An essay by Pour une Intervention Communiste on the origins and development of the concept of “the Party” in the Marxist tradition, with critical analyses of the contradictions of Marx’s and Engels’ vacillations on this issue, and their partial responsibility for the subsequent career of the Party concept in its permutations at the hands of Liebknecht, Bebel, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky and Bordiga (social democratic continuity, the dictatorship of the Party), and its radical yet insufficient reformulations by Luxemburg, the KAPD and others (“return to Marx”, “historic Party”, the “Marx Party”—or even the “Debord party”) as a revolutionary minority whose goal is to promote proletarian autonomy.

Note to the reader

The text published in this issue is the product of a collective project undertaken over a period of three years by the group “Pour une Intervention Communiste” (which published the journal, Jeune Taupe). Originally intended to comprise the first part of a larger work on the topic of revolutionary organization, it nonetheless constitutes a Whole that may be read on its own, independently of its sequels, which, for the time being, remain unfinished.

As a result of the dissolution of Pour une Intervention Communiste in November 1981, the members who had resigned from the group six months earlier and who had since that time been publishing the journal, Révolution sociale, assumed responsibility for the further political dissemination of this text and express their sincere gratitude to Cahiers Spartacus which ensured that the text would be published. In order to show our respect for the collective nature of the text’s production, however, we have decided, in agreement with René Lefeuvre, to attribute its authorship to a pseudonymous collective.

Révolution sociale

March 1982

***

No saviour from on high delivers,

No faith have we in prince or peer.

Our own right hand the chains must shiver….

“The Internationale” (lyrics by E. Pottier, music by P. Degeyter)

Preface to the Spanish edition

Proletarian organization and the role of revolutionary minorities

With respect to this Spanish edition, which retains the title of the work originally published in 1982 by Editions Spartacus (8 impasse Crozatier, 75012, Paris, France), Au-delà du Parti (Beyond the Party), it is necessary to provide—twenty years after it was first published—some indispensable explanations in order to help the reader understand this text.

I. History

In France, under the influence of the general strike of May-June 1968 and the proletarian movements that took place in various European countries (Italy, Poland, England, Portugal, Spain…), a group of revolutionaries formed an organization that existed between 1974 and December of 1981. It was called “Pour une Intervention Communiste” (PIC) (For a Communist Intervention) and published a quarterly journal called Jeune Taupe (Young Mole) (a total of 38 issues were published). Primarily concerned with activity on the terrain of contemporary struggles, this group engaged in a process of reflection on the question of organization, seeking to derive lessons from the experiences of the past. Considering itself to be a product of class confrontations, it sought to be an active factor in contemporary and future movements by contributing, in the class struggle, to revolutionary consciousness. It rejected both the Leninist concept of the Party, according to which the Party brought consciousness from “outside” the proletariat, as well as the concept of the councilists, who denied the necessity of any role for revolutionary minorities.

It gradually dawned on the members of the group that this was an immense task, since they had to go all the way back to Marx in order to clarify the situation. After having established a general plan for study, divided into four major parts, its militants set to work, without claiming, as others did, that they were “the skeleton of the future communist Party” that the other minorities only needed to join. Each member of the group shared the task of writing the text, always aware of its purposes and the discoveries of previous research. Once written, all the texts had to be read by all the members of the group and then submitted to collective debate. One comrade wrote the first part, which bears the title, “The Evolution of the Concept of the Party since Marx”, and, after it was discussed, another comrade added a three-page note on anarchism. The other, unfinished, parts remained in the condition of rough drafts, and only the articles, “On Organization” were published in the group’s journal as preparatory contributions to Part Three: Current Perspectives on Organization.

PIC was swept up by the storm of the social movement in Poland (August 1980-December 1981), which led to divergent interpretations, and then analytical disagreements that crystallized into tendencies and finally resulted in a split (May 1981). After a few months and after two more issues of Jeune Taupe (Nos. 37 and 38), the majority fraction decided to dissolve the group. In the meantime, those who supported the split had already formed another group, “Volonté Communiste”, which published 17 issues of a monthly journal entitled, Révolution sociale. It was the members of this group who asked Editions Spartacus to publish Part One under the title, “Au-delà du Parti”, with its authorship attributed to “Collectif Junius”, to show respect for the principle of the work’s collective production (see “Note to the Reader”, above).

II. The contents of the Spanish edition

After this Preface, the reader will find the translation of Part One: “The Evolution of the Concept of the Party since Marx”, which was published by Editions Spartacus under the title, Beyond the Party.

After the main body of the text below, the reader will discover, as added appendices that did not appear in the original French edition, the articles collected under the title, “On Organization”, which were originally published in issues 35 and 36 of the journal, Jeune Taupe. These articles were originally intended to be included in Part Three: “Current Perspectives on Organization” (see the outline of the general plan for the text, above).

We hope that all of this will still be able to contribute some elements of a theoretical response to the vital problem of proletarian revolutionary organization. Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to take up the thread of this text where it left off—at least in the foreseeable future—and carry on with the task it sought to perform, in such a way as to fill in the gaps and complete the project as it was initially conceived, due to the dissolution of the successive groups that were engaged in this project and the scattering of their members. However, because this problem of organization has not been relegated to a secondary place in our concerns, we shall attempt to clarify the points that seem most essential and that are elaborated throughout this Spanish edition translated by comrade Emilio, to whom we express our thanks. For it is the case that, with respect to both proletarian organization as well as the role of revolutionary minorities, important critiques can be articulated concerning what should not be done, in the light of the erroneous concepts of Marxism, social democracy, Bolshevism, anarchism, and also the ultra-left (that is, the different varieties of the communist left: Luxemburgism, Bordiguism, councilism). Beyond these critiques, it is also possible to discern certain signposts that point towards what should be done in order for proletarian organization to be independent of the ruling ideology, the vehicle of the class consciousness of the immense majority of the exploited, and therefore effective as a means to destroy, from the bottom up, in a revolutionary way, the entire capitalist apparatus (States, borders, law of value, commodities, money…).

III. An organization produced by the revolutionary movement of the proletariat

All historical experience, and all the analyses derived from that experience, clearly prove that the organization of the proletariat, that is, the unitary organization of the class, cannot be created prior to the revolutionary movement…. Otherwise, it becomes a “mass party” that seeks to enroll the proletarians for reformist goals (the so-called minimum program) and goals that are counterrevolutionary in the long run (the ideology of the so-called maximum program). Especially noteworthy for their performance of this anti-proletarian role were the German Social Democratic Party and the Second International before 1914 (dragging the world proletariat into the first imperialist slaughterhouse), and then the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party-Bolshevik (Majority), which later called itself the “Communist Party”, and the Third International after 1917-1919 (dragging the world proletariat into the counterrevolution of 1920-1930, and then the second imperialist slaughterhouse). We recall that the delegate of the German Communist Party-Spartacus League, Eberlein, had been mandated to vote against the founding of the Third International if the latter were to have its headquarters in Moscow, so that the German Party would face the prospect of being under the boot of the Bolshevik-Leninists. (As it turned out, by the time Eberlein arrived in the Russian capital, the Commune of Berlin and the Spartacists had already been massacred by the Social Democrats and their “bloodhound” Noske, and he chose to merely abstain from the vote because the leadership of his Party had been decapitated: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, assassinated in cold blood after having been captured on January 15, 1919; and Leo Jogisches, kidnapped and held in a secret location between January and March of 1919, and then imprisoned and liquidated in his cell.)

The unitary organization of the class is instead the product of the activity of the revolutionary movement, which assumes its structural forms in the general struggle and which can thus become an active factor for the destruction of the capitalist system and its various States. In fact, the proletarian organization “grows everywhere spontaneously from the soil of modern society”, as Karl Marx had proposed in the middle of the 19th century and as historical practice would then demonstrate by way of the spontaneous emergence of the Workers Councils in Russia (the “Soviets” in 1905, and then again in 1917-1918), in Germany (the “Räte” of 1918-1919, and then the “Unionen”), etc. Thus, even in 1904 when, compared to Lenin’s What Is To Be Done, Luxemburg was right when she wrote in her text, “Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy”, published in both Iskra and Neue Zeit:

“In time we see appear on the scene and even more ‘legitimate’ child of history – the Russian labor movement. For the first time, bases for the formation of a real ‘people’s will’ are laid in Russian soil.

“But here is the ‘ego’ of the Russian revolutionary again! Pirouetting on its head, it once more proclaims itself to be the all-powerful director of history – this time with the title of His Excellency the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Russia.

“The nimble acrobat fails to perceive that the only ‘subject’ which merits today the role of director is the collective ‘ego’ of the working class. The working class demands the right to make its mistakes and learn the dialectic of history.

“Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee.”

(See the anthology entitled, Marxisme contre dictature [Marxism versus Dictatorship][1], edited by Lucien Laurat, Editions Spartacus, Series B, No. 55 [in English, see “Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy”, at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/index.htm])

One year later, the first Russian Revolution fully confirmed her assertions, for whereas the Soviets represented the movement of the proletariat’s self-organization, the Bolshevik Party remained isolated, outside of these mass organizations, not understanding that it had to act within them. Only Leon Trotsky, who only joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917, recognized the historical importance of this phenomenon and, furthermore, was elected to serve as President of the Petrograd Soviet.

Although Karl Marx referred to this proletarian organization emerging from the spontaneous mass movement as a political Party, the further unfolding of revolutionary history has unfortunately demonstrated that the idea of the Party, with its bureaucratic and hierarchical apparatus, had a tendency to supplant that of the Workers Councils, vacating them of their unitary class content. In this respect, the revolt of the sailors at Kronstadt in 1921 against the rule of the Bolshevik dictatorship was exemplary. Effectively responding to Trotsky—a field marshal in the “red army”—who wanted to kill them all “like partridges” (!), the rebels proclaimed a revealing and symbolic rallying cry: “All power to the Soviets, not to the Party!” They denounced the attempt to definitively transform the dictatorship of the proletariat exercised by the unitary organization of the class into the dictatorship over the proletariat that was sought by the Party. Contrary to the proletarian expression of the Paris Commune, cited by Marx as an “example” of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks (repression of left social revolutionaries and anarchists beginning in 1918; the slogan, “One party in power, the others in prison”) was identified with the conquest of the State rather than the imperative to “do away with all the old repressive machinery” (Marx, The Civil War in France). Instead of a bourgeoisie acting in its private capacity, the bureaucrats of the Bolshevik Party—since the time of Lenin—have been the managers of the State capitalism that was installed in Russia and which Stalin subsequently designated as “socialism in one country”, thus concluding the process of counterrevolution that would deceive the proletarians of the entire world. Otto Rühle, however, who had learned a thing or two from the German Revolution, wrote a text entitled, “The Revolution is Not a Party Affair!”[2] (see La gauche allemande. Textes. Pour l'histoire du mouvement communiste en Allemagne de 1918 a 1921. (Textes du KAPD, de L'AAUD, de L'AAUE et de la KAI 1920 - 1922. Avec notes et présentation) [The German Left. Texts. Towards a history of the communist movement in Germany, 1918-1921. With notes and introduction. Texts of the KAPD, AAUD, AAU-E and KAI (1920-1922)], supplement to the second issue of the journal, Invariance, Vol. V, Series 2, 1973, published in a paperback edtion by La Vecchia Talpa/Invariance, Naples, 1973, 169 p.).[3] He criticized the KAPD (German Communist Workers Party)—which, moreover, claimed that it was “not a traditional party” because of its links with the workers Unionen—and he called for the unitary organization of the proletariat, demanding the immediate dissolution of the Party as a separate institution distinct from the class as a whole. Later, in 1946, Anton Pannekoek attempted to carry out a comprehensive analysis of this question in his text, Workers Councils (see Editions Spartacus, Vols. I and II [in English translation, available online as of August 2017 at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1947/workers-councils.htm]).

IV. The role of revolutionary minorities

The historical movement of the proletariat in its struggle against world capitalism, and therefore of the revolutionary proletariat itself (according to Marx’s famous formula: “The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing!”), also produces within its unitary organization diverse revolutionary minorities corresponding to the various degrees of its class consciousness. They can form separate, minority organizations whose task is to contribute, in the class struggle, to this unitary consciousness before dissolving into the framework of the organization of the proletariat as a whole. None of these minorities can claim to be the vanguard Party (the “historic Party”, according to Marxist tradition), the only possessor of “the” truth, “the” program, that is, “all consciousness”, the consciousness that would somehow be introduced “from outside” to a proletarian movement considered to be incapable of proceeding beyond a trade unionist consciousness, that is, a syndicalist consciousness (see Lenin’s view as expressed in What Is To Be Done?, which attributes to professional revolutionaries the role of being the leaders of a proletariat considered to be “infantile”). To the contrary, these minorities must not assume any role whatsoever in the sense of acting as a “political leadership” (of the kind represented by the Bolshevik Party), or a “spiritual leadership” (of the kind represented by the KAPD), or any other kind of leadership substituting for the proletariat, but must instead seek to gradually merge into the unitary class organization as the counterrevolutionary danger recedes and as the realization of integral communism proceeds (extension of the world revolution, destruction of States and borders, abolition of wage labor, money and social classes…).

Currently, with the dawning of the 21st century, the relation of forces is in favor of capitalism despite the economic crisis that is undermining this system on an international scale and even though the proletarians, who are more numerous than ever (wage workers, precarious workers, unemployed…), still have the potential for offensive action despite the ideological campaigns of every kind, from the never-ending media bombardment, the terrorist threat, intensive war propaganda, etc. For this reason, the tasks of those minority factions that still exist in the world (political groups, discussion circles and networks…) are many and various. These tasks include the exchange of information, correspondence, translations, publications (journals, newspapers…), but also the organization of meetings, debates, etc.; all of these things are indispensable. But the most important task of all, however, remains theoretical elaboration that addresses the profound changes in the evolution of the capitalist system and a reality that has refuted most of the older perspectives. This labor will allow for a more effective intervention in the future proletarian revolutionary movement and will contribute to the clarification of class consciousness.

As Paul Mattick said in an article entitled, “Groups of Council Communists” (The Social Frontier 5; (45): 243-53, May 1939):

“The Groups do not claim to be acting for the workers, but consider themselves as those members of the working class who have, for one reason or another, recognised evolutionary trends towards capitalism’s downfall, and who attempt to co-ordinate the present activities of the workers to that end. They know that they are no more than propaganda groups, able only to suggest necessary courses of action, but unable to perform them in the ‘interest of the class’. This the class has to do itself. The present functions of the Groups, though related to the perspectives of the future, attempt to base themselves entirely on the present needs of the workers. On all occasions, they try to foster self-initiative and self-action of the workers.”

(Published in the collection entitled, Integración capitalista y ruptura obrera, EDI, 1972 [the text quoted above was taken from an essay entitled “Council Communism”, published as Chapter 5 of Anti-Bolshevik Communism (1978). “Council Communism”, available online as of August 2017 at https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1939/council-communism.htm, appears to be a slightly revised version of the original article, “Groups of Council Communists”])

The dogmatism of the sects is death. Only a critical method based on the inseparability of theory and practice instills life.

Guy Sabatier

October 2002

Introduction

The critique of the concept of the Party, even when it is undertaken by councilists and the supporters of various modernist tendencies (situationists, associationists, autonomists of every stripe…), fails to clearly situate the origins of the erroneous nature of this concept in the theses of Marx himself. Worse yet, the exponents of such a critique believe that they can oppose Marx’s theory of the “proletarian Party” to all those theories that, descended from Social Democracy and Leninism, have identified the Party with the representation of the proletariat, the embodiment of its class consciousness, the guarantee of its realization of communism understood as a “Historic Program” and therefore, when it has “conquered political power”, a “transitional” State responsible for ensuring the conditions for that realization. (Dictatorship of the Party!)

With regard to the national question and the analysis of the revolutionary process in Russia, Rosa Luxemburg did not hesitate to abandon what she called the “old ideas” of Marx and Engels. As for us, revolutionaries who have learned the lessons of the world counterrevolution that has been underway since October 1917, our task is to do the same with regard to the concepts of the “founding fathers” concerning the Party. Our critical method has nothing in common with an alleged “anti-authoritarianism” or any kind of “apoliticism” proclaimed by the anarchists to condemn Marx, while their own theoreticians, following in the footsteps of Bakunin, articulated and practiced concepts of revolutionary organization and relations with the proletariat as a whole that, in many respects, prefigured Leninism!

Our method is Marx’s method, historical and dialectical materialism, which we apply to Marx’s own theories, and those of Engels, formulated during a very specific period (after the Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848, during the second half of the 19th century), and for that very reason it has the same limitations as Marx’s method. To a certain extent, Marx must no longer be merely a “critic of Marxism”, but also a critic of … Marx!

“… The ‘conquest of political power’ is the absolute trap, the suicide of the workers movement. As ambiguous as Marx’s legacy has been, there is nonetheless one lesson we can learn: the self-emancipation of the working class can only be social and the means to achieve it is not the conquest and transformation of the State, but the abandonment and destruction of all political power. Only the conquest of social power, a trail blazed so far by the few experiences of the socialism of the Councils, can once again provide a meaning and a soul to the workers movement.”

(Maximilien Rubel, “De Marx au bolchevisme: Partis et conseils” [From Marx to Bolshevism: Parties and Councils], Arguments, VI, no. 25-26, 1962)[4]

The “Marxist” Concept of the Party

Even if his formulations concerning the problem of proletarian organization are not numerous, Marx, after the experience of the Paris Commune, always clearly expressed a very precise concept with regard to this question. For him, the constitution of the proletariat into a revolutionary class can only take place by means of the formation of a political Party:

“This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.”

(Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848)

“In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes, the working class cannot act as a class except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to all old parties formed by the propertied classes.

“This constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to insure the triumph of the social revolution, and of its ultimate end, the abolition of classes.”

(Article 7a, incorporated into the statutes of the First International by decision of the Hague Congress, 1872) (Our italics—PIC)

With respect to this particular concept of Marx’s, we must distinguish between what is correct and what is false in relation to the real goal of the proletarian movement he formulated above: the abolition of classes.

a) The need for a political stage: critique of the utopians, the economists and the anarchists

In Marx, the profoundly correct aspect is the vision of a political stage through which the social movement of the working class must pass. This stage is characterized by the struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist State, and must result in the complete destruction of the latter and the establishment of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in order to prevent any attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie to recover its lost power. From being an economic class sociologically defined by and for capital, the proletariat thus becomes a political class capable of acting for itself. From a class that possessed nothing in capitalism and was dispossessed of its own “being” (total alienation, because “the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class”!) the proletariat is transformed into a conscious class, armed with a revolutionary project thanks to its violent confrontation with the capitalist system that takes the form of a mass movement. And this makes one of Marx’s key formulations easier to understand: “The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing”! Unlike the old exploited classes (the bourgeoisie under feudalism, for example), the working class cannot found its political action on an economic power base already established in the heart of the old system, it can only affirm itself politically from the start, autonomously, in order not to improve, but to destroy the existing social order: the abolition of wage labor and commodity production and therefore of classes.

This view implicitly contains a critique of the various currents that arose in the 19th century within the workers movement and which, in various ways, engaged in theoretical reflections on the objectives that movement should pursue and the methods it should utilize to achieve its emancipation. Marx directed his attacks against both the utopians who perceive “no historical self-determination on the part of the proletariat, no political movement particular to it”, since “they are conscious of capturing mainly the interests of the working class as the class that suffers most. Only from this perspective of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them” (“Manifesto of the Communist Party”) as well as against the economists like Proudhon who “want the workers to remain in society as it is constituted and as it has been signed and sealed by them in their manuals” because “they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society” (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847).

Marx’s critique is also directed against the anarchists who, like the other currents, reject the political stage and reduce the proletariat to a mere class for capital, that is, a class that only seeks to improve its lot within the framework of the existing system (the theme of self-management). He called them the “apostles of political indifferentism” because for them the working class “must not … under any pretext, engage in political action, for to combat the state is to recognize the state: and this is contrary to eternal principles” (“Political Indifferentism”, 1873).

It is essentially in his fundamental critique of Proudhon, The Poverty of Philosophy, that Marx develops the dialectic of the transition, on the part of the proletariat, from being an economic class to being a political, and therefore a revolutionary class:

“Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle….

“Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No.

“The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all orders.

“The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.

“Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?

“Do not say that social movement excludes political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social.

“It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions.”

Marx had previously sketched a rough outline of this dialectic of transformation of the proletariat and his view of the revolutionary process on the occasion of his critique of the Hegelian idealism of his collaborator Arnold Ruge in the sole issue of the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher (February 1844):

“But whether the idea of a social revolution with a political soul is paraphrase or nonsense there is no doubt about the rationality of a political revolution with a social soul. All revolution – the overthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old order – is a political act. But without revolution, socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution. But as soon as its organizing functions begin and its goal, its soul emerges, socialism throws its political mask aside.”

(“Critical Notes on the Article: ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian’”, Vorwarts!, No. 63, August 7, 1844; “a Prussian”, was the pseudonym used by Arnold Ruge.)

b) The limitations of this political stage due to the economic-political conditions of the 19th The concept of the “proletarian Party” in the democratic process.

One may discern all the limitations of this political stage conceived by Marx when, for example, he defines the moment when the workers struggle becomes political in the following manner:

“… every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.”

(Letter to Bolte, November 23, 1871)

Thus, for Marx, the supersession of the purely economic struggle (the trade union struggle), in order to transform it into a political struggle, takes the form above all of the constitution of a proletarian Party, distinct from and independent of the other parties formed by the possessing classes. The political tasks of this Party are oriented towards the reform of the capitalist system in a sense favorable to the interests of the workers, and then, subsequently, towards the “conquest of power”. This Party therefore corresponds to the political game of the 19th century, which is favorable to a certain extension of the democratic process characteristic of capital in its ascendant phase. For this same reason, the political stage of the proletariat’s organization into a class is situated entirely within the framework of the system. This means the total separation of this stage from the social goal (abolition of classes) contained in the revolutionary process characteristic of the proletariat, a goal whose realization is postponed until the future!

Marx had taken the formula according to which the proletariat organizes itself into a class by constituting itself as a Party from the utopian socialist Flora Tristan, whom Engels defended from Edgar Bauer’s attacks in The Holy Family, or the Critique of Critical Criticism, in 1845 (Flora Tristan’s “Union Ouvrière”). And in the last chapter of The Poverty of Philosophy (“Strikes and Combinations of Workers”) Marx points out that:

“In England, they have not stopped at partial combinations which have no other objective than a passing strike, and which disappear with it. Permanent combinations have been formed, trades unions, which serve as ramparts for the workers in their struggles with the employers. And at the present time all these local trades unions find a rallying point in the National Association of United Trades, the central committee of which is in London, and which already numbers 80,000 members. The organization of these strikes, combinations, and trades unions went on simultaneously with the political struggles of the workers, who now constitute a large political party, under the name of Chartists.”

We should point out that Engels summarized this transition to a political Party in his work, The Condition of the Working Class in England.

What is false in Marx’s conception is revealed by his identification of the political movement of the working class with the formation and activities of a proletarian Party.

What are the sources of his error?

Marx assessed the economic-political conditions of the 19th century as favorable for the proletarian revolution, for it was in his view upon the basis of the completion of the bourgeois democratic process, and by making this revolution “permanent”, that it was possible to proceed to the classless society, to communism.

His concept of the “proletarian Party” is the product of his separation of the political stage from the social goal.

The economic-political conditions of the 19th century were characterized by:

The economic development of capitalism between its cyclic crises (the ascending period) entailed the growth of the trade unions that would allow the working class to take advantage of the benefits that the system was capable of offering (reformism);

The development of the democratic State that responded to the necessities of free exchange and the economic “boom”, which led to the constitution of “workers Parties” in order to bring pressure to bear on capitalist parliaments for the purpose of improving the lot of the working class (democratic demands, parliamentarism).

This Trade Unions/Parties separation made it more difficult for the proletariat to conceive of itself as anything but a class in itself, that is, as an economic/political class within the system.

Marx’s proposal for the proletariat to proceed from being a class for capital to being a class for itself was based on the existence of a communist fraction within the workers parties: “The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties” (The Communist Manifesto). In his view, the revolutionary process consisted primarily in an extension of economic and political democracy: “The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat” (ibid.). Beyond the political role of the trade unions (transmission belts) and parliamentary practice (obtaining favorable legislation), it was therefore necessary for the proletarian Party (workers parties plus the communist fraction) to seize political power in capitalist society in its existing form in order to later transform it. The political stage was separate from the social goal, since it was situated on a different terrain, that of the capitalists. For Marx there was no rupture between bourgeois democracy and the realization of communism, but a certain continuity: the political stage represented in a way the hinge between the two, for once power is conquered, the guarantee of the subsequent social transformation was the existence of a communist fraction in the proletarian Party:

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others….”

(Ibid.)

Thus, this Fraction held in its hands the possibility of realizing communism thanks to the establishment of the State of the Dictatorship of the proletarian Party and the implementation of its maximum program, as opposed to the minimum programs of the workers parties (the transformation of the proletarian Party into the communist Party!). Drawing their conclusions from the lessons of the revolutionary events in France and Germany in 1848-1849, Marx and Engels formulated the theory of what they called the “permanent revolution”:

“The further particular individuals or fractions of the petty bourgeoisie advance, the more of these demands they will explicitly adopt, and the few who recognize their own programme in what has been mentioned above might well believe they have put forward the maximum that can be demanded from the revolution. But these demands can in no way satisfy the party of the proletariat. While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”

(“Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”, London, March 1850)

Despite the “concluding profession of faith” of this passage concerning communism and despite Marx’s insistence on the independent character of the proletarian Party, the political activity of the latter was anchored, from the very beginning, in the bourgeois democratic process. The dynamic of the capitalist revolutions in Europe against the remnants of feudalism had to be brought to a conclusion and therefore a continuity had to be established with the Jacobin extremism embodied by Babeuf and the Equals in 1796: “The French Revolution is nothing but the precursor of another revolution, one that will be greater, more solemn, and which will be the last.” (“Manifesto of the Equals”, Sylvain Marechal, 1796). The positions of Marx and Engels with regard to Russia (liquidation of Czarism thanks to a bourgeois revolution) and national liberation struggles (support for Polish independence, for example) are thus perfectly understandable in connection with their general view of the revolutionary process over the course of the 19th century: the merger of the democratic and the proletarian stages!

“As in France in 1793, it is the task of the genuinely revolutionary party in Germany to carry through the strictest centralization….

“They can force the democrats to make inroads into as many areas of the existing social order as possible, so as to disturb its regular functioning and so that the petty-bourgeois democrats compromise themselves; furthermore, the workers can force the concentration of as many productive forces as possible – means of transport, factories, railways, etc. – in the hands of the state.”

(“Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”)

Engels had already formulated this merger (support for the revolutionary bourgeoisie, or the realization of democratic tasks by replacing the revolutionary bourgeoisie) in his articles on the movements of 1847:

“The democratic movement in all civilised countries is, in the last analysis, striving for the political domination of the proletariat. It therefore presupposes that a proletariat exists, that a ruling bourgeoisie exists, that an industry exists which gives birth to the proletariat and which has brought the bourgeoisie to power.”

(“The Civil War in Switzerland”, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, November 14, 1847)

Once again, beyond the maturation of the objective conditions (economic and social determinism), the guarantee of the transition to a social revolution after the political stage is based solely on the application of the “communist credo” that exists as radical theory in the proletarian Party.

Far from facilitating this transition, the proletarian Party in power (social democracy, then Bolshevism) would be the main obstacle to any communist revolution. For by identifying with the State and favoring the concentration of capital, it would appear as an instrument of the rationalization of the system and therefore of the super-exploitation of the proletariat. Engels had foreseen the threat of the eventual integration of the Party, but due to the tendency to favor wage demands rather than its tendency to pursue the tasks of democratization:

“As for the Chambres Syndicales — well, if one is going to account a member of the workers’ party every STRIKE association which, like the English TRADES UNIONS, fights solely for high wages and short working hours but doesn’t otherwise give a damn for the movement — then the only party one will actually form is one for the preservation of wage labour rather than its abolition.”

(Letter to Bernstein, November 28, 1882)

On the basis of the bourgeois democratic process, contrary to the view held by Marx and Engels, the only thing that is permanent is not a proletarian revolution that will result in communism, but an adjustment to capital by means of a high degree of integration (illusions) or force (repression) applied to the proletarian movement. The Parties/Trade Unions dualism was (and still is!) one of the essential vehicles to propagate illusions and therefore to maintain the proletariat as an economic/political class within the system (wage demands and calls for democratic reforms). The repression of June 1848 in France (the massacre of the workers by Cavaignac’s troops) was emblematic of the fundamental antagonism between bourgeois democracy and communism. Marx and Engels did not learn any lessons from this other than the need for the existence and the political independence of the proletarian Party in order to pursue the permanent revolution and defeat the bourgeoisie by conquering power. The experience of the Paris Commune would lead them to draw other conclusions and modify their previous positions.

After the 1851 coup d’état in France (see The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte), Marx and Engels carried out the theoretical analysis that posited the shift of the vital center of the class struggle towards Germany, along with England, which they considered to be the epicenter of the world revolution despite the pitfall of the Irish Question (the headquarters of the IWA had been in London since 1864). Despite the danger posed by the hegemonic pretensions of the Prussian Chancellor, Bismarck, they counted on the impulse of the democratic and republican ideas that were set in motion as part of his campaign for German unity. Under the same title that was assumed by the Russian aristocracy and the Austrian Empire, the Second Empire arose in Europe as an additional barrier against the further unfolding of the revolutionary process. Against the wars that they referred to as “dynastic” (Napoleon III’s attempt to extend the borders of the French Empire by crushing democratic movements, for example), Marx and Engels supported, in the name of the proletariat, so-called “defensive” wars because they were situated in the perspective of national independence. This is what they said in September 1870 when Napoleon III declared war on Germany:

“The German working class have resolutely supported the war, which it was not in their power to prevent, as a war for German independence and the liberation of France and Europe from that pestilential incubus, the Second Empire. It was the German workmen who, together with the rural laborers, furnished the sinews and muscles of heroic hosts, leaving behind their half-starved families. Decimated by the battles abroad, they will be once more decimated by misery at home.”

(“Second Address on the Franco-Prussian War”, London, September 9, 1870)

Thus, from the very beginning, because this war had led to the restoration of the Republic in France, despite the inability of the German working class to prevent the fulfillment of the annexationist goals of its bourgeoisie (Alsace-Lorraine), Marx and Engels recommended to the French proletariat that it not launch its insurrection and instead wait for the Republic to be consolidated, taking advantage of the time thus gained to build its class organization:

“The French working class moves, therefore, under circumstances of extreme difficulty. Any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a desperate folly. The French workmen must perform their duties as citizens; but, at the same time, they must not allow themselves to be swayed by the national souvenirs of 1792, as the French peasant allowed themselves to be deluded by the national souvenirs of the First Empire. They have not to recapitulate the past, but to build up the future. Let them calmly and resolutely improve the opportunities of republican liberty, for the work of their own class organization. It will gift them with fresh herculean powers for the regeneration of France, and our common task – the emancipation of labor. Upon their energies and wisdom hinges the fate of the republic.”

(Ibid.)

After the siege and fall of Paris, and after the workers’ insurrection refused to allow its forces to be disarmed (March 18, 1871) and the Commune was proclaimed ten days later, the analyses previously made by Marx and Engels concerning the absolute priority of the democratic process were refuted. This movement, eminently social, would sweep away all their predictions of progressive national independence on the chessboard of European States and Empires. The economic development of capital would do the rest; hence, the abandonment of their theses on Poland by Rosa Luxemburg (see The Industrial Development of Poland, 1898). In 1891, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Commune, despite his attempts to justify the correctness of the analyses of the General Council of the IWA in its first two Addresses (July 23 and September 9, 1870), Engels nonetheless highlighted the social character of the Commune:

“Thus, from March 18 onwards the class character of the Paris movement, which had previously been pushed into the background by the fight against the foreign invaders, emerged sharply and clearly. As almost without exception, workers, or recognized representatives of the workers, sat in the Commune, its decision bore a decidedly proletarian character.”

(Introduction to The Civil War in France)

On May 30, 1871, two days after the last combatants of the Commune had been massacred on the slopes of Belleville by the Versailles troops, Marx for his part announced the principal and fundamental lesson of that social movement:

“… the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”

(“Third Address of the General Council to the IWA”, in The Civil War in France, 1871)

Marx had therefore made the transition from a view that called for the “conquest of political power” by the proletariat to the position that “the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it….” (Letter to Kugelmann, April 12, 1871). He thought that this modification of his earlier position was so important that he provided further clarifications of his view in the Preface to a new edition of the Communist Manifesto, dated June 24, 1872:

“… That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’.”

However, despite the experience of the Paris Commune, he reaffirmed the necessity, for the proletariat, of constituting a Party in order to act as a class (see Article 7a, incorporated into the statutes of the First International by resolution of the Hague Congress, 1872, quoted at the beginning of this chapter). Marx and Engels persisted in holding this view because their analysis of the political transition from capitalism to communism, and therefore, of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was still hobbled by a certain notion of the coexistence of a State and the rule of the proletarian class, or, in other cases, by the pure and simple identification of the two concepts:

“In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.”

(Engels, Introduction to The Civil War in France, 1891)

“The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word ‘people’ with the word ‘state’.

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

(Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”, 1875)

Once again, the theory of the separation of the political stage and the social goal, and therefore, of the continuity of certain functions of class society and capitalism in the political stage (= the State), even if Engels proposed “that Gemeinwesen [‘commonalty’] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French ‘Commune’” (Letter to Bebel, March 18-28, 1875), led Marx and Engels to deduce the need for a proletarian Party capable of assuming these functions (= State of the Dictatorship of the Party) in order to subsequently implement its historic program (realization of communism, which entails the extinction of the State). The affirmation of the need for a political stage would lead Marx and Engels to make a total break with the anarchists, whose apoliticism would lead them, for their part, towards “revolutionary syndicalism” or anarchosyndicalism (Hague Congress, 1872). But the limitations of their concept of this political stage would lead them, after the Hague Congress and after the dissolution of the IWA (which had transferred its headquarters to New York!), to move closer to the German social democracy and its consorts (the Second International), not only due to a compromise with Lassalleanism (insufficiencies of the criticisms of the Gotha Program, merger of the Eisenach “Marxists” in 1869 with the Lassalleans) but also due to the inability of their immediate successors to be anything but “disciples”, and this applies first of all to Engels, who instead of exercising the critical method, transformed it into an ideology under the rubric of “Marxism” (see “La Légende de Marx ou Engels fondateur” [The Legend of Marx, or ‘Engels the Founder’], Maximilien Rubel, Études de Marxology, Série S, No. 5. Socialisme: Science et Ethique [available in English translation online as of August 2017 at: http://marxmyths.org/maximilien-rubel/article.htm]). These limitations also explain the bureaucratic procedures (administrative measures, evidence based on hearsay, etc.) used to exclude Bakunin and the other members of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy at the Hague Congress. The absence of any real debate that the General Council might have been able to initiate concerning these divergences, especially concerning the problem of the political stage, effectively indicates the influence of these limitations on the formation and then on the evolution between 1864 and 1872 of the IWA, which some people try to present today as different from the corresponding development of later political parties (our critiques of Marx, we repeat, are not a veiled defense of the Bakuninists, who also for their part used a whole series of “organizational procedures” in an attempt to seize power in the IWA!).[5]

Defending the thesis that for Marx the principle of the Association is different from that of the constitution of the proletariat into a political Party, Claude Berger writes, criticizing Glucksmann: “Marx’s weaknesses, furthermore, do not reside where [Glucksmann] wanted to find them. He can be reproached for having fled from the difficulties of the associationist movement—which is to say the International Workingmen’s Association—and, in compensation, for having inclined towards the ‘mass party’ form. This favored the social democracy, which he nonetheless ruthlessly criticized and which excluded the anarchists, with whom, however, he had more in common.” (See “Autopsie de la ‘Nouvelle philosophie’” [Autopsy of the ‘New Philosophy’], Spartacus, No. 10, July-August 1978). In fact, despite the essential difference that the communist Party (the “Marxists” of the General Council) was not in a position of hegemony, as it had to face the opposition of the other working class Parties (Proudhonians, Blanquists, Bakuninists….) right up until the Paris Commune, the IWA was clearly the prototype of the mass proletarian Party as conceived by Marx after the dissolution of the Communist League. In the Second International, Marx’s ideas were dominant under the social democratic form, especially the German variety:

“While the Commune was the grave of early specifically French socialism, it was, for France, also and at the same time the cradle of a new international communism.”

(Engels, October 1884)

Furthermore, the IWA was oriented towards becoming a mass organization prior to the general struggle of the proletariat to achieve its constitution into a class; this is, by the way, what Claude Berger acknowledges in his own esoteric language:

“The Party of the ‘Communists’ was proposed to favor this movement for the association, that is, to organize the real movement against all the parties of equal appearance and of the wage workers. These parties of equal appearance, exclusively defending the most immediate interests (global and hierarchical) of the working class in general, or rather the particular and frequently divergent interests of the different layers of hierarchically organized workers, worked, therefore, when it came right down to it, for the order of wage labor, whether bourgeois or working class (under the term, ‘democratic’). The perspective sketched out by Marx demanded that the working class associations should exist outside of the struggle, to unite these associations with each other, and to externalize their unconscious, but real, content of revolt against the oppression of wage labor and the recomposition of existence. And in fact, the great activity of Marx and Engels consists in creating this ‘real workers movement’ of the association.”

(Marx, l'association, l'anti-Lenine: Vers l'abolition du salariat [Marx, the Association, the Anti-Lenin: Towards the Abolition of Wage Labor], Petite bibliotheque Payot, 1974, 238 p. [the above passage was translated from the Spanish translation])

Association and political Party; two formulas that in fact designate, in Marx, the same project of proletarian organization!

c) The contradiction between the concept of the Party as an organization that exists prior to the proletarian movement, and the concept of the Party as an organization that is produced by that same movement

Beyond the need for the Party, there is in Marx a contradiction concerning the way this Party will be constituted in relation to the proletarian movement. As soon as it is claimed that the Party must be an organization constructed prior to the existence of the movement, then the movement becomes nothing but a means to develop the Party. This is what Marx says in his letter to Bolte, for example: “If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation” (see citation above). And, in his practice as a militant, Marx frequently strove to build a Party-organization rather than the movement of the working class as a whole. This was the case, as we pointed out above, in his activities in the Communist League (1847-1852) and even more so the International Workingmen’s Association (1864-1872). Thus, the political necessity for the proletariat to constitute a Party can be summarized in the formula, “the Party is the class” since, for Marx, the previously-existing organization must represent, once it takes shape, the workers as a whole (mass Party).

But he also asserted the contrary, that is, that the Party is an organization produced by the movement:

“The ‘League’, like the société des saisons in Paris and a hundred other societies, was simply an episode in the history of a party that is everywhere springing up naturally out of the soil of modern society.”

(Marx, letter to Freiligrath, February 29, 1860)

“[The IWA] has not been hatched by a sect or a theory. It is the spontaneous growth of the proletarian movement, which is itself the offspring of the natural and irrepressible tendencies of modern society.”

(The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council of the IWMA to the Brussels Congress, 1868)

The real, practical movement therefore has priority over any previously existing organization, whether the latter proves to be superseded and must be criticized, or whether it has become a real obstacle and therefore must be dissolved:

“The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.”

(Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”)

“The international movement of the European and American proletariat has become so much strengthened that not merely its first narrow form — the secret League — but even its second, infinitely wider form — the open International Working Men’s Association — has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues.”

(Engels, “On the History of the Communist League”, 1885)

The proletariat only creates the Party, as a political organ, in its general struggle, and therefore it has no vocation to join any previously existing mass organization whatsoever. Here, the formula is the opposite of the preceding one: “The class is the Party!”

One component of the Leninist current, the Italian Left (Bordiguism), has attempted to construct a theory from this contradiction in Marx in order to harmonize the “dialectic of the Party”. Thus, the previously existing organization would be a species of formal Party, while the tendency of the class movement to constitute itself into a political organization over the course of the struggle would represent the historic Party. The result of this theoretical construct is that the formal Party can be mistaken and it can be an obstacle to the development of the historic Party, which then would lead to the formation of a communist Fraction that is the sole force capable of rendering a valid interpretation of the historical tendency as opposed to the sclerosis of the formal Party. The chess piece is moved: the proletarian Party (the class movement and the Fraction) is put back on the rails and will be able to perform its role! We shall observe that in the councilist current, in the person of Maximilien Rubel, a similar attempt has been made to resolve this contradiction in Marx: on the one hand, the previously existing organization is defined as the workers Party, that is, sociologically, and on the other, that which is produced by the historical movement gives rise to the proletarian Party, “which in a manner of speaking transcends the conditions of the established society”, that is, which cannot “be identified with a real organization subject to the servitudes of political alienation”. But this ethical concept (the magic of words!) of the proletarian Party requires the intervention, as in the case of the Bordiguists, of a communist Fraction that will know how to turn this Party into a “spur and instrument for proletarian spontaneity” rather than “an organ of class collaboration” (“Remarques sur le concept de parti prolétarien chez Marx” [Observations on the Concept of the Proletarian Party in Marx], Revue française de sociologie, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1961, pp. 166-176).

In situations where the historical movement of the working class ceases to be a factor, Marx would always attempt to “euthanize” those organizations which failed to play a determinant role in revolutionary movements (1848, the Commune):

In 1852, with the renewed expansion of capitalism and the integration of the proletariat, the Communist League was disbanded;

In 1872, with the counterrevolution in Europe after the defeat of the communards, the headquarters of the IWA was transferred to New York, heralding its dissolution in 1876.

During those periods, Marx would criticize every attempt to preserve formal or institutionalized organizations and would refuse to obey any directives from existing workers Parties, in the following terms:

“I told them straight out that we owed our position as representatives of the proletarian party to nobody but ourselves; this, however, had been endorsed by the exclusive and universal hatred accorded us by every faction and party of the old world.”

(Marx to Engels, May 18, 1859)

Furthermore, in certain circumstances, Marx also preferred to devote himself to work of reflection and theoretical elaboration rather than participate in organizational deliberations. Thus, in 1866, when he was engaged in the continuation and intensification of his research in order to produce as complete an economic analysis of the capitalist system as possible (the drafts of Capital), he would refuse, despite the pleas of his closest friends, to attend the IWA Congress at Geneva. He explained his decision in the following terms:

“I think that this work which I am doing is of far greater importance to the working class than anything that I, personally, could do at any [quelconque] Congress.”

(Marx to Kugelmann, August 23, 1866)

So as to leave no stone unturned, we must also mention that this preference expressed by Marx, besides privileging theory over the problems of organization at that particular juncture, must also be considered in the context of the polemic with the Proudhonians, whose workerism dominated the IWA and caused it to disparage the contributions of non-manual workers to the struggle of the proletariat.

Marx therefore often adopted a policy of remaining on the sidelines, whether in relation to a Blanquist-type substitutionist campaign when the mass movement of the working class was silenced and integrated into capitalism, or with respect to reformist debates within the mass Party when the conditions for resuming the class struggle were nonetheless present. As M. Rubel says (see “Le parti proletarien” [The Proletarian Party] in Marx, critique du marxisme, Payot, 1957, p. 190):

“Henceforth, it can be understood that Marx was able to speak, in his correspondence and in certain public addresses, of ‘our party’, at a time when no official organization was linked to the group of friends in the ‘Marx party’. This political group had no statutes, but it did have a creed, communism, and it was Marx’s vocation to provide it with theoretical foundations.”

d) The “Marx Party”, or the elitist concept of the Communist Party

In Marx, if there is one positive idea, it is certainly the one that, contradicting other statements he made, leads him to formulate the impossibility of a revolutionary mass organization outside of periods of open confrontation by the proletariat as a whole with the system. This would be recognized by Rosa Luxemburg in her critiques of social democracy and the Second International in the light of the Russian experience of 1905. The historic Party is therefore conceived as a spontaneous product of working class struggles during the course of the revolutionary process (in fact, it would be the Workers Councils that would arise as the unitary political expression of the proletariat, abolishing by the very fact of their existence the division between parties and trade unions that corresponded with the previous conditions!) While waiting for the key periods to arise during which the Party can be formed, however, the consciousness of what the historic Party will be, in a practical manner, is embodied in a “laboratory-sect” that preserves (the Bordiguist theme of Invariance) or re-adapts (enriches)—this depends on the texts one consults—the communist Program. In effect, Marx and his “group” (Engels…) set themselves up as the elite guardians of the theory that the practical movement was supposed to realize: they are the historic Party on the theoretical plane! When Marx said, “When theory grips the masses, it becomes a material force”, this was not so very different from Lassalle’s formula concerning “the alliance of science and the proletariat” … nor is it very far removed from what Kautsky and Lenin would subsequently write concerning consciousness introduced from outside of the class struggle into the proletariat. Thus, M. Rubel states at the end of his text, “Le parti proletarien” (cited above):

“It remains for sociological analysis to show just how such a concept of charismatic choice differs, or does not differ, from the idea that Marx had concerning political sects.”

There are in fact important differences between what Marx-Engels said and, for example, what Kautsky said with his ideological and therefore bourgeois view of theory:

“England gave them the greater part of the economic documentation that they used, and German philosophy gave them the best method to deduce from that documentation the goal of contemporary social development; the French Revolution clearly showed them the need to conquer power, and especially political power in order to attain their goal. In this way they created modern scientific socialism by merging everything that English thought, French thought and German thought possessed that was great and fertile.”

(“Les Trois Sources du Marxisme” [The Three Sources of Marxism], Spartacus, series B, no. 78, p. 21 [translated from the Spanish translation])[6]

These differences are essentially based on Marx-Engels’ recognition of the determinant role played by the real movement of the proletariat in relation to intellectual production. The class struggles of the 1840s had helped them to discard not only Hegelian idealism, but also the bourgeois materialism that was the basis of the dualism of thought and action (see “Theses on Feuerbach”, 1845):

“The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

“They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.”

(The Communist Manifesto, 1848)

“They ‘evolve’ the idea by ‘consistent’ studies which leave no trace behind. They then ‘carry this idea to our workers’ organizations’. To them, the working class is so much raw material, a chaos into which they must breathe their Holy Spirit before it acquires a shape.”

(“Les prétendues scissions dans l'Internationale” [Fictitious Splits in the International] (1872), Spartacus, “Textes sur l’organisation” [Texts on Organization], series B, no. 36, p. 89 [in English, see: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/03/fictitious-splits.htm])

Before this critique of the maneuvers of the Bakuninist Alliance, Marx-Engels had in the same text differentiated their position from the positions of the utopian sects by showing what distinguishes the IWA from the latter:

“The International’s Rules, therefore, speak of only simple ‘workers’ societies’, all aiming for the same goal and accepting the same program, which presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while leaving its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the sections, unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs and Congresses.”

(Our emphasis—PIC)

As a final example of these differences, one may cite the following passage from the “Circular Letter of Marx-Engels to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke and other leaders of the German Social Democratic Party” of September 1879, with regard to the abandonment of the revolutionary principles of the proletariat by exiles from that Party (including Bernstein) as a consequence of an “emergency law” enacted by Bismarck that targeted the socialists:

“As for ourselves, in view of our whole past there is only one path open to us. For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving force of history, and in particular the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution; it is therefore impossible for us to co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement. When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle-cry: the emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who say that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above by philanthropic bourgeois and petty bourgeois. If the new Party organ adopts a line corresponding to the views of these gentlemen (C.H. Schramm, C. Höchberg and E. Bernstein), and is bourgeois and not proletarian, then nothing remains for us, much though we should regret it, but publicly to declare our opposition to it and to dissolve the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German Party abroad” (!).

Despite these differences, however, and despite the fact that for Marx-Engels, unlike Kautsky-Lenin, socialism is not born from the head of the intellectuals but arises from the practical necessities of the workers struggle confronted by the crisis of capitalism, a separation was nonetheless present in their conception of the question, between the theoretical interpretation (consciousness) of the real movement, and the practice of the movement. This is very clearly demonstrated when, on the organizational plane, Marx-Engels posed the question concerning what distinguishes the role of the communists from that of the other workers parties in the proletarian Party as a whole (the working class in movement). For they responded to this question as follows:

“… theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

(The Communist Manifesto)

The line of march, the conditions, the ultimate general results…. Everything is laid down in black and white for that “great mass of the proletariat” which does not have “the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march”, and therefore does not have any theoretical contribution to make, at least not in any fundamental sense! This proletariat is, in a way, a blind man who must allow himself to be guided by them, the communists, who possess the program from A to Z:

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others.”

(ibid.)

The revolutionary process is in fact nothing but the practical realization of a theory possessed by a particular fraction, that of the communists, because:

“… they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”

If one pursues this idea to its logical conclusions, there is no communist movement properly speaking. For Marx-Engels, communism is a program borne by the Party, that “communist Party” that enlightens the proletarian Party, that is, the historical movement of the working class. Thus, there are passages in Marx-Engels that express the idea that they are nothing but interpreters of reality, but privileged interpreters, in the likeness of those sages who observe phenomena and deduce their general laws:

“Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and the Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the struggle itself of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely Utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science. But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.”

(Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847) (Our emphasis—PIC)

Furthermore, it was Engels who would institutionalize the formula of “scientific socialism” as opposed to “utopian socialism”. With this kind of theoretical pretension and his assimilation of a veritable “science of the proletariat”, the value of the succession of social experiences themselves that might have made possible the supersession and constant enrichment of the preceding theoretical positions (and don’t give us any of this talk of definitive knowledge, or of any “historical thread” or “organic continuity”!), on the one hand, and on the other, the necessary task of putting into perspective all theoretical contributions from one or another fraction precisely in accordance with the experiences of the movement as a whole in its confrontation with the changing objective conditions, would gradually fade away and disappear in their collision with the dogma and elitism that is inherent to such a position. Like the metaphysics of Christianity, or Reason for the philosophers of the 18th century, “scientific socialism” would become the cornerstone of a new religion called “Marxism”, and its churches, the political parties christened as “socialist” or “communist”!

We therefore once again observe the negative role played by the French Revolution in the consciousness of Marx-Engels. What lies behind this separation of theory and practice that would lead to ideological deformation is the separation between political tasks and social tasks for the proletarian process that is modeled, in its first (political) stage, on the bourgeois process, in accordance with the objective conditions of the 19th century:

“Its own struggle against the bourgeoisie cannot begin until the day of the victory of the bourgeoisie.” (Marx to Kugelmann, February 23, 1865);[7]

“In all civilised countries, democracy has as its necessary consequence the political rule of the proletariat, and the political rule of the proletariat is the first condition for all communist measures.”

(Engels [“The Civil War in Switzerland”, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, November 14, 1847])

Despite the lessons derived from the experience of the Paris Commune, the key formula of the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”—the conquest of political power by way of the democratic process—would undergo further development in the German Social Democratic Party, which, by the way, always refused to join the IWA despite the efforts of Marx-Engels. The separation of the political/social stages would be cast in high relief by the Communist-Jacobin Party, which realizes this separation in practice, a party of specialists in politics, professional revolutionaries, theoreticians of the proletariat.

For Marx-Engels, the party which is the bearer of the theory elaborated by the communists, and thus the mediator (Lukács) between theory and practice, was an interpreter, certainly a privileged one, and a revealer of the proletarian movement, but it also arose as a product of the revolutionary spontaneity of the working class. For social democracy and Bolshevism, the Party that is formed prior to emergence of the revolutionary movement will become the vehicle for the introduction of ideological consciousness into the proletariat, which is considered to be merely trade unionist!

Subsequently, the Bordiguist themes of the Invariance of theory, organic continuity and organic centralism on the organizational plane, would end up mummifying all interpretation of reality due to its elitist delirium, and its Messianic program for communism, entirely conceived as an ideology to be realized:

“Leaping over a whole cycle, communism is the knowledge of a plan of life for the species. That is, for the human species.”

(“Proprietà e capitale” [Property and Capital], Prometeo, series II, p. 125)

To conclude this analysis of the “Marxist” concept, we shall offer a quote from Engels that will once again confirm the fact that, despite their many errors occasioned by the conditions of their time, neither Engels nor Marx ever completely succumbed to this ideology, due to their utilization of the materialist, historical and dialectical method. Contradiction is and always will be the source of all social life, even in communism:

“Herr Heinzen imagines communism is a certain doctrine which proceeds from a definite theoretical principle as its core and draws further conclusions from that. Herr Heinzen is very much mistaken. Communism is not a doctrine but a movement; it proceeds not from principles but from facts. The Communists do not base themselves on this or that philosophy as their point of departure but on the whole course of previous history and specifically its actual results in the civilised countries at the present time. Communism has followed from large-scale industry and its consequences, from the establishment of the world market, of the concomitant uninhibited competition, ever more violent and more universal trade crises, which have already become fully fledged crises of the world market, from the creation of the proletariat and the concentration of capital, from the ensuing class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in this struggle and the theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat.”

(Engels, “The Communists and Karl Heinzen”, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, Nos. 79 and 80, October 3 and 7, 1847)

The “Social Democratic” Concept of the Party

During the whole course of its historical development, Social Democracy would abandon the positive contributions that Marx was able to make thanks to the application of his method: principally the concept of a revolutionary mass organization that arises as a product of the spontaneous movement of the proletariat in periods of crisis in capitalism and of open confrontation between the workers and that system of exploitation; but also that of an organization that plays an active role in the destruction of the State and, for that very reason, is inscribed in a process of non-separation between the political tasks and the directly social tasks of the proletarian revolution (refer to the lessons of the Paris Commune).

Only the left wing fractions of the Social Democracy, having already expressed profound theoretical disagreements with the Party prior to 1914 (Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek…), and then the entire current known as the “ultra-left” (except for the Italian Left, or Bordiguism), would reassert the preeminence of the real movement on the plane of the formation of the revolutionary mass organization, but they would preserve, with some nuances (see the analysis in the chapters that follow), the idea of the “Party”, of its privileged role and therefore of the separation between the political stage and the social movement. It was the revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat itself on the historical stage (1905, and then 1917-1923) that was responsible for this dissident trend and, later, for the growing radicalization of the various currents.

The Social Democracy, however, would proceed to amplify all of Marx’s negative features due to the limits imposed on its theory by the economic-democratic development of the capitalist system in the second half of the 19th century, but also due to the tactics it elaborated and implemented, especially in Prussia. From the concept of the Party as the privileged interpreter and theoretical vehicle for the revelation of the revolutionary spontaneity of the proletariat, it would engineer the further separation of these factors until it arrived at the concept of the Party as the bringer of socialist consciousness to a proletariat that can only be “trade unionist” if left to its own devices. In this manner the perfectly static separation between theory and practice was realized: the Social Democratic Party, the sole possible mediation, stood guard over the maximum program (that is, ideologically preserved the political content, and then the social content, of a communist revolution postponed until the Greek Calends) while it implemented the minimum program (i.e., repairing capitalism by implementing “working class reforms”).

A point of no return had thus been reached in the denial of all the revolutionary capabilities that characterize the real movement of the proletariat. Everything else would follow: from then on, the only thing that mattered was the democratic stage; the Party conceived as a mass organization, constructed prior to the existence of any movement of the working class—which was itself only perceived as a simple means of furthering the growth of that type of organization—had no other “final goal” than the conquest of political power (even, once again, by way of universal suffrage) and, therefore, the management of the capitalist State.

In the mainstream historiography of what is called “the workers movement”, according to the interpretations of a traditional type (left wing: Socialist Party, Communist Party) or leftist (including contemporary ultra-left currents!), we note the continued existence, with reference to the explanation of how Marx and the Social Democracy are related, of attempts to assure a “historical affiliation” between them, and on the other hand attempts to “cleanse” the former to one degree or another of any responsibility for the “reformist sins” of the latter! We are obliged to point out that if there is an affiliation, it is with “Marxism”, that is, an ideology (and later, a State religion: the USSR, China…) which no longer had anything in common with Marx’s original method, which for its part was based on the fundamental antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This ideology not only appropriated and exacerbated the theoretical errors of Marx that were induced by the conditions of the 19th century, evidently without any attempt to analyze the changes that those conditions were undergoing (the expansion of capital due to the assertion of its imperialist tendencies on a planetary scale after 1880: the first effects of the economic crisis in Europe during this period which led to a colonial repartition of the world and to the imperialist rivalries that arose as a result, as in the Fashoda incident in 1898 in which the opponents were England and France!), but also transformed the general analysis of the system elaborated by Marx in Volume I of Capital (“The Critique of Political Economy”), using his draft manuscripts to construct the “abstract” concept of a system that functions in isolation (see Volumes II, III and IV, edited by Engels and Kautsky). Of course, even if the world market was not yet completely formed, imperialist tendencies, in impressive displays, have existed since the beginning of capitalism. After all, this system, based on competition, could only develop historically by destroying the vestiges of prior modes of production and therefore modes of production that were external to its own sphere of economic operations (production-circulation of commodities among capitalists, or for sale to wage workers). As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out in The Accumulation of Capital (1913), it is the need to realize all of its surplus value in the form of money, a condition sine qua non for ensuring an endless extended reproduction, which forces capitalism to venture outside of its own sphere in search of markets.

The bourgeoisie was historically revolutionary, for it made possible a distinctly higher level of development of the productive forces compared to previous systems, but it was only revolutionary, above all, from the perspective of capital, of which it was a product and whose real rule it made possible. Thus, the proletariat has had the right to nothing but crumbs, more or less substantial depending on the periods and their struggles, scattered by that ruling class, contributing to the movement of capital. Its role, due to its antagonistic position towards the bourgeoisie in the relations of production, could only be, from the very start, to engage in an intransigent war against the bourgeoisie, the main stronghold, along with the State, of capitalist exploitation. The working class did not have to collaborate with any of the bourgeois forces, not even the most democratic, nor did it have to try to play the role of a substitute for them in order to “accelerate History” (!) should those forces show indecisiveness, or even an openly stubborn refusal, to liquidate the old regime (the remnants of feudalism).

Due to the limitations of his concept of the political stage that the proletariat was supposed to embark upon, and due to the tactics that he and Engels advocated to achieve this goal (“permanent” revolution, proletarian Party, etc.), Marx, during his lifetime, and then Engels, would make a significant contribution to paving the way for social democracy, and especially, and first of all, German social democracy.

1. Social Democracy during Marx’s lifetime or … “the vagaries of the proletarian Party in Germany”

“In all my writings, I never called myself a social democrat, but a communist. For Marx, as for me, it is absolutely impossible to use such an elastic expression to designate our concept.”

(Engels, 1894 Introduction to a pamphlet containing articles published by Volksstaat, the journal of the Eisenachers, between 1871 and 1875 [translated from the Spanish translation])

“Whatever else I may be, I am not a Marxist!”

(Marx, in a statement recounted by Engels in a letter to Paul Lafargue dated August 27, 1890)

The above claims would seem to be supported by the circumstance that, prior to the merger with the Lassalleans of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein [General German Workers Association] (ADAV) at the Congress of Gotha in 1875, Marx and Engels appeared to possess a clear politics, that is, a communist politics, as opposed to the social democratic currents and especially their “supporters” in the “Social Democratic Workers’ Party”, founded in Eisenach in 1869. The assertions of the intelligentsia of the “Marx experts” concerning the evolution of the “workers movement”, however, belong, once again, to the domain of deceitful interpretation! For, besides a few a posteriori declarations intended to serve as self-justification, the “Founding Fathers”, in practice, gave their imprimatur (despite the existence of “private” critiques of the “leaders” circulated via the back door of their private correspondence) to the politics of the “German Marxists”, first to the ADAV between 1863 and 1869, and then to the Party of Eisenach from 1869 to 1875, and finally to the “unified” party after 1875, a politics that was, from the very beginning, of a social democratic nature. This will make it possible to put into perspective the all-too-famous “concessions” to Lassalleanism in the “Gotha Program”, to which the paternity of all “deviations” has been attributed: reformism, legalism, revisionism…. Why? Because, in view of the absence of a revolutionary bourgeoisie in Germany after 1848, when that country was objectively at the threshold of the necessary stage of its “bourgeois political revolution” (like England in 1646 and France in 1789), it was Marx and Engels who personally elaborated an entirely social democratic political tactic for the German proletariat. In their view, the German proletariat must lead the movement for democratic demands, substituting for the bourgeoisie—the great moguls of industry and finance—who, incapable of affirming themselves in the political arena, had entered into an alliance with semi-feudalism as represented by the big landowners of Prussia and their spokesman, the Junker, Bismarck. Even before 1848, Marx had already produced—in a style that was bloated with metaphors—a veritable “ideological salad” that anticipated the subsequent elaborations of this tactic:

“If we compare the meek, sober mediocrity of German political literature with this titanic and brilliant literary debut of the German workers; if we compare these gigantic children’s shows of the proletariat with the dwarf-like proportions of the worn-out political shoes of the German bourgeoisie, we must predict a vigorous future for this German Cinderella. It must be granted that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European proletariat just as the English proletariat is its economist and the French its politician. It must be granted that the vocation of Germany for social revolution is as classical as its incapacity for political revolution.”

(Marx, “Critical Notes on the Article: ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian’”, Vorwarts!, No. 64, August 10, 1844)

Later, Engels was somewhat more prosaic in his praise for the actions of the German proletariat when, leaving its bourgeoisie behind, it helped the struggle for democratic demands by forming organizations for that very purpose:

“The social and political activities of the proletariat have kept pace with the rapid growth of industry since 1848. The role of the German workers, as expressed in their trade unions, their associations, political organisations and public meetings, at elections, and in the so-called Reichstag, is alone a sufficient indication of the transformation which came over Germany in the last twenty years. It is to the credit of the German workers that they alone have managed to send workers and workers’ representatives into the Parliament – a feat which neither the French nor the English had hitherto accomplished.”

(Engels, 1870 Preface to the Second Edition of The Peasant War in Germany)

In a note on the above text and on the tactic implemented in Germany in the 19th century by Marx-Engels, R. Dangeville—as a consistent Bordiguist … among other things!—clearly exposed the link that would make Lenin the standard-bearer of such a tactic in Russia at the turn of the 20th century:

“The history of Germany was therefore a kind of laboratory in which valid solutions for all the countries of the world had to be formulated! (that is, the backward countries, since the bourgeois revolution had not yet taken place in them). Thus, his study of the conditions of Germany after 1848 and of the political tactic elaborated by Marx-Engels made it possible for Lenin, beginning in 1905, to expound the ‘Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution’ in Russia. Masterfully defining the aspects of the ‘backward’ material conditions that imposed a non-communist, social democratic politics, Lenin advocated, in the absence of a revolutionary bourgeoisie, the seizure of the reins of the revolution from the beginning of the process—the bourgeois stage—in order to lead it to its conclusion—socialism….”

(Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, La Social-démocratie allemande (German Social Democracy), translated and edited by Roger Dangeville, U.G.E. 10/18 1975, pp. 342-343 [translated from the Spanish translation])

From this book, which, like the four volumes on Le parti de classe [The Class Party] (Maspero), is meticulously documented, we have taken a large number of quotations that contradict the positions defended by its author, instead of supporting them, as he believes!

In order to transform his tactic into practice, Marx needed a mass Party in Germany. As this represents a key period in the gradual transformation that would take place with respect to the “Marxist” concept and the “social democratic” concept of the Party, we shall examine it in detail, in the context of the organizational events that followed one after another in rapid succession.

a) The origins of the General German Workers Association (ADAV):

After the period of reaction that followed the workers movements of the late 1840s in Germany (the Cologne Trial, for example) and the dissolution of the Communist League, the General German Workers Association was formed in 1863 in Leipzig under the leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle and his disciples.[8]

After his dispute with Lassalle, immediately following Lassalle’s fruitless visit to London (July 1862), Marx was isolated from the ADAV’s formative years. After the death of its “Guide”, however (Lassalle died as a result of wounds incurred in a duel over a woman in August, 1864), the ADAV looked for a successor to assume leadership over the organization. Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the future leaders of the Eisenach Party and subsequently of the unified Social Democracy, then asked Marx on several occasions to accept the presidency of the ADAV, saying that Bernhard Becker (named successor-designate in Lassalle’s Last Will and Testament) had suggested him as a candidate.

Marx, who had just assumed the leadership of the International Workingmen’s Association, responded as follows:

“Enquiries have reached me, e.g., from Berlin, as to whether I would accept the presidency? I replied that it was impossible, because for the present I am still forbidden to take up residence in Prussia. However, I would certainly think it a good gesture by the party, vis-à-vis both the Prussian government and the bourgeoisie, if the workers' congress were to elect me, to which I would make a public reply explaining why I cannot accept the election.”

(Letter from Marx to Carl Klings, October 4, 1864; Klings was still in contact with some of the old members of the Communist League who remained in Germany after the League’s dissolution)

It turned out, as expected, that Becker was “elected” to the presidency of the ADAV. As a result of this episode, it can be seen that Marx had no illusions about the effectiveness of any kind of official plebiscite to modify the Lassallean orientation of the Association, although he did not discount its symbolic impact in order to try to use it within the framework of his political tactic. More fundamentally, however, his tactic was based on what we defined above as the “historic Party” (or the “Marx Party”), that is, on the elitist concept of a communist fraction serving as the theoretical directors of the “formal Party”, that is, the proletarian Party that had already existed for only a short time with an internationalist vocation (the IWA):

“… the International Association takes up an enormous amount of time, as I am in fact, the head of it.”

(Letter from Marx to Engels, March 13, 1865)

Thus, although he continued to try to persuade the ADAV to join the First International, Marx did not lose sight of the need for a theoretical struggle against the ideas of “Saint Ferdinand Lassalle”. However, he gradually began to put this struggle on the back burner in order to pursue a tactic designed to ensure the recruitment of a “working class base” in Germany to confront those whom he c