{"id":458110,"date":"2022-01-05T17:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T17:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=125117"},"modified":"2022-01-05T17:12:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T17:12:00","slug":"before-and-without-marx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/01\/05\/before-and-without-marx\/","title":{"rendered":"Before and Without Marx"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some\u00a0peoples possess\u00a0shamans to\u00a0explain how the world works.\u00a0We have charlatan economists and politicians posing as intellectuals who claim to be able to reveal the mystery of running society.<\/p>\n

The ideas of Marx did not arise out of thin air but grew from the works of many others before him. But the purpose of this short essay is not to explore his Young Hegelian philosophical roots or to expound on the influence of earlier economists such as Ricardo had on Marx but to focus upon the independent thought that developed within the working class which Marx would incorporate into his own conception of the world around him.<\/p>\n

Out of the discontent of the Industrial Revolution arose the Chartist\u00a0movement.\u00a0The\u00a0need for the whole working class to unite\u00a0in one movement had\u00a0come to the fore.\u00a0The Chartists\u00a0was the first mass political movement of the British working class and effectively Britain\u2019s first civil rights movement. Many unknown and,\u00a0therefore,\u00a0unacknowledged workers engaged in the mass struggle for the vote. As the factory and mill owners resisted any rebellion against the dictatorship of capital,\u00a0certain\u00a0radicals emphasized the connection between the struggle to win the vote and the class struggle.\u00a0They also\u00a0came to understand\u00a0that this was just a part of a wider and greater international fight for democracy and people\u2019s power.<\/p>\n

In his 1839 Labour\u2019s Wrongs and Labour\u2019s Remedy or The Age of Might and the Age of Right<\/em>, one of \u00a0the early Chartist activists, John Francis Bray, writes:<\/p>\n

There is wanted, not a mere governmental or particular remedy, but a general remedy – one which will apply to all social wrongs and evils, great and small\u2026they want a remedy for their poverty – they want a remedy for the misery\u2026Knowledge is merely an accumulation of facts; and wisdom is the art of applying such knowledge to its true purpose – the promotion of human happiness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the same year as Bray published his book, George Julian Harney was\u00a0dismissing\u00a0the\u00a0policy\u00a0of appealing to the\u00a0goodwill\u00a0of the ruling class,\u00a0rebuffing\u00a0any alliances with them. Referring to the effects of the New Poor Law Act on the conditions in the workhouses, he stated:<\/p>\n

You see now through the delusions of your enemies. Nearly nine years of \u2018liberal\u2019 government have taught you the blessings of middle class sway, blessings exemplified in \u2018bastilles\u2019 and \u2018water gruel,\u2019 in \u2018separation\u2019 and \u2018starvation\u2019; in the cells of silent horror and the chains of transportation, in the universal misery of yourselves and the universal profligacy of your oppressors\u2019.\u00a01<\/a><\/sup> \u00a0 .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was on\u00a0September 1845,\u00a0two decades before the First International,\u00a0the society of Fraternal Democrats\u00a0was formed,\u00a0adopting the\u00a0motto, \u2018All men are brethren.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was founded by some\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0British\u00a0Chartist movement\u00a0such as Harney,\u00a0along with a variety of\u00a0political\u00a0exiles\u00a0from across Europe.<\/p>\n

The Fraternal Democrats\u2019\u00a0political platform,\u00a0declared:<\/p>\n

We denounce all political and hereditary inequalities and distinctions of castes\u2026that the earth with all its natural productions is the common property of all; we therefore denounce all infractions of this evidently just and natural law, as robbery and usurpation. We declare that the present state of society, which permits idlers and schemers to monopolise the fruits of the earth and the productions of industry, and compels the working classes to labour for inadequate rewards, and even condemns them to social slavery, destitution, and degradation, is essentially unjust.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It made\u00a0a\u00a0call for\u00a0internationalism:<\/p>\n

Convinced that national prejudices have been, in all ages, taken advantage of by the people\u2019s oppressors to set them tearing the throats of each other, when they should have been working together for their common good, this society repudiates the term \u2018Foreigner,\u2019 no matter by, or to whom applied. Our moral creed is to receive our fellow men, without regard to \u2018country,\u2019 as members of one family, the human race; and citizens of one commonwealth \u2013 the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As\u00a0Harney\u00a0explained:<\/p>\n

Whatever national differences divide Poles, Russians, Prussians, Hungarians, and Italians, these national differences have not prevented the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian despots uniting together to maintain their tyranny; why, then, cannot countries unite for obtainment of their liberty? The cause of the people in all countries is the same – the cause of Labour, enslaved, and plundered\u2026In each country the tyranny of the few and the slavery of the many are variously developed, but the principle in all is the same. In all countries the men who grow the wheat live on potatoes. The men who rear the cattle do not taste flesh-food. The men who cultivate the vine have only the dregs of its noble juice. The men who make clothing are in rags. The men who build the houses live in hovels. The men who create every necessary comfort and luxury are steeped in misery Working men of all nations, are not your grievances your wrongs, the same? Is not your good cause, then the same also? We may differ as to the means, or different circumstances may render different means necessary but the great end – the veritable emancipation of the human race – must be the one end and aim of all.<\/p>\n

It is not any amelioration of the conditions of the most miserable that will satisfy us: it is justice to all that we demand. It is not the mere improvement of the social life of our class that we seek, but the abolition of classes and the destruction of those wicked distinctions which have divided the human race into princes and paupers, landlords and labourers, masters and slaves. It is not any patching and cobbling up of the present system we aspire to accomplish, but the annihilation of the system and the substitution, in its stead, of an order of things in which all shall labour and all enjoy, and the happiness of each guarantee the welfare of the entire community.\u00a02<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another\u00a0prominent\u00a0Chartist\u00a0activist,\u00a0Ernest\u00a0Jones gave the Chartist movement a more socialistic direction\u00a0and he too\u00a0was committed to the wider international context of the workers\u2019 movement.\u00a0In The People\u2019s Paper<\/em> of 17 February 1854, Jones wrote:<\/p>\n

Is there a poor and oppressed man in England? Is there a robbed and ruined artisan in France? Well, then, they appertain to one race, one country, one creed, one past, one present, and one future. The same with every nation, every colour, every section of the toiling world. Let them unite. The oppressors of humanity are united, even when they make war. They are united on one point that of keeping the peoples in misery and subjection\u2026Each democracy, singly, may not be strong enough to break its own yoke; but together they give a moral weight, an added strength, that nothing can resist. The alliance of peoples is the more vital now, because their disunion, the rekindling of national antipathies, can alone save tottering royalty from its doom. Kings and oligarchs are playing their last card: we can prevent their game.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In\u00a0yet\u00a0another article\u00a0from\u00a0the\u00a0\u2018Peoples Paper<\/em>\u2019, March 3 1855,\u00a0Jones\u00a0explained:<\/p>\n

Let none misunderstand the tenor of our meeting: we begin to-night no mere crusade against an aristocracy. We are not here to pull one tyranny down, only that another may live the stronger. We are against the tyranny of capital as well. The human race is divided between slaves and masters…Until labour commands capital, instead of capital commanding labour, I care not what political laws you make, what Republic or Monarchy you own – man is a slave.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ernest Jones was also the prime mover in assembling what was called, the Labour Parliament. Jones in\u00a0The People\u2019s Paper<\/em>\u00a0for January 7, 1854, wrote:<\/p>\n

Every day brings fresh confirmation of the need for a mass movement and the speedy assembling of the Labour Parliament. If it is delayed much longer, every place, Preston included, lost or at the best forced into degrading and weakening compromises\u2026The Cotton Lords, at a \u2018Mass Meeting\/ of their own, unanimously resolved to support their brother Cotton Lords of Preston and Wigan with the full force of their funds. Under these circumstances it is class against class\u2026It must, therefore, become manifest that unless the working classes fight this battle as a Class, that is, in one universal union by a mass movement, they will be inevitably defeated \u2026The greater the lock-out, the wider the strike movement, the more national becomes the movement \u2013the more of a class struggle it is rendered \u2013and if the working classes once see that they are struck at as a class, their class instinct will be roused and they will rise and act as one man.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Parliament met on March 6, 1854, at Manchester, attended by some fifty or sixty delegates with the Parliament\u2019s discussions lasting several days. Marx was to comment:<\/p>\n

Some future historian will have to record that there existed in the year 1854, two Parliaments: a Parliament at London and a Parliament at Manchester \u2013 a Parliament of the rich and a Parliament of the poor \u2013 but that men sat only in the Parliament of the men and not in the Parliament of the masters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Peter McDouall was another\u00a0significant figure in Chartism\u00a0who\u00a0was an\u00a0advocate of the power of the ordinary worker. He explained:<\/p>\n

The Trades are equal to the middle class in talent, far more powerful in means and much more united in action\u2019 and again \u2018The agitation for the Charter has afforded one of the greatest examples in modern history of the real might of the labourers. In the conflict millions have appeared on the stage and the mind of the masses has burst from its shell and begun to flourish and expand.\u2019The question of what was to be the next step forward was one of great urgency and on this issue, the Chartists were deeply divided. Many moderates refused to host McDouall\u2019s meetings as he opposed alliances with the middle class.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Past defeats, he judged, could all be attributed to\u00a0the fact:<\/p>\n

Our associations were hastily got up, composed of prodigious numbers, a false idea of strength was wrought up to the highest pitch, thence originated a sense of security which subsequent events proved to be false, and why? Because no real union existed at the bottom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McDouall\u2019s\u00a0proposal\u00a0was to turn to the working class\u00a0as\u00a0only it had the necessary potential strength. He believed the Chartists should win\u00a0over the newly-forming trade unions\u00a0and use them.\u00a0However, some\u00a0of his\u00a0Chartist\u00a0critics\u00a0saw the trade unions not as allies but as rivals, regarding\u00a0union activity as a diversion, side-tracking people from the real struggle\u00a0for the franchise.<\/p>\n

McDouall was\u00a0yet another Chartist who recognised the international aspect of their struggle.<\/p>\n

Let all who have possessions in India, or all who profit by what you call \u2018our Indian possessions\u2019 be off to India, and fight a thousand battles for them as they like\u2026 but let them not mock our degradation by asking us, working people to fight alongside them, either for our \u2018possessions\u2019 in India, or anywhere else, seeing that we do not possess a single acre of ground, or any other description of property in our own country, much less colonies, or \u2018possessions\u2019 in any other, having been robbed of everything we ever earned by the middle and upper classes\u2026On the contrary, we have an interest in prospective loss or ruin of all such \u2018possessions\u2019, seeing they are but instruments of power in the hands of our domestic oppressors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1848 was Europe\u2019s Year of Revolutions\u00a0and as Marx and Engels released their Communist \u00a0Manifesto, McDouall was addressing\u00a0rallies,\u00a0spurring people into\u00a0action. After he spoke in Edinburgh,\u00a0there were\u00a0street disturbances with\u00a0shouts of \u2018Vive la Republique\u2019 and \u2018Bread and Revolution\u2019.<\/p>\n

Many before Marx understood the terrible human impacts of the capitalist system \u2014 all the poverty, misery, madness, inequality and its injustice. Socialists, who reject capitalism, follow a similar strategy as those Chartists militants before us and struggle for any improvements even if we know they can disappear overnight. But to stop struggling would only make workers worse off.<\/p>\n

  1. London Democrat<\/em>, April 20, 1839.<\/li>
  2. George Julian Harney, Red Republican, 1850.<\/em><\/li><\/ol>The post Before and Without Marx<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Some\u00a0peoples possess\u00a0shamans to\u00a0explain how the world works.\u00a0We have charlatan economists and politicians posing as intellectuals who claim to be able to reveal the mystery of running society. The ideas of Marx did not arise out of thin air but grew from the works of many others before him. But the purpose of this short essay [\u2026]<\/p>\n

    The post Before and Without Marx<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3568,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,40357,4397,471,11161,804,1134,123],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458284,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458110\/revisions\/458284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}