The failure of western European labour to adopt a Marxist stance, unlike the Bolsheviks, obviously requires a great deal of explanation, and part of that explanation must lie in the fact that western governments were never as repressive as their Tsarist counterparts. One major variable which may have influenced the European workers and their representatives, and persuaded them to abandon a position of complete hostility, was the relative political relaxation which occurred in several states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the French working class experienced much greater governmental repression than its English counterpart, that repression was far from total. After the initial suppression of the left wing in the wake of the Commune, strikes and unions were effectively legalised in 1884. The extension of the manhood suffrage and parliamentary sovereignty obviously helped to render the state more sympathetic to the demands of the emerging working class. The combination of the vote and parliamentary sovereignty thus enabled the French working class to play a significant role in political life.
The government of Germany did make some concessions to working class ideals, not only in the field of economic policy but also in terms of political rights, universal suffrage and civil liberties. The ending of the anti-socialist law in 1890, allowed German Social Democracy to exist as a legal organisation, which served to undermine certain kinds of radicalism and to produce expectations of peaceful improvement within the existing system. Furthermore, competition at the polls also led to a significant dilution of official revolutionary ideology.
The association of working class radicalism and political violence finds further demonstration in Italy, where universal manhood suffrage was only introduced in 1912, and where troops were regularly deployed against strikers in the late nineteenth century. In Spain, the brutality of the Civil Guard produced a working class mentality which was prepared to risk death in the course of a bloody Civil War. Most obvious of all, Imperial Russia offers the clearest example of the way in which unlimited autocracy and unmitigated repression transformed the economic grievances of the working class into the political revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Through economic policies, wars that undoubtedly hurt working class living standards, and through direct and violent intervention in labour disputes, state control could easily act as a radicalising agent upon labour protest. Thus differing degrees of governmental repression do seem to correlate with levels of working class radicalism. Autocratic Russia produced an unambiguous revolutionary movement, while liberal England witnessed strongly reformist labour politics, and semi-autocratic Germany gave birth to a working class, which was neither uniformly revolutionary nor totally reformist.
It has often been argued that poverty breeds not only discontent, but also working class radicalism. We therefore see a clear connection between proletarian affluence and reformist labour politics in western Europe in the late nineteenth century. The overall improvement in working class living standards after the early stages of the industrial revolution, were crucial to the prevention of working class revolution. In Germany the real wages of labour improved from the mid 1870's until 1914 (Geary 53), and this has been seen as one of the main factors which diminished revolutionary activity within the SPD. Not only did the worker enjoy increasing security but he also had to spend less time in the factory, thus further reducing the possibility of dissatisfaction. However, a significant section of labour was still being bribed away from political radicalism through improved conditions of work and pay.
In the theory of" labour aristocracy ", it is argued that certain groups of skilled workers benefited disproportionately from the boom conditions of capitalism. This small and wealthy working class elite enjoyed the profits of exploited colonial labour, and were thus bought off by the benefits of empire. The relative affluence of skilled labour made it less interested in talk of revolution and the overthrow of the capitalist system. This led to divisions within the labour force, and therefore reduced the likelihood of a solidaristic working class consciousness. Hence, the growth of reformism within pre-war German Social Democracy has been attributed to the dominance of a similar labour aristocracy within its ranks.
Furthermore, the relative industrial weakness of the German proletariat before the outbreak of World War One must be considered, as German employers revealed an almost total hostility to independent working class organizations. Their power to engage in such autocratic behaviour was a function of the very modernity of the industrial structure and their monopoly of the labour market. The spectacularly rapid urbanization of the Second Reich's industrial heartland required the provision of much company housing. This tied the worker to the employer, and any attempt at industrial action would almost certainly have been followed by eviction. In addition, there were other more subtle mechanisms at play; the provision of pension and insurance schemes by industrial magnates such as Krupps and Stumm-Halberg, further tied the worker to the employer. Proletarian unrest therefore became risky, and even those workers who did not join trade unions or engage in strike activity, soon found themselves faced by an increasingly powerful federation of employers. The prospect of successful industrial action thus receded and an increasing number of strikes ended in defeat.
In 1914, with a few exceptions, the major socialist parties of western Europe voted for the war efforts of their respective governments. What this appeared to show was that the official internationalisation of the socialist parties was a hollow sham. The events of 1914 seemed to demonstrate that the socialist ideology of internationalist class conflict was weaker than the forces of nationalism and patriotism. To many contemporaries, the European labour movement had abandoned its revolutionary doctrines for a mass of reformist ideals. The German Social Democratic party has often been seen as the clearest embodiment of this move to the right. It was a party which had adopted revolutionary Marxism at the Erfurt Congress of 1891, and possessed a significant number of Marxist theorists in its leading ranks. However in 1914, its passivity in the face of government harassment and a previous failure to denounce imperialist adventures in Morocco, all seemed to indicate that the SPD had lost its revolutionary soul.
In August 1914, French workers mobilized to fight in the war without bellicose enthusiasm, but with a reluctant sense of duty to defend the Republic against Kaiserist aggression. Efforts by socialists to liaise with the German left were a fiasco, and the socialists faced a hopeless dilemma, how could one wage a fervent anti-militarist crusade when German labour leaders appeared increasingly cautious and patriotic? The SPD vote for war credits in 1914 is often regarded as a betrayal of revolutionary ideals, but what ruled party leaders in 1914 was above all else confusion, and a genuine belief that Germany was about to be invaded by autocratic Russia.
The First World War has often been regarded as a watershed in European history, as a traumatic break with the politics of the pre-war ancien regime. This applies as much to the history of the European labour movement as to other areas of investigation. On the left, mass communist parties emerged in France, Germany and Italy. There had been two revolutions in Russia in 1917, the second in October resulting in the first socialist workers' state in the world. In France, miners and metal workers engaged in massive strike waves in 1919 and 1920, and many anarcho-syndicalists believed the "capitalist republic" was about to be overthrown by a proletarian revolution. Clearly the impact of the war had radicalised certain sections of the European working class, yet there still had not been a successful western European proletarian revolution according to Marx's expectations.
Although the war had seemed to radicalize certain sections of the European working class, it had also led to a host of new tensions, which ultimately produced a fateful division of the socialist movement into hostile camps. The issues involved in support for the national war efforts called forth various ideological perspectives. Pre-war Marxists such as Lenin, had argued that the war was a battle between equally culpable imperialist powers struggling to control markets. For Lenin, the war was not to be supported but rather to be ended in proletarian revolution, and for all those who thought like Lenin, the decision to support government war efforts had been nothing short of a betrayal. A new international, purged of reformist elements and with a tighter central direction was to be erected. Thus the Communist Third International came into existence, after meetings between disaffected and radical socialists during the course of the war. The question of whether to affiliate to this new organisation was precisely the issue which led to the division of the French Socialist party in 1920, and to the subsequent break up of the Italian PSI. In Germany, the different attitudes to the war had already split the Socialist party into the USPD and the MSPD. The First World War thus provided the stimulus to a clear division within the western European labour movement, and therefore ultimately doomed socialism to failure in its prime goal of proletarian revolution.
One explanation for the success enjoyed by the Russian revolutionaries and denied to the socialists of western Europe, is that of the existence of the Bolshevik party. In Russia, the revolution succeeded because of the existence of a party of committed revolutionaries, purged of reformist elements and with a tight central direction. Conversely, the failure of the left to seize control in Germany and Austria in the revolutions of 1918 can be ascribed to the absence of such a party. It may well appear that the existence of a tightly disciplined organisation was even essential for the physical seizure of power. Marx had argued that the proletariat would become radicalised by the constant frustration it would face trying to overcome the effects of exploitation. Its consciousness would rise to the recognition that only a complete transformation of property relations could fulfil their hopes. However, can we identify a substantial body of advanced workers in Russia? and if so, do they closely fit the bill in the way that Marxist theory expects them to do ?
The working class in Russia was clearly a long way from fulfilling the criteria for revolution as derived from Marx's writings. We can only conclude that the militancy and innate socialism of the Russian labour movement came from elsewhere. Almost by definition, socialist theory was the preserve of European intellectuals, given the very limited access to education that characterised late nineteenth century Europe. It is clear that a small group of intelligentsia, divorced from the elite and the people, played a crucial part in the Russian revolutionary movement. The combination of the intelligentsia, Russia's weak position within the international economy and the outbreak of a fatal war, meant that she was left no time for internal change or parliamentary progress. It could therefore be argued that a radical minority seized power in Russia in favourable circumstances, and thus it was not a true proletarian revolution on Marxist terms.
It is possible to argue that the specific economic and political situation in Russia in 1917 would have produced a second revolution with or without the Bolsheviks. The policies of the Provisional government and the continued prosecution the war created an explosive situation which the Bolsheviks had then exploited. However, in other European countries the situation was very different. The democratic governments which were constructed in the wake of the Austrian and German revolutions of 1918 were committed to the rapid conclusion of peace, a peace which they ultimately achieved. Hence one major stimulant to revolution was no longer present in central Europe, let alone victorious France, Britain or Italy.
Furthermore, few European countries witnessed the total disintegration of the old state apparatus in the wake of the First World War. In Russia, divisions within the Tsarist ruling class and above all the dissolution of the Russian army formed the backcloth to much of Lenin's success. The armies and security forces of the victorious powers remained intact and could therefore be relied upon to deal with proletarian insurrection. In addition, France, Germany and Italy all possessed a powerful and numerous middle class. In these countries industrialists could be relied upon not only to support, but to finance the existing authorities in their counter-revolutionary measures. The revolutionary proletariat would have to confront not only an industrial elite, but white collar workers, shopkeepers and landowning peasants in any attempt at revolution. Paradoxically, the very success of Lenin and his Bolsheviks in Russia may have contributed to the prospects of failure as well. The forces of reaction in Europe learnt many lessons from the events of 1917; in particular the fear of Bolshevism served as a rallying point for the European bourgeoisie and as an ideological weapon with which to fight off the threat of socialism.
In conclusion, according to Marx's descriptive analysis of capitalism, the system was destroying itself, and an expected revolution was the result of those self destructive features. When Marxists talked of the proletarian revolution still to come, they invested it with great significance, as though it would be a climatic end of all things previously known. However a major problem emerged that Marxists could not ignore; that neither the revolution nor the society that would follow was correctly portrayed in Marxist theory. Some of the confusion can be attributed to Marx and Engels themselves, as they were reluctant to discuss details of the post-revolutionary society. They also seemed confused as to what would cause the revolution, when it would occur and whether a radical party was necessary to lead it. The revolutionary legacy the two men left was therefore confusing enough that practically any later interpretation could be called Marxist.
When events did not unfold that way in the way Marx had predicted, Engels himself argued that their revolutionary predictions had been a romantic version of the events of 1789. With the hindsight of over a century, Marx and Engels did not realize that revolutions occur when the crisis of modernisation in a specific country, confronts an old politico-economic system that is unable to respond to new demands. They failed to appreciate the flexibility of capitalists in responding to new crises or demands, instead they attributed to the bourgeoisie all of the rigid attributes of the old monarchical orders. In 1895, Engels believed that he and Marx had been wrong because economic conditions had not sufficiently ripened, however, they had not paid enough attention to how the revolutionary fervour of workers could be sapped by nineteenth century developments, such as the extension of voting rights and the growth of effective unions.
Division and disunity were central to the western European working class experience between 1848 and 1939. There were differences between national labour movements and differences within them, differences between skilled and unskilled workers, between workers of different occupations, between anarchists and socialists and between democrats and revolutionaries. In addition, the shape of labour protest was often determined by the role of those outside the movement; repression stimulated radicalism, whilst political relaxation and the structure of collective bargaining encouraged reformism. Expectations played a crucial role as did the ability to do something about one's problems: it was rare the most impoverished proletariat who formed the nucleus of labour protest in this period. Outside Russia, nowhere in western Europe did labour succeed in realising the dreams of socialism. What followed in Russia and China, in the bureaucratic structures of the Stalinist and Maoist states, was an exploitation of labour and a complete domination of society, which gave witness to a deformed proletarian revolution or even a form of "state capitalism". With the transformation of Russian and Chinese communism into the official ideology of totalitarian regimes, Marxism was wrenched out of it original context and therefore divorced from its western European origins.
Bibliography
Geary Labour and Socialist Movements in western Europe before 1914
Geary European Labour Protest 1848-1939
Ozinga Communism, the story of its implementation
Lichtheim A short history of Socialism
Lichtheim Marxism; a critical study
McClellan Marx; his life and thought
