| NAZARIYA MAGAZINE |
Friedrich Engels Against Opportunism and Revisionism
The fight against Opportunism-Liquidationism-Revisionism is a constant struggle that communists have been entrenched in since the formation of proletariat parties became the general trend from the 1860s. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who spent the entirety of their adult lives embattled with the petite bourgeoisie and its ideological influences over the working class’ movement, found themselves in this new fight in the age of the proletariat parties. In the first half of their political lives, it was reformism, utopian socialism and anarchism which represented the petite bourgeois influence among the proletariat. Marx and Engels’ bitter struggles against the likes of Proudhon, Max Stirner and Michael Bakunin as part of the International Workingmen’s Association (retrospectively called the First Communist International) led to developments which saw the isolation and eventual elimination of these representatives of bourgeois from among the proletariat’s organization. This was the victory of Marxism as a scientific truth and as the ideology of the proletariat, now formally accepted. In the course of these ideological struggles, Marx and Engels led the revolutionary upsurges that hit many European nations around 1848, exposing the superiority of Marxism against Bakunin’s attempts at anarchist insurrections. As they entered the later part of their lives, Marx and Engels were both quick to recognise that the formation of proletariat parties in Europe was a welcome development, though it also came with the caveat that a new struggle against petite bourgeois ideology was to be fought now. Instead of fighting Marxism from the outside, the petite bourgeois liberal influence on the proletariat now attempted to come from within the ranks of proletarian parties working on Marxist lines. For the longest time, the two comrades had roughly split up their duties, with Marx focusing on political economy and revolutionary strategy while Engels focused on philosophy, military affairs and sciences. But with Marx’s passing, it fell upon Engels to not only carry out his given tasks but also Marx’s side of the work as the leader the young proletarian parties looked up to for guidance. On this 5th August, let us remember Comrade Engels, one of the five great teachers of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by looking at his historic contribution in fighting the very first battles against Opportunism-Liquidationism-Revisionism and seek inspiration for our ongoing fights today. Over the passage of a decade or so after the first parties were founded in the first half of the 1860s, they matured to the point of line struggles emerging in concrete forms among their ranks. The earliest fight came in 1875 when the General Association of German Workers led by Ferdinand Lassalle merged with the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (also called the Eisenachers) led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht to form the German Social-Democratic Party. The Lassalleans represented the petite bourgeoisie already, aiming for what Marx called a “Royal-Prussian state socialism.” Meanwhile Bebel and Liebknecht led the Eisenach party with guidance from Marx and Engels and their First International, with the Eisenach party taking firm positions against all reactionary trends. On the other hand, Lassalle regarded the state as a supra-class organization and, in conformity with that philosophically idealist view, he believed that the Prussian state could be utilised to solve the social problem through the setting up of producers’ co-operatives with its aid. Lassalle directed the workers towards peaceful, parliamentary forms of struggle, believing that the introduction of universal suffrage would make Prussia a ‘free people’s state’. To obtain universal suffrage, he promised Bismarck the support of his Association against the liberal opposition and also in the implementation of Bismarck’s plan to reunite Germany ‘from above’ under the hegemony of Prussia. The Eisenach party and other groups (the socialist sectarians) had strongly opposed this Prussian chauvinism. Lassalle repudiated the revolutionary class struggle, denied the importance of trade unions and of strike action, ignored the international tasks of the working class, and infected the German workers with nationalist ideas. His contemptuous attitude towards the peasantry, which he regarded as a reactionary force, did much damage to the German working-class movement. Marx and Engels fought his harmful utopian dogmatism and his reformist views. |
