstery system was very fantastic. But Bernstein’s idea of turning the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness by adding social-reform lemonade bottle by bottle is only more insipid, and not one hair less fantastic.

The relations of production of capitalist society come ever closer to those of socialist society; its political and legal relations, on the other hand, raise an ever higher wall between capitalist and socialist society. This wall is not breached by the development of social reforms and of democracy but, on the contrary, made firmer and more rigid. What can bring it down, therefore, is only the hammer-blow of revolution, that is, the conquest of political power by the proletariat.