Class Struggle 1932

The difference between the classes and their antagonism, which have
objective reasons, is an ineluctable fact, inherent in human nature. Besides
that, it is the consequence of social conditions and the structure of society. In
the epoch of organic society, the difference of classes was hidden behind
the tensions that were never eased between the different estates. Rich and
poor, noble and humble, powerful and weak, high and low, free or dependent,
lord and servant, employee and boss, but also aristocrat and bourgeois were
in no case complementary polarities on the inside of a harmonious ensemble.
These opposites designate explosive forces that the social structure must
master, against which it must never cease to defend itself.

When the feeling of social difference reaches the point where we want to
overcome it, difference between the classes transforms into class struggle.
Opposition between social classes is a fact outside of human will. Class
struggle is a conscious exacerbation of this opposition that only human will
can provoke. Difference between the classes is a given, class struggle must be
organized. Difference is a state, struggle is an activity. Difference between
classes is a destiny, class struggle is a revolt against destiny.

Social structure is vertical, it goes from top to bottom. At the base, we plant
the charges. The weight of the ensemble rests on the base. The higher up,
more is loose. The freedom of movement increases, and, higher up, it is
much easier to straighten ones shoulders, and raise ones head. The view
going from the low to the high is very different. Down there, there is nothing
that that one up top can covet. He has no reason to envy the other who is
lower. He enjoys his highness, his superiority, as soon as he looks below.
But seen from the bottom, this highness appears as a privileged destiny, as
a happier fate. They are excluded, when they find themselves down below,
where they suffer and envy these happiness.

Thus, we understand that the will to engage in class struggle is always

inflamed from the bottom. He who is high up thinks to maintain the order to
which the world is linked so that he can guard his good position. A privileged
man always thinks he has a just title. In the framework of class struggle, he
finds himself on the sunny side. What reason does he have to conquer the
positions in the shadow? The class struggle aims for the privilege of being
up high. He is highly in danger of being thrown into an inferior situation, as
soon as the class struggle commences. Thus, all those who are higher up have
good reason to definitively and ignominiously condemn the class struggle.
Up high, they are good. For those who can feel secure there, it is necessary
that those on the bottom feel equally good there. The class struggle is a
cataclysm; the terrain on which they are placed begins to tremble. Class
struggle is considered as the greatest curse to strike the world. Those up high
unanimously condemn it. If, down there, they express the same accord, the
class struggle will be suppressed. Those who are up high will no longer fear
that they will fall down. But down below, they do not maintain this
opinion. Showing envy. Those who have nothing to lose, outside of their
chains, will always try to win it all. Thus, the din of class struggle will never
cease.

Marxism affirms that the class struggle is the motive force of history. History
is nothing other than class struggle. It is the greatest enterprise of world
history to quicken the class consciousness of the lower classes and
impregnate them with the fanatical will of this struggle. His interpretation of
history is a means of encouraging the will to class struggle. He explains
history as he wants to make it.

For seventy years, we taught the German worker class consciousness, we

trained him in the class struggle. Nowhere else, have we put such zeal
into cultivating class consciousness in the working class, inculcating it in the
class struggle. And despite all, until this day, the German worker does not
dare to engage in the revolution of the proletarian class. 1918 was only an
collapse. But the politics of coalitions, that followed, was not class struggle;
it was full of servile complacency regarding bourgeois society. Not only the
kicks, to which we respond today in the shameful fashion of the self
disowning German worker, prove it, but there are others. In Germany the idea
of proletarian class struggle could not, until the present, develop in a manner
to influence the course of history.

In the year 1789, the revolution of the French bourgeoisie against feudal
society was a class struggle. Under the successors of Louis XIV, the eminent
position that France occupied in the world crumbled, bit by bit. France lost its
empire in America. In Europe, it was surpassed by Prussia and Austria. The
indebtedness of the state paralyzed its freedom of external action. The feudal
ruling class squandered a splendid historical heritage. It was in the process of
lowering France into complete ruin. This class was a bad administrator of the
vital needs of the country.

Was there a better administrator of these vital needs?

The bourgeoisie claimed it had this competence. The emigres, who since
Coblence, excited the foreigner against France, to betray their country,
subsequently confirmed this claim.

Pushed by their instincts of class struggle, the bourgeoisie drove out the
nobility. For reasons of national politics, it deserved to be driven out. This
overthrow was much more than a social event: the idea of class struggle was
based here in an inflamed national passion. The French bourgeoisie saved
the country from Europe first by decapitating its king and its aristocracy. The
reversal of the established social order gave it an import social gain. But all
together, this upheaval had fulfilled a national function. In the conditions of
the epoch, the class struggle, under the bourgeois form, was the only means
permitting France to lead the combat to affirm itself well, as a nation. The
class struggle was the means of national combat. National war and not the
class struggle gave its true meaning to the events. The difference of classes
was stirred and thus transformed into class struggle to make it
a political motive force in order to satisfy a national requirement. The French
bourgeoisie became the ruling class, because its class struggle was
subordinated to the law of political and national life of France. The true
meaning of the French Revolution was not limited to the class
struggle. Because the French bourgeoisie knew to give new bases to the
national and political power of France, it was equally able take social
direction. It left victorious from the class struggle because it knew to lead the
national combat well.

As the French bourgeoisie saved France from political powerlessness, the

Russian worker saved Russia from tearing itself apart and colonization. The
Russian ruling class, feudal and bourgeois, had conspired with the enemy. It
had sacrificed independence and national integrity, so they could be given the
assurance of maintaining their privileges. Thus even the existence of superior
classes became a danger for Russia. If the country would want to guard its
autonomy and material freedom from foreign politics, it was necessarily to
annihilate these classes. They were secret agents and allies of Western
powers. The defense of their privileges was a treason. Consequently, they
were submitted to the punishment reserved for traitors to their country.
Eternal Russia found on its side groups of partisans and workers brigades.
Overnight, Lenin was named the administrator of this Russia. The idea of
class struggle could not have inflamed the masses, if it had not been charged
with this explosive that is the national mission. Certainly, this idea already
existed, but under a less acute form and without vitality. It smoldered in its
cinders. The idea became a fire devouring the decay and purifying the
indestructible substance at the moment where it discharged this national
mission for which Russia, in the paroxysms of suffering, had searched for an
instrument willing and ready to sacrifice. The Russian Revolution was
equally a national revolution. The will to struggle of the laboring classes had
apolitical function. It was, in some way, military morality, which the worker
immediately obeyed when he was called to make world history.

In Germany, things are very different. The workers conscious of their class
avoid with a blind stubbornness the encounter with national passion. This
applies just as well to the social democrat as for the communist. The worker
class is obstinate in the selfishness of its class struggle. A large national
horizon frightens it. Since 1918, it realized that its class consciousness, that
had been categorically limited to itself, is totally sterile in the political
scheme, without any weight. By refusing to be an instrument permitting
intervention in national affairs, class consciousness is incapable of exercising
real influence on the course of things. Social democracy and the Communist
Party are not living organs. They do not have this radiance permitting them to
penetrate the political space of Germany. The class struggle inspired by social
democracy limits itself to hollow phrases. It cannot shake the bourgeoisie. In
the measure where it tries to transform politics, it becomes an element
favoring the foreign policy of France. In contrast, the class struggle inspired
by communism runs out in a useless racket. It tries to be the reflection of the
upheaval of the world, that was produced in Russia. But because
on German soil, it can hardly be the instrument of the fanatical ardor
of Russian nationalism, it remains a vain and fruitless enterprise.

The bourgeois character of the Versailles regime is a veritable provocation

regarding the German worker, inciting him to amalgamate the will to class
struggle with the will for the liberty of Germany. Before this provocation,
social democracy remained in a heavy muteness. But never had it dared more
than a tactical dalliance with the will to German liberty. That was also
finished. In the meantime, it had retired in a class selfishness as pure as it is
sterile.

The fact that the will to class struggle of the German workers proves
inaccessible to national passion assures, better than any other thing, the social
power of the bourgeoisie, favoring its restoration and encouraging Fascism.
The ruling class of Germany is in connivance with the enemy. It practices
with Versailles, as the ruling class of Russia had done with France, England,
Japan, and America. It transfers its capital to the foreigner. By the
constitution of trusts and by international indebtedness, it delivers Germany
to its hostile neighbors. The politics of the execution of treaties is an eternal
renunciation of itself. Morally, it can longer justify itself.
But there is no one who, by love for Germany, can put an end to it. Only the
class struggle, whose true motive force is the breath of passion for the
freedom of Germany, can achieve that. The idea of class struggle in itself
does not authorize that in the German worker. He is conscious that this idea
does not have enough breath for such a historic mission.

Thus, the national task remains unaccomplished.

Thus the German bourgeoisie can still easily put in place and the perfect the
system of reassurance close to the Versailles regime.

Thus, Germany sinks further and further into French domination.

The link, ultimately natural, between the proletarian struggle and the
national passion was not created. That is why the situation in Germany is
desperate.

The will to class struggle, that looks after the purity and authenticity of its
intentions, cannot even liberate the class from which it arose.

Only the will to class struggle, such that it is a political organ and
the nationalreceptacle of the will to life, liberates peoples.