Core Texts: Communism

Question 1: What is Communism?

"Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat."

Question 2: What is the proletariat?

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor—hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.

Question 4: How did the proletariat originate?

The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half of the last [18th] century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world.

This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.

Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the metal industries.

Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions which could be performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell, one after another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done.

But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big capitalists, and their workers were deprived of whatever independence remained to them. Gradually, not only genuine manufacture but also handicrafts came within the province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly displaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labor.

This is how it has come about that in civilized countries at the present time nearly all kinds of labor are performed in factories—and, in nearly all branches of work, handicrafts and manufacture have been superseded. This process has, to an ever greater degree, ruined the old middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the workers; and two new classes have been created which are gradually swallowing up all the others. These are:

1. The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
2. The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

Question 12: Periodic Crises

Big industry created in the steam engine, and other machines, the means of endlessly expanding industrial production, speeding it up, and cutting its costs. With production thus facilitated, the free competition, which is necessarily bound up with big industry, assumed the most extreme forms; a multitude of capitalists invaded industry, and, in a short while, more was produced than was needed.

As a consequence, finished commodities could not be sold, and a so-called commercial crisis broke out. Factories had to be closed, their owners went bankrupt, and the workers were without bread. Deepest misery reigned everywhere.

After a time, the superfluous products were sold, the factories began to operate again, wages rose, and gradually business got better than ever.

But it was not long before too many commodities were again produced and a new crisis broke out, only to follow the same course as its predecessor.

Ever since the beginning of this [19th] century, the condition of industry has constantly fluctuated between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every five to seven years, a fresh crisis has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers, and always accompanied by general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.

Question 13: Commercial Crises

First: That, though big industry in its earliest stage created free competition, it has now outgrown free competition;

that, for big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter;

that, so long as big industry remains on its present footing, it can be maintained only at the cost of general chaos every seven years, each time threatening the whole of civilization and not only plunging the proletarians into misery but also ruining large sections of the bourgeoisie;

hence, either that big industry must itself be given up, which is an absolute impossibility, or that it makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.

Second: That big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom.

It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.

We see with the greatest clarity:

1. That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and
2. That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.

In 1929: With unemployment at 3+ million and factories closing, the KPD could point to this and say: "See? We predicted this. Only we offer a solution."

Question 18: The Course of Revolution

Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

1. Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.), forced loans, etc.
2. Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.
3. Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.
4. Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.
5. An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
6. Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.
7. Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation—all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.
8. Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.
9. Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.
10. Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.
11. Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.
12. Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.

Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

Question 20: After the Revolution

"There will be no more crises... Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day."

With communism, crises disappear. Production expands infinitely. Abundance replaces scarcity. Classes dissolve. Humans develop all their capacities.

Opening Statement: The Communist Vision

While Social Democracy wants to sustain and perpetuate the existent state of misery, while the Hitler party with deceitful phrases heralds a nebulous “Third Reich” that in reality would look even worse than the present wretchedness, we communists say clearly what we want. We conceal nothing. We make no promises that we will not unequivocally keep. Every laborer, every female worker, every young proletarian, every office worker, every member of the cities’ indigent middle classes, every working peasant in the country, every honest productive person in Germany, should with full clarity be convinced of our goal. The only way to the national liberation of the broad masses is a Soviet Germany.

Translation: We're better than both the SPD (who preserve capitalism) and the Nazis (who lie). Only we offer real national liberation through communism.

Attacking Nazi Claims: The Young Plan Hypocrisy

"The fascists (National Socialists) maintain that they are fighting for the national liberation of the German people... These assurances by the fascists are deliberate lies... The fascists provide practical help in the implementation of the Young Plan by condoning and encouraging the transfer of its burdens onto the working masses of Germany. These assurances by the fascists are deliberate lies. The German bourgeoisie has adopted the predatory Young Plan with the intention of passing all its burdens on to the working people."

"The fascists provide practical help in the implementation of the Young Plan by condoning and encouraging the transfer of its burdens onto the working masses, by assisting in the implementation of the customs and tax laws dictated by the Young Plan (approval of the National Socialist Reichstag faction to all submissions for customs and tax increases; Frick’s negro-tax in Thuringia), by attempting to forestall and stifle all strike movements against wage reductions. [“Negro-tax” was the mocking name for Frick’s (NSDAP) proposed flat-rate poll tax. The name derived from comparisons to tax practices in Germany’s former colonies, where the local African populations had been taxed on a similar universal, flat-rate basis."]

The KPD's key accusation: The Nazis talk about opposing the Young Plan but actually implement it. Nazi governments in Thuringia vote for tax increases required by the Young Plan. They suppress strikes against wage cuts. Their "socialism" is a mask for capitalism.

Attacking Social Democrats: The "Traitors"

"The governing parties and Social Democracy have sold off the belongings, life, and existence of the working German people to the highest-bidding foreign imperialists. The Social Democratic leaders, Hermann Müller, Severing, Grzesinski, and Zörgiebel, are not only the executioner’s assistants of the German bourgeoisie, but simultaneously the willing agents of French and Polish imperialism."

The SPD governed Germany's first republic. For the KPD, their participation in bourgeois democracy and refusal to push for revolution made them betrayers. The SPD kept workers in chains when communism could have freed them.

The Communist Program: What the KPD Would Do

After seizing power through proletarian revolution, the KPD would:

• Tear up Versailles and the Young Plan; declare all debts null and void
• Restore German territories in consensus with revolutionary workers of neighboring countries
• Form an economic alliance with the Soviet Union (trade industrial goods for food and raw materials)
• Nationalize all banks without compensation; nullify all debts to capitalists
• Seize all factories and land; operate them for workers' benefit, not profit
• Reduce rents, electricity, water, gas to the minimum for working people
• Guarantee full employment through seven-hour day and four-day work week
• Provide universal social security: unemployment, disability, health, pensions—all at state expense
• "With an iron proletarian broom we will sweep away all parasites": expropriate the rich without compensation

The Vision: Soviet Germany

"We declare before the working people of Germany: if today’s Germany is vulnerable and isolated, then Soviet Germany, which will be buttressed by more than nine-tenths of its population and will enjoy the sympathy of the working peoples of all countries, need not fear invasion by foreign imperialists. We refer the working people of Germany to the fact that, only thanks to the support of the workers of all countries, has the Soviet Union successfully managed to repulse the interventions of world imperialism with the aid of its invincible Red Army."

The KPD's vision: Germany allied with the Soviet Union, controlled by workers' councils ("Soviet democracy"), with all production serving the people's needs instead of capitalist profit.

Engels' Theory (1847)

Capitalism: Industrial, mechanized, destined to collapse under its own contradictions

Proletariat: Passive victims who will eventually rise because conditions force them to

Timeline: Revolution might take decades

International: Must happen simultaneously in England, France, Germany, America

Nationalism: A bourgeois phenomenon that communism will transcend. National boundaries will dissolve.

KPD Practice (1930)

Capitalism: In final crisis. Great Depression is capitalism's death throes. Revolution could happen now.

Proletariat: Active agents. The KPD will lead through organizing, propaganda, struggle

Timeline: Urgent. Must seize power before Nazis or reactionaries consolidate control

International: Soviet-centered. Align with the Soviet Union; don't necessarily wait for worldwide revolution

Nationalism: The KPD emphasizes national liberation. Promises to restore territories, end foreign domination, restore German honor