THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS
 What, now, must be the attitude of the revolutionary workers to the abolition of bourgeois-democratic rights ? Is it a "stern revolutionary duty" to defend the political rights to the uttermost ? We say : No. We are of the opinion that anyone who fights for "democratic rights" is defending a lost cause. Democracy is not in place in a society where capital is concentrated in a few hands. Democracy belongs in a society where small ownership prevails, which represents in this way its contradictory interests. But when concentration asserts itself in the economic life, this process must necessarily follow on the political field as well. It is a well-known marxist rule that the development in the material foundation of society is mirrored also in its politics. Seen from this point of view, the political dominance of monopoly capital is a necessary development. In view of the dominance of monopoly capital, a return to democracy is impossible, just as a return to small business is at present impossible. Anyone who today fights for democratic rights is trying to turn the clock of history backward, just as did the hand weavers a century ago when they stormed the factories in order to smash the machines. One might just as well found a society for the prevention of solar eclipses. A forward-driving class can set for itself only such goals as lie in the train of development. The new labor movement must direct its glance in the forward direction. It has no reason to mourn for the lost "good old times"; the new conditions serve for its orientation. It is not justified in harboring any doubt that the bourgeois-democratic period is definitely over, because such a period is not in conformity with the concentration of economy. The beginning of a new labor movement is possible only where it is recognized that bourgeois democracy has become economically and hence also politically impossible and that the working class must win another democracy -- the democracy of the working class. The development to absolute dominance on the part of monopoly capital is a fact, and the abolition of democracy no less, even though various possibilities stand open as to the manner and means by which this is brought about. The big bourgeoisie has laid democracy aside as a weapon which is unserviceable for its ends, in order later probably to bring it out of the lumber room once more. Democracy will be trotted out when the workers march up in mass movements and seriously menace capitalism. Democracy can then once more perform its services, in that it confuses and divides the workers, in order thus to exorcise the menacing revolution. At that time bourgeois democracy will again become of significance for the workers, but not because they come out for its restoration but because they combat it. The proletarian revolution must overcome bourgeois democracy just as well as the absolute dominance of monopoly capital; it can only win under the dominance of the workers' councils, under the democracy of the working class. The fight for democratic rights under the present conditions bears a utopian character. But not only that : it is also obviously impossible. What is the sense of trying to make a fist when one lacks even a hand ? Before high-sounding speeches at meetings, operetta-like mass demonstrations or a strike here and there, with which it is desired to defend the rights of democracy, the bourgeoisie recedes not a single step. For bringing down the big bourgeoisie, other forces are needed. We must look the bitter truth in the face; namely, that the masses still have to find the new form of struggle proper to them. The old methods of struggle, -- the elections, the demonstrations, the meetings of protest, the petitions, the strike limited to occupations (with or without the leadership of the trade unions), the local insurrection of isolated armed groups, however heroically it may be fought out, -- everything has been struck from their hand like a broken sword. They have no greater effect than a revolver bullet against a 40-mm. armor plate. The great mass of the workers is quite well aware of this fact, and so also there is hardly a sign of any sort of resistance, while at the same time the hunger belt has to be buckled ever more narrowly. No less true is it that in the class struggle of the present and future hundreds of thousands, yes, millions, must come into action if the power apparatus of the owning class is to be shaken. This too is very well known to the great mass, which knows equally well that as yet there is present no spiritual bond, no vital principle by which the millions are thrown as a unit into the struggle. Here lies the essential difference between the struggle in the period coming to an end and the struggle which now begins. Down to the present time the various groups of workers fought each for itself, and the thing by which they were moved was the safeguarding of their occupational interests as metal workers, longshoremen, transport workers, etc. There was an absence of general class interests, and they had no need of any great unifying principle. An organizational apparatus sufficed for conducting the struggle and giving it direction. But for conducting the struggle of the millions who must now come out, no organizational apparatus is equal to the task. And yet the millions must move in one direction, must be guided in a common river bed, so to speak, if they are to arrive at common action. And since an organizational apparatus is not qualified for that task, it must be performed in some other manner. That happens when a new vital principle arises in the masses. It does not come about through preaching, it can not be imposed on the masses from the outside, or poured like a liquid into an empty vessel. The great unity of the like-directed class forces grows in struggle and through struggle, and it can be consolidated and remain an enduring thing only when the self-action breaks through from below in new organizational forms, when the organizations arise which in the struggle for emancipation combine the self-action into a total deed; organizations which are a bond of union in the struggle for freedom, and thus give rise to a consciousness that this freedom has as its content the mastery over one's own work, over the means of labor, over social production in general. It is the conversion of the thought world of the suppressed class to Communism. All class-struggle experience directed to the mastery of the class forces leaves in the masses its trace in the form of class unity, struggle for freedom, communism. There thus arises a new vital principle, through which the masses are more closely joined, are inspired to greater sacrifice and greater courage, know how to exercise more discipline and solidarity, than a fixed, formal organization was ever able to demand of them. Communism, seen in this way, is nothing other than the self-emancipation of the masses; they must be self-conscious, that is, in this sense communistic. Here the Russian communists and the Third International under their influence separate themselves from the struggle of the working class for Communism. They take the view that it suffices when the masses turn the communist party into the governing party and when this latter, once in possession of the political power, constructs communism. To them the masses are the tool which is employed by the party. Anyone who thinks of communism in this way can also combine it with wage labor, and also finds no fly in the ointment when the Third International is so unprincipled and false as to be bound up in opposition to its own comrades. The new, revolutionary labor movement, however, must again bind up communism with devotion to the class. It has need of loyalty and comradeliness; it must assist in the overcoming of wage labor, in that it promotes the mastery of social life through the great broad mass itself. It is only then, at last, that dictatorship as well as the "democracy" of a ruling element has lost its meaning. |