III. 1789–1848–1905

History does not repeat itself. However much one compares the Russian revolution with the Great French one, the former will not on that account turn into a repetition of the latter. The nineteenth century did not pass in vain.

Already 1848 differs enormously from 1789. Compared with the Great Revolution, the Prussian or Austrian one is striking for its insignificant sweep. It came, on the one hand, too early, and on the other, too late. The gigantic exertion of strength that bourgeois society needs in order to settle accounts radically with the lords of the past can be achieved either by the powerful unanimity of the whole nation, risen against feudal despotism, or by a powerful development of the class struggle within this nation that is freeing itself. In the first case, which occurred in 1789–93, the national energy, compressed by the terrible resistance of the old order, is spent entirely on the struggle against reaction. In the second case, which has not yet occurred in history and which we consider as a possibility, the active energy needed for victory over the dark forces of history is generated within the bourgeois nation by means of an “internecine” class struggle. Severe internal frictions, which absorb a mass of energy and deprive the bourgeoisie of the possibility of playing the chief role, push its antagonist forward, give it in a month the experience of decades, put it in the first place and hand it the tightly drawn reins. Resolute, knowing no doubts, it gives events a mighty sweep.

Either a nation gathered into one whole like a lion before its spring, or a nation that in the course of the struggle has split decisively in order to release the best part of itself for the fulfilment of a task beyond the strength of the whole. These are the two polar types, which in pure form are possible, of course, only as logical opposites.

The middle position, here as in many cases, is the worst of all. And it was this middle position that created 1848.

In the heroic period of French history we see a bourgeoisie, enlightened, active, not yet aware of the contradictions of its own position, upon which history lays the leadership of the struggle for a new order of things: not only against the outworn institutions of France but against the reactionary forces of all Europe. The bourgeoisie, in the persons of all its factions in turn, regards itself as the leader of the nation, draws the masses into the struggle, gives them their watchword and dictates their tactics of battle. Democracy binds the nation together with a political ideology. The people, petty bourgeois, peasants and workers, send bourgeois as their deputies, and the instructions that the communities give them are written in the language of a bourgeoisie coming to consciousness of its messianic role. During the revolution itself class antagonisms do come to the surface, but the powerful inertia of the revolutionary struggle throws the most inert elements of the bourgeoisie off the political road one after another. Each stratum breaks away only after it has passed on its energy to the strata that follow it. The nation as a whole meanwhile goes on fighting for its aims by ever sharper and more decisive means. When the upper layers of the propertied bourgeoisie break away from the national core that has been set in motion and enter into alliance with Louis XVI, the democratic demands of the nation, now directed against this bourgeoisie, lead to universal suffrage and the republic, as the logically inevitable forms of democracy.

The Great French Revolution is indeed a national revolution. More than that: here, within national limits, the world struggle of the bourgeois order for domination, for power, for undivided triumph, finds its classic expression.

Jacobinism is now a term of abuse in the mouths of all the liberal sages. Bourgeois hatred of revolution, of the masses, of force, of the greatness of the history that is made in the streets, is concentrated in one cry of indignation and fear: Jacobinism! We, the world army of communism, settled our historical accounts with Jacobinism long ago. The whole of the present international proletarian movement was formed and grew strong in the struggle against the traditions of Jacobinism. We subjected it to theoretical criticism, we laid bare its historical limitations, its social contradictoriness, its utopianism, we exposed its phrasemongering, we broke with its traditions, which for decades had seemed the sacred heritage of the revolution.

But against the attacks, the slanders and the senseless abuse of bloodless, phlegmatic liberalism, we shall take Jacobinism under our protection. The bourgeoisie has shamefully betrayed all the traditions of its historical youth, and its present hirelings riot over the graves of its ancestors and profane the ashes of its ideals. The proletariat has taken upon itself the guarding of the honour of the revolutionary past of the bourgeoisie itself. The proletariat, which has broken so radically in its practice with the revolutionary traditions of the bourgeoisie, preserves them as the heritage of great passions, heroism and initiative, and its heart beats in sympathy with the speeches and deeds of the Jacobin Convention.

What gave liberalism its charm, if not the traditions of the Great French Revolution?… At what other moment did bourgeois democracy rise so high, kindle so great a flame in the heart of the people, as the Jacobin, sans-culotte, terrorist, Robespierrist democracy of 1793?

What, if not Jacobinism, made it possible, and still makes it possible, for French bourgeois radicalism of various shades to hold a great part of the people, even of the proletariat, under its charm to this day, while the bourgeois radicalism of Germany and Austria wrote its short history in deeds of insignificance and shame?

What, if not the charm of Jacobinism, of its abstract political ideology, its cult of the sacred republic, its solemn declamation, still nourishes the French radicals and radical-socialists, Clemenceau, Millerand, Briand and Bourgeois, all those politicians who know how to guard the foundations no worse than the dull Junkers of Wilhelm II, by the grace of God; and whom the bourgeois democracy of other countries so hopelessly envies, while at the same time heaping slanders on the original source of their political advantages, heroic Jacobinism?

Even after many hopes had been shattered, they remained in the consciousness of the people as a tradition; for a long time the proletariat spoke of its future in the language of the past. In 1840, almost half a century after the government of the Mountain and eight years before the June days of 1848, Heine visited several workshops in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau and saw what the workers, “the healthiest part of the lower class”, were reading. “I found there,” Heine reported to a German newspaper, “several new speeches of old Robespierre, and pamphlets of Marat, issued in parts at two sous, Cabet’s History of the Revolution, Cormenin’s venomous lampoons, Buonarroti’s Doctrine and Conspiracy of Babeuf: all works smelling of blood… As one of the fruits of this seed,” the poet foretells, “a republic threatens sooner or later to spring up on the soil of France.”

In 1848 the bourgeoisie was already incapable of playing a comparable role. It did not wish, and did not dare, to take upon itself the responsibility for the revolutionary liquidation of the social order that stood in the way of its rule. We already know why. Its task consisted, and it was clearly aware of this, in introducing into the old order the necessary guarantees, not of its own political rule, but merely of a share in power with the forces of the past. It was meanly wise with the experience of the French bourgeoisie, corrupted by its betrayals, frightened by its failures. Not only did it not lead the masses to storm the old order; it set its back against the old order in order to resist the masses that were pushing it forward.

The French bourgeoisie managed to make its revolution great. Its consciousness was the consciousness of society, and nothing could take shape in institutions without first passing through its consciousness as an aim, as a task of political creation. It often struck theatrical poses in order to hide from itself the limitations of its bourgeois world; but it went forward.

The German bourgeoisie, on the other hand, from the very beginning did not “make” the revolution but dissociated itself from it. Its consciousness rose up against the objective conditions of its own rule. The revolution could be carried through not by it but against it. Democratic institutions were reflected in its head not as the aim of its struggle but as a threat to its welfare.

In 1848 what was needed was a class capable of directing events without the bourgeoisie and in spite of it, ready not only to push it forward by the force of its pressure but, at the decisive moment, to throw its political corpse out of the way.

Neither the petty bourgeoisie nor the peasantry was capable of this.

The petty bourgeoisie was hostile not only to yesterday but to tomorrow as well. Still entangled in medieval relations but already unable to withstand “free” industry; still setting its stamp on the towns but already yielding its influence to the middle and big bourgeoisie; sunk in its prejudices, deafened by the roar of events, exploiting and exploited, greedy and helpless in its greed, the provincial petty bourgeoisie could not direct world events.

The peasantry was to a still greater degree deprived of independent political initiative. Enslaved for centuries, impoverished, embittered, uniting in itself all the threads of the old and the new exploitation, the peasantry was at a certain moment a rich source of chaotic revolutionary force. But fragmented, scattered, pushed away from the towns, the nerve centres of politics and culture; dull-witted, its horizon bounded by the village fence, indifferent to all that the town had thought out, the peasantry could have no leading significance. It calmed down as soon as the burden of feudal obligations had been thrown off its shoulders, and repaid the town that had fought for its rights with black ingratitude: the emancipated peasants became fanatics of “order”.

The intellectual democracy, lacking any class strength, now trailed behind its elder sister, the liberal bourgeoisie, as its political tail, now broke away from it at critical moments only to reveal its own impotence. It got itself entangled in contradictions that had not yet matured, and carried this confusion with it everywhere.

The proletariat was too weak, without organisation, experience or knowledge. Capitalist development had gone far enough to make necessary the abolition of the old feudal relations, but not far enough to bring forward the working class, the product of the new relations of production, as a decisive political force. The antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, even within the national limits of Germany, had gone too far to allow the bourgeoisie fearlessly to take on the role of national hegemon, but not far enough to allow the proletariat to take that role upon itself. The internal frictions of the revolution did, it is true, prepare the proletariat for political independence, but for the time being they weakened the energy and unity of action, spent forces fruitlessly, and compelled the revolution, after its first successes, to mark time wearily, and then, under the blows of reaction, to move into reverse.

Austria gave a particularly sharp and tragic example of this incompleteness and unfinished state of political relations in the revolutionary period.

The Viennese proletariat showed astonishing heroism and inexhaustible energy in 1848. Again and again it went into the fire, moved only by a dim class instinct, lacking any general idea of the aims of the struggle, groping its way from slogan to slogan. The leadership of the proletariat passed, astonishingly enough, to the students, the only active democratic group, which thanks to its activity enjoyed great influence over the masses, and therefore over events. The students were undoubtedly able to fight bravely on the barricades and knew how to fraternise honestly with the workers, but they were quite unable to direct the course of the revolution, which had handed them the “dictatorship” of the street.

The proletariat, disunited, without political experience or independent leadership, followed the students. At every critical moment the workers invariably offered “the gentlemen who work with their heads” the help of those who “work with their hands”. The students now called the workers out, now themselves barred their way from the suburbs. At times, by the force of their political authority, which rested on the weapons of the Academic Legion, they forbade them to come forward with independent demands of their own. This was a classically clear form of a benevolent revolutionary dictatorship over the proletariat.

The result of these social relations was this. When on 26 May the whole of working-class Vienna rose to its feet at the call of the students, to fight against the disarming of the students (the “Academic Legion”); when the population of the capital, covering the whole city with barricades, showed astonishing power and took possession of the city; when all Austria stood behind armed Vienna; when the monarchy, in flight, had lost all significance; when, under the pressure of the people, the last troops had been withdrawn from the capital; when the governmental power of Austria had become an estate without an heir, there was no political force to take the helm.

The liberal bourgeoisie consciously refused to make use of power obtained in such a brigand’s way. It dreamt only of the return of the Emperor, who had withdrawn to the Tyrol from orphaned Vienna.

The workers were brave enough to smash the reaction, but not organised and conscious enough to succeed it. There was a mighty working-class movement, but no developed class struggle of the proletariat setting itself definite political aims. Unable to take the helm itself, the proletariat could not move bourgeois democracy to this historic feat either; for democracy, as so often happens with it, hid itself at the very moment it was most needed. To compel this absentee to fulfil its duties, the proletariat would in any case have needed no less strength and maturity than to organise a provisional workers’ government itself.

On the whole, the result was a situation that a contemporary quite correctly characterises in the words: “In Vienna a republic had in fact been established, but unfortunately nobody saw it…” The republic that nobody noticed left the stage for a long time, giving up its place to the Habsburgs… An opportunity once lost does not come round a second time.

From the experience of the Hungarian and German revolutions Lassalle drew the conclusion that from now on a revolution could find support only in the class struggle of the proletariat.

In his letter of 24 October 1849 Lassalle writes to Marx:

We shall not stop to criticise these resolute conclusions. What is unquestionably true in them, at any rate, is that already by the middle of the nineteenth century the national task of political emancipation could not be solved by the unanimous and concerted onslaught of the whole nation. Only the independent tactics of the proletariat, drawing the strength for the struggle from its class position, and from that alone, could have secured the victory of the revolution.

The Russian working class of 1906 is not in the least like the Viennese working class of 1848. And the best proof of this is the practice of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies all over Russia. These are not conspiratorial organisations prepared in advance, which in a moment of excitement seized power over the proletarian mass. No, they are organs created according to plan by this mass itself, to co-ordinate its revolutionary struggle. And these Soviets, elected by the masses and responsible to the masses, these unquestionably democratic institutions, carry on the most resolute class policy in the spirit of revolutionary socialism.

The social peculiarities of the Russian revolution show themselves with particular sharpness in the question of arming the people.

A militia (a National Guard) was the first slogan and the first conquest of all the revolutions, of 1789 and of 1848, in Paris, in all the states of Italy, in Vienna and in Berlin. In 1848 the National Guard (that is, the arming of the propertied and the “educated”) was the slogan of the whole bourgeois opposition, even the most moderate, and its purpose was to protect not only the liberties won, or merely due to be “granted”, against coups from above, but also bourgeois property against encroachments by the proletariat. Thus the militia was a sharply class demand of the bourgeoisie. “The Italians understood well,” says a liberal English historian of the unification of Italy, “that the arming of a civic militia would make the further existence of despotism impossible. Besides, for the possessing classes it was a guarantee against possible anarchy and all the disorders that lurked below.” (Bolton King, A History of Italian Unity, Moscow, 1901, vol. 1, p. 220.) And the ruling reaction, not having enough military force at the centres of action to deal with “anarchy”, that is, with the revolutionary masses, armed the bourgeoisie. Absolutism first let the burghers suppress and pacify the workers, and then disarmed and pacified the burghers themselves.

With us the militia, as a slogan, has no credit whatever with the bourgeois parties. The liberals cannot in fact fail to understand the importance of arms: absolutism has given them several object lessons on this score. But they also understand the complete impossibility of creating a militia in our country apart from the proletariat and against the proletariat. The Russian workers bear little resemblance to the workers of 1848, who filled their pockets with stones and took up crowbars, while the shopkeepers, students and lawyers had royal muskets on their shoulders and sabres at their sides.

To arm the revolution means, with us, first of all to arm the workers. Knowing this and fearing it, the liberals give up the militia altogether. They surrender this position too to absolutism without a fight, just as Thiers’s bourgeoisie surrendered Paris and France to Bismarck rather than arm the workers.

In the symposium The Constitutional State, that manifesto of the liberal-democratic coalition, Mr Dzhivelegov, discussing the possibility of a coup d’état, says quite rightly that “society itself must at the necessary moment show readiness to rise in defence of its constitution” (The Constitutional State, a collection of articles, 1st ed., p. 49). And since the demand for the arming of the people follows from this of itself, the liberal philosopher at once considers it “necessary to add” that to repel coups “it is not at all necessary for everyone to keep arms at the ready”. All that is needed is that society itself be ready to offer resistance. By what means is not known. If anything follows from this evasion, it is only that in the hearts of our democrats the fear of the armed proletariat outweighs the fear of the autocracy’s soldiery.

Thereby the task of arming the revolution falls with all its weight on the proletariat. And the civic militia, the class demand of the bourgeoisie of 1848, appears with us from the very beginning as a demand for the arming of the people, and even, above all, of the proletariat. The whole fate of the Russian revolution hangs on this question.