By MICHEL GOULART DA SILVA*

The context of preparation of the revolutionary process is confused with the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

It is not uncommon to find interpretations that point to a teleological nature of Marxism, stating that, for this school of thought, revolution would be a process that would inevitably lead to socialism or even communism. Communist Manifesto would be one of the main examples that express this Marxist teleology, after all, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would have predicted that capitalism would soon collapse.

However, this is a mistaken interpretation of the work. In this text, in general, the “imminence” of the revolution that would overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie is only perceptible at the end of the text, when it states: “It is above all to Germany that the attention of the communists is turned, because Germany finds itself on the eve of a bourgeois revolution and because it will carry out this revolution in the most advanced conditions of European civilization and with a proletariat infinitely more developed than that of England in the 17th century and that of France in the 18th century; and because the German bourgeois revolution can therefore only be the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution.”[1]

As can be seen, this is an analysis of the German situation, which was in fact confirmed by the continental revolutionary process of 1848. In that context, workers from different countries mobilized in the struggle for social change. The process led, on the one hand, to an advance in the organization of workers and, on the other, to the consolidation of the power of the bourgeoisie.

Karl Marx later wrote, assessing the situation in France: “The February Revolution was won by the struggle of the workers with the passive support of the bourgeoisie. The proletarians rightly considered themselves the victors of the month of February and made lofty demands of those who had won the victory. They had to be defeated in the streets; they had to be shown that they would be defeated as soon as they stopped fighting.” com the bourgeoisie and started to fight against the bourgeoisie”.[2]

The context of preparation for the revolutionary process is intertwined with the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. One of their main merits was to explain the economic and political foundations and the contradictions that permeated capitalist society. In the first chapters of Communist Manifesto, in addition to presenting central concepts of historical materialism to the public for the first time in a systematic way, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels demonstrated the existence of class antagonism in capitalist society. Drawing comparisons between the forms of labor exploitation in previous historical moments, such as the slave system of Antiquity or medieval feudalism, Marx and Engels point to class struggles as the foundation of the “history of all hitherto existing societies”.[3]

In their specific analysis of capitalism, the authors show the antagonism between capitalist exploitation and the struggle of the proletariat, which has as its backdrop the contradictions of the capitalist relations of exploitation that are structural to the system itself. According to the creators of historical materialism, “[…] the productive forces at its disposal no longer favor the development of bourgeois property relations; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions and are now constrained by them; and as soon as they are freed from these constraints, they throw the entire society into disorder and threaten the existence of bourgeois property.”[4]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels point out that these contradictions are not eternal, that is, there would be a time when the proletariat could overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and build a proletarian state. As the authors show in Communist Manifesto, the dynamics of capitalism would allow finding ways to overcome its cyclical crises, opting, “on the one hand, for the violent destruction of a large quantity of productive forces; on the other, for the conquest of new markets and the more intense exploitation of old ones”.[5]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels also point out that the overthrow of capitalism would not be a natural product of the class antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but the result of the organized political action of the exploited. This organized political action would have a party at its head. The authors of Communist Manifesto they stated that “the communists constitute the most resolute fraction of the workers’ parties in each country, the fraction that drives the others”.[6]

The strategic character demonstrated by the need to build the party highlights the main task of the communist manifesto, that is, to present a synthesis of the theoretical and political elaborations of the Communist League, of which Marx and Engels were members, as a possible political leadership that could lead the proletariat to victory in the revolution.

The process of drafting the manifesto is related to the political context, as Engels explains: “At the League Congress held in London in November 1847, Marx and Engels were tasked with writing a complete theoretical and practical party program for publication. Written in German in January 1848, the manuscript was sent to the London publisher a few weeks before the French Revolution of February 24. A French translation appeared in Paris shortly before the June 1848 insurrection.”[7]

O communist manifesto It was written for a specific political situation, when Europe was shaken by the specter of revolution: “[…] a European economic cataclysm coincided with the visible erosion of the old regimes. A peasant uprising in Galicia, the election of a ‘liberal’ pope in the same year, a civil war between radicals and Catholics in Switzerland at the end of 1847, won by the radicals, one of the perennial autonomous insurrections in Sicily, in Palermo, at the beginning of 1848, were not only the advance indication of what was about to happen, but constituted true premonitions of the great typhoon.”[8]

It wasn't just the socialists – who were divided into the most varied currents, as shown in a specific chapter of the communist manifesto – or the communists who spoke of “revolution”. All social classes, each with their own parties, had an understanding of the process underway and foresaw an era of political transformation. It can be said that “revolution has rarely been predicted with such certainty, although it was not predicted in relation to the right countries or on the right dates. An entire continent was waiting, ready to spread the news of the revolution by electric telegraph”. [9]

O Communist Manifesto made public the positions of one of these parties, the communists, which, in its program, sought to express the political project of the proletariat and in its actions to organize workers in the struggle against capitalist exploitation. Shortly after the publication of the communist manifesto, although not directly under its influence, the great days of struggle were fought in Europe: “[…] the revolution that broke out in the first months of 1848 was not a social revolution simply in the sense that it involved and mobilized all classes. It was, in the literal sense, the uprising of the working poor in the cities – especially in the capitals – of western and central Europe. It was their strength alone that brought down the old regimes from Palermo to the borders of Russia.”[10]

In its apparent form, the revolutionary process was positioned against the remnants of the Ancien Régime, that is, in defense of the deepening of the revolutions under the leadership of the bourgeoisie that occurred in the 1848th and XNUMXth centuries. However, in XNUMX, these remnants ended up having as an ally the bourgeoisie itself, which sought with these agreements to stabilize the political regimes and, in this way, control the power of the State.

Therefore, even though it could position itself as part of the mobilizations, the bourgeoisie was also an enemy to be defeated by a revolution led by the workers. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about the subject in another text, written in 1850, analyzing the dynamics of the clashes between social classes, taking the situation in Germany as their object: “In fact, it was the bourgeoisie who, after the March movement of 1848, immediately took possession of the government and used this power to force the workers, their allies in the struggle, to return to their previous condition of oppression. Even though the bourgeoisie was unable to do this without forming an alliance with the feudal party defeated in March, and in the end even ceding the government once again to this feudal absolutist party, it guaranteed itself the conditions that in time, due to the government's financial difficulties, would end up placing power in its hands and ensuring all its interests, if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to have a so-called peaceful evolution already at that time.”[11]

The French scenario was also analyzed later by Marxists, as can be seen in this text by Engels: “The defeat of the Paris insurrection of June 1848 – the first great battle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie – once again pushed the social and political aspirations of the European working class into the background. From then on, the struggle for supremacy once again became, as it had been before the February revolution, simply a struggle between different layers of the propertied class; the working class was forced to limit itself to a struggle for the conquest of political space, assuming positions of the extreme wing of the middle-class radicals.”[12]

In the continuation of this process, the bourgeoisie itself could be overthrown by the organization of the workers. To the extent that the bourgeoisie abandoned its own program, the workers could carry forward this struggle and the revolutionary process, overcoming not only the feudal remnants, but even the limits of the program proposed by the ruling classes.

This is the simplified formula of the so-called “permanent revolution,” as outlined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: “The demands of petty-bourgeois democracy outlined here are not advocated by all factions at the same time, and very few people have them in mind as a whole as a definite goal to be achieved. The more the individuals or factions that make up the democracy advance, the more they will take up these demands as their own, and the few who recognize the above-mentioned program as their own would believe that they have thus proposed the maximum that can be expected from the revolution. But these demands can by no means suffice for the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty-bourgeois want to carry out the revolution as quickly as possible and by fulfilling at most the demands mentioned above, it is in our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the propertied classes have been deprived of power to a greater or lesser extent, state power has been conquered by the proletariat, and the association of the proletarians has advanced not only in the one country, but in all the dominant countries of the world, to such an extent that competition between the proletarians has ceased in these countries and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletariat.”[13]

As long as the reformists limited themselves to celebrating occasional partial victories, the revolutionaries could not be content with these measures that could be implemented within the bourgeois order. The revolutionaries should “exacerbate the proposals of the democrats, who in any case will not act in a revolutionary but merely reformist manner, and transform them into direct attacks on private property.”[14]

Although the exposition about the process of the impending revolution made in communist manifesto Although this part of the document has not proven to be accurate, it does not outweigh the importance of the set of discussions presented and, mainly, the first exposition of the dynamics of capitalist exploitation. The authors perceived in advance the social and political complexity of the events that would unfold in that context, when analyzing the contradictions of the capitalist system.

Even though Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were unable to predict the exact dynamics of the revolutionary process underway in the 1848 context, they were developing the only possible way to not only explain that process and its economic and political dynamics, but also to understand how that context fits into the historical development of capitalism itself. In their conjunctural analysis, Marx and Engels seem to have underestimated capitalism's capacity to overcome crises and overestimated the possibilities of the European proletariat, incorporating these lessons into the analyses they later developed on tactics and strategy.

The proletariat did not rise to power after the revolutionary processes of the 1848 period. One of the products of this revolution that swept across the European continent was the consolidation of “republican” governments, gradually putting an end to the remnants of the Ancien Régime. Engels points out that “[…] the events and vicissitudes of the struggle against capital, the defeats greater than the victories, could only show the fighters the insufficiency of all the panaceas in which they believed, making them understand better the true conditions for the emancipation of the working class.”[15]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made important assessments of those revolutions, intervening through the Communist League and other workers' organizations. They left as a legacy not only a rigorous method of analysis to understand the contradictions and dynamics of capitalism, but also fundamental references for the tactical and strategic actions of later generations of revolutionaries.

*Michel Goulart da Silva He holds a PhD in history from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and a technical-administrative degree from the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFC).

Notes

[1] MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 69.

[2] MARX, Karl. Class Struggles in France from 1848 to 1850. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2012, p. 61.

[3] MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 40.

[4] MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 45.

[5] MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 45.

[6] MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 51.

[7] ENGELS, Friedrich. Preface to the 1888 English edition. In: MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2005, p. 74-5.

[8] HOBSBAWM, Eric. The Age of Revolutions: Europe 1789-1848. 32nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2014, p. 471.

[9] HOBSBAWM, Eric. The Age of Revolutions: Europe 1789-1848. 32nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2014, p. 471.

[10] HOBSBAWM, Eric. The Age of Revolutions: Europe 1789-1848. 32nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2014, p. 467.

[11] MARX, Karl & ENGELS, Friedrich. Message from the Central Committee to the Communist League [1850]. In: Class Struggle in Germany. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2010, p. 59.

[12] ENGELS, Friedrich. Preface to the 1888 English edition. In: MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2005, p. 75.

[13] MARX, Karl & ENGELS, Friedrich. Message from the Central Committee to the Communist League [1850]. In: Class Struggle in Germany. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2010, p. 63-4.

[14] MARX, Karl & ENGELS, Friedrich. Message from the Central Committee to the Communist League [1850]. In: Class Struggle in Germany. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2010, p. 74.

[15] ENGELS, Friedrich. Preface to the 1888 English edition. In: MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2005, p. 76.

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