8 - The Communist Manifesto and Working-class Parties in Western Europe

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the relationship between the Communist Manifesto and the subsequent development of working-class parties in Western Europe. The first half of the chapter shows how both the formation of social democratic and labour parties and the development of their early programmes were significantly influenced by the Manifesto. Even the young British Labour Party, which is widely felt to have developed without notable Marxist influence, owed considerable debt to the Manifesto. However, as will also be shown, these working-class parties increasingly pursued a reformist road rather than playing the revolutionary role apparently assigned to them in the Communist Manifesto. In the second half of the chapter the reasons for the ‘failure’ of working-class parties to act as the key organisational agent in the overthrow of capitalism are examined. It is argued that paradoxically the Manifesto itself was central in setting workers on a reformist road, particularly as it was interpreted forty-five years later by Karl Kautsky in his (1892) book The Class Struggle. Moreover, through a brief consideration of Eduard Bernstein's critique of Kautsky's orthodox Marxism, it is proposed that some of the reasons why working-class parties did not maintain their revolutionary character can also be found within the text of the Manifesto.

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, PROLETARIAN ORGANISATION AND WORKERS’ PARTIES

The central theme of the Manifesto is that the development and growth of industrial capitalism creates the conditions for a class struggle, in which an expanding and exploited working class unites to overthrow the capitalist system of production. According to Marx and Engels, the growth of capitalism and its downfall are part of an unalterable historical process of class struggle, in which the bourgeoisie must seek the advance of industrial capitalism and the proletariat must seek and, moreover, must obtain its destruction.

Industrial progress, involuntarily and irresistibly promoted by the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the workers through competition with their revolutionary unity through close association. The development of large-scale industry pulls from under the feet of the bourgeoisie the very foundations on which they produce goods and appropriate them. Above all it produces its own gravediggers. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally unavoidable.’