LET US COME to the main question.
Comrade Kautsky attempts to pose the question of whether it is now possible to think about a mass strike in terms of a general theory of strategies. Until the Paris Commune the 'strategy of overthrow', according to Comrade Kautsky, was the norm for the revolutionary classes. Since then, however, the 'strategy of attrition' has taken its place. German Social Democracy owes all its growth and its outstanding successes to this strategy of attrition, and we have no reason now to abandon this victorious strategy with a mass strike, in order to go over to the strategy of overthrow. Obviously Comrade Kautsky's contention about the two strategies and the advantages of the strategy of attrition is the most important pillar of his argument. In particular Comrade Kautsky lends the greatest authority to his position by deriving his 'strategy of attrition' directly from the 'Political Testament' of Friedrich Engels.
Unfortunately the whole argumentation rests here on a new word, a new label for old, well-known things. If one lays aside this new and misleading name, then the point of controversy has very little to do with Friedrich Engels. What in concrete terms lies behind that supposed 'strategy of attrition' which is so valued by Comrade Kautsky and to which German Social Democracy owes its outstanding successes? The use of the parliamentary means of the bourgeois state for the daily class struggle, for educating, unifying and organising the proletariat. Moreover, the basis for this 'new strategy' was laid not just at the time of the Paris Commune, but in fact, in Germany, almost a decade earlier, by the agitation of Lassalle[1] who was in this, as Engels says, only carrying out the directives of the Communist Manifesto. Friedrich Engels does indeed recommend and give reasons for this tactic in his famous introduction to 'The Class Struggles in France'.
Instead of putting forward general schemata of strategies as Comrade Kautsky does, Engels states quite clearly what the tactic recommended by him consists of - and also what other tactics it is directed against. "All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of one definite class rule by another; but all ruling classes up to now have been only small minorities in relation to the ruled mass of the people. One ruling minority was thus overthrown; another minority seized the helm of the state in its stead and refashioned the state institutions to suit its own interests". Since all these revolutions were actually revolutions of the minority, they were carried out by means of sudden attack. In 1848 the hope existed of beginning the socialist revolution by the same means of a surprise attack by a revolutionary minority.
"History", says Engels, "has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production", that it was "impossible... in 1848 to win social transformation by a simple surprise attack". It became clear that the objective basis for the socialist revolution could be established only in the long process of development of bourgeois society, and the proletariat could prepare itself for its mission in this revolution only in a long, tenacious, daily class struggle. "The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they should fight for. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work that we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair". And Engels stresses as the most outstanding weapon in this respect, the use of universal suffrage. "With this successful utilisation of universal suffrage, however, an entirely new method of proletarian struggle came into operation, and this method quickly developed further". On the other hand, Engels shows how at the same time the prospects for revolutionary surprise attacks in the old style had superficially deteriorated. "For here, too, the conditions of the struggle had essentially changed. Rebellion in the old style, street fighting with barricades, which decided the issue everywhere up to 1848, was to a considerable extent obsolete". After Engels has explained the military-technical side of barricade-fighting under modern conditions, he says: "To keep this growth going without interruption until it of itself gets beyond the control of the prevailing governmental system, that is our main task. And there is only one means by which the steady rise of the socialist fighting forces in Germany could be temporarily halted, and even thrown back for some time: a clash on a big scale with the military, a blood-letting like that of 1871 in Paris". Therefore the despairing bourgeoisie attempts to lead us astray to such an action. Proof: the subversion bill[2].
This is the 'Political Testament' of Friedrich Engels as it was published 15 years ago, at the very moment when the 'Prison Bill'[3] was presented to Parliament. Clearly, precisely, and concretely, he criticises the utopian socialism of the pre-1848 period, which believed it possible to begin the realisation of the ultimate goal by fighting on the barricades, and opposes to this the modern Social Democratic day-to-day struggle using parliamentarism.
And now I ask: What in the world has this 'Testament' of Engels to do with the present situation and the question of the mass strike? Has someone envisaged a sudden introduction of socialism by the mass strike? Or has it occurred to anyone to work towards fighting on the barricades, towards "a large-scale confrontation with the military"? Or, finally, did some individual inveigh against the use of universal suffrage, against the use of Parliament?
It is clear: by bringing into play Engels' 'Testament' against the slogan of the mass strike in the present Prussian suffrage struggle, Comrade Kautsky is again victoriously shadow-boxing with an anarchistic phantom of the mass strike, and it is obviously the timeless trumpet blasts of Domela Nieuwenhuis which have suddenly stirred him to this campaign[4]. On the other hand, however, the 'Testament' of Engels, insofar as it criticises the outdated tactics of surprise attacks, is directed above all against Comrade Kautsky himself, who conceives of the mass strike as a surprise attack secretly hatched out by a 'council of war'.
How little the 'strategy of attrition' defended by Comrade Kautsky has to do with Engels' 'Political Testament' in reality is proved by an amusing fact. At the same time as Comrade Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein[5] in the 'Sozialistische Monatshefte' opposes the slogan of the mass strike in the present situation. With the same arguments, in places with almost exactly the same words as Comrade Kautsky, Bernstein wants to see the protest strike sharply distinguished from the 'strike of compulsion', and the trade union strike from the political strike, and thunders against those 'gamblers' who now toss the dangerous slogan of a 'strike of compulsion' into the masses. Such a tactic is not suitable for 'representatives of the movement of the working class, which carries with it the certainty of its social elevation. For this class, unremitting organisational work has proved its value as the most certain means for the realisation of this elevation". "There is in truth no reason" to get involved in the dangers of a mass strike, "since the German working class movement has come forward step by step, perhaps slowly, but constantly and safely, along the path it has followed". Bernstein, not Engels, defends here Comrade Kautsky's 'strategy of attrition'. This strategy of attrition means, however, something completely different from Engels' Testament.
The mass strike, as it is presently the subject of debate in the Prussian struggle for the franchise, was not and is not conceived of by anybody as being in opposition to working in Parliament, but as its complement, indeed, as a method of achieving parliamentary rights. Not as something in opposition to the daily work of schooling, educating, and organising the masses, but as an outstanding means of promoting exactly this schooling, education, and organisation of the proletarian masses. Since Comrade Kautsky now counterposes our old and tested tactic of working in Parliament to this mass strike, envisaged in this way, he recommends in reality, provisionally and for the present situation, nothing but Parliamentarism: not in opposition to the utopian socialism of the barricades, as Engels saw it, but in opposition to the Social Democratic mass action of the proletariat for the achievement and exercise of political rights.
Indeed, Comrade Kautsky emphatically directs us towards the coming Reichstag elections - and this is the central pillar of his strategy of attrition. Complete salvation is supposedly to be expected from these elections. They will certainly bring us an overwhelming victory, they will create a completely new situation, they provide us with a broader basis for the struggle, they alone can produce the conditions under which we can think about a 'strategy of overthrow', that is to say, simply about a mass action. They will bring 'a catastrophe for the whole existing system of government', they already place 'the key to this tremendous historical situation in our pocket'. In a word, the coming Reichstag elections are so promising for us Social Democrats that we would be criminally light-minded to think now about a mass strike in view of such a certain future victory to be gained at the ballot box, which is already safely "in our pocket".
I do not believe that it is either good or suitable for the party to see us paint our future victory in the Reichstag elections in such glowing colours. On the contrary, I believe that it would be more advisable to prepare ourselves for the Reichstag election, as always, with all possible zeal and energy, but without exaggerated expectations. We will then see whether and to what extent we are victorious. To taste future victories in advance is not at all in the nature of serious revolutionary parties, and I fully share the view of Comrade Pannekoek that it would be better not even to mention such fanciful perspectives as a doubling of our votes.
But above all: what has the future electoral victory to do with the question of the Prussian suffrage struggle today? Comrade Kautsky believes that the outcome of the Reichstag election will create "a completely new situation". What, however, the nature of this new situation will be, remains completely unclear. If we do not have the fanciful hope that we will suddenly win the majority of the seats, if we remain in the real world and look to the supposition of a growth of our fraction to 125 members [5], then a revolution in the political situation is still not in question here. In the Reichstag we remain a minority which is opposed by a unified reactionary majority. Even Comrade Kautsky himself cannot believe that our electoral victory would have such an overwhelming effect on the forces of reaction in Prussia that they would suddenly give us equal suffrage in Prussia of their own free will.
The 'completely new situation' can therefore only consist of one thing - a coup by the authorities, the annulment of the right to vote for the Reichstag. Then, comrade Kautsky believes, we will proceed by all means necessary, even with the mass strike. The 'strategy of attrition' which speaks for today against a greater mass action is linked to a speculation about a coup, after which we will be in a position to under-take large-scale actions.
Now this speculation about the future has in common with all such speculations that it is just music of the future. If the coup does not take place, but things continue to muddle along in a zig-zag course as hitherto - and Comrade Kautsky himself must admit that this result of the Reichstag elections is the most probable - then the whole combination of the 'new situation' and our great actions collapses. If of course we do not seek to make our tactics reach a climax in the Reichstag elections and the coup, if we do not at all want to organise ourselves according to particular combinations of what may happen in the future, then the question of whether we win more or less seats in the next elections, whether or not the coup then takes place, can leave us rather cold. If we do our duty at every moment in the present in order to achieve in any given situation the maximum agitation and education of the masses and to be equal to the situation and its demands, then we will find our reward in any course of future events. If however one wants, like Comrade Kautsky, to base a whole 'strategy of attrition' for today on a prospect of great deeds of the 'strategy of overthrow' next year, in which those great deeds are also dependent on an eventual coup, then our 'strategy' becomes rather like that of the petty bourgeois democrats in France whom Marx so brilliantly characterised in his 'Eighteenth Brumaire': they used to console themselves for the actual half-measures and defeats in the present with the hope of great deeds at the next opportunity. "They consoled themselves... for June 13 with the profound utterance: But if they dare to attack universal suffrage, well then - then we'll show them what we are made of! Nous verrons!"...
Notes
1. Ferdinand Lassalle was one of the founders of the German trade union and socialist movement. In the early 1860s he led a movement for universal suffrage. Lassalle's programme was confused and unscientific, and his manipulative conception of politics led him to try to make an agreement with the Prussian Minister Bismarck to the disadvantage of the liberal bourgeoisie. (See Engels' article, "The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party"). Lassalle's followers eventually unified with the German Marxists in 1875 to form the Social Democratic Party. (For a critique of Lassallean politics as represented at that time, see Marx's 'Critique of the Gotha Programme').
2. In December 1894 the government introduced a bill which punished "attempts at subversion" with imprisonment without trial and insulting remarks about religion, the monarchy, the family, marriage or private property with up to two years' imprisonment. The bill was rejected on its second reading in May 1895 because of mass protests and divisions among those supporting it.
3. The government introduced a bill in June 1899 to 'defend the relations of labour in industry', which effectively removed the workers' right to organise and strike. It became known as the 'Prison Bill'. The Kaiser spoke in support of the bill, saying "Unless the government acts; everything is lost... One cannot expect an improvement until the Social Democratic leaders are taken from the Reichstag and shot. We need a law which makes being a Social Democrat grounds to be deported to the Caroline Islands". The bill was not passed by the Reichstag in November 1899 because of the strong protest movement.
Luxemburg seems to confuse this Bill with the 'Subversion Bill' mentioned above, as Engels' 'Testament' was published in 1895.
4. It is, however, interesting to investigate the position of the present-day anarchists on the question of the mass strike in Germany. At their most recent congress in Halle during the Whit holiday - it seems that a few dozen of this sort still exist in Germany - they served up the following gems of wisdom reported by the 'Berliner Tageblatt'.
According to the predominant opinion in anarchism, a mere protest strike is absolutely to be condemned. A seriously undertaken political mass strike in which there can be no return to work until the set goal has been achieved means, however, the beginning of the great revolution. Under present conditions, however, this would be a misfortune for the whole proletariat; for the ruling classes are not asleep... However it would hardly come to that, for Social Democracy lacks the human material for a serious mass strike. The General Commission cannot be won over for the serious mass strike, and what it does not want, the Party cannot carry out.
...All the delegates were clear about the fact that a serious mass strike at the present time could only bring about a worsening of the social situation of the proletariat, while a protest strike contradicts the principles of anarchism.
One can see that this is the typical reasoning of the anarchists: the mass strike as a single great strike; the 'great revolution' of which the execution is dependent on whether or not the 'General Commission' is 'to be won over' for such a strike. And from such a conception one concludes today that the mass strike would be 'a misfortune' for the proletariat.
5. Eduard Bernstein was the foremost representative of the 'revisionist' tendency in German Social Democracy, which believed that the contradictions of capitalism were getting milder and that therefore it was possible for capitalism peacefully to evolve into socialism. When his views were first published in 1899, he was opposed by both Kautsky and Luxemburg, and his views were rejected by the majority of the party, though he remained a member. 'Sozialistische Monatshefte' was the journal published by the Revisionists.
Last updated on: 14.10.2026