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Proletarian Revolution and the Crisis of Modernity

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Proletarian Revolution and the Crisis of Modernity Proletarian revolution and the crisis of modernity German orthodox Marxism and French revolutionary syndicalism, 1889-1914 Ken Cheng UCL PhD Centre for European Studies 1 I, Ken Cheng, confirm that confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This study develops a close-textual and comparative analysis of two influential doctrines of “proletarian revolution” that appeared during the Second International period (1889-1914): “German orthodox Marxism” and “French revolutionary syndicalism.” It considers the effect of the dramatic mass-organizational development of the European workers’ movement upon both doctrines – in particular, how this shaped the key concepts of “scientific socialism” and “direct action.” In this light, the first chapter of the study examines the relationship of both doctrines to “classical” Marxist and anarchist ideology. The main body of the study then outlines the historical development of both tendencies – their “formation” and “decomposition.” This analysis challenges prevailing historiographical interpretations of several significant revolutionary thinkers: on the Marxist side, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, and Rosa Luxemburg; on the syndicalist side, Fernand Pelloutier, Émile Pouget, and Georges Sorel. It also reframes the political history of two major pre-First World War institutions: the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and the Confédération générale du travail. 3 Table of contents Introduction 6 I. The institutionalization of Marxism and anarchism 37 II. The formation of German orthodox Marxism 102 III. The formation of French revolutionary syndicalism 160 IV. The decomposition of German orthodox Marxism 210 V. The decomposition of French revolutionary syndicalism 262 Conclusion 307 Bibliography 311 4 Acknowledgements I am grateful to my supervisor Mark Hewitson for his guidance (and patience) throughout this project. Additional thanks to Constance Bantman, Stephanie Bird, Kevin Inston, Egbert Klautke, Philippe Marlière, and Jeff Bowersox. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, as I could not have completed this thesis without their support. 5 Introduction This study will examine two influential doctrines of “proletarian revolution” that emerged during the period of the Second International (Socialist International, 1889-1914): namely, German orthodox Marxism and French revolutionary syndicalism. These doctrines are generally regarded as polar opposites. On one hand, orthodox Marxism advocated a parliamentary mode of revolutionary struggle, organized and led by a socialist workers’ party, and culminating in the proletarian seizure of political power. On the other, revolutionary syndicalism envisaged the overthrow of capitalist society through a general strike, motivated by economic interests rather than political values, and prepared for by a federation of autonomous syndicats (trade unions). These strategies were tied to rival institutions within the European workers’ movement: the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, established 1875), which dominated the theoretical discussions of the Second International, and the Confédération générale du travail (CGT, established 1895), which was at the forefront of an anarchistic counter-tendency ostracized from the International. Furthermore, whilst the orthodox Marxists rooted their revolutionary vision in Karl Marx’s dialectical theory of social development, which they labelled as “scientific socialism” (wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus), the revolutionary syndicalists placed their faith in the practical energy and creative spontaneity of the workers, encapsulated in the slogan of “direct action” (action directe). In short, the doctrines were philosophically opposed, seeming to stand at the “deterministic” and “voluntaristic” extremes of revolutionary theory. This can be linked to their main ideological forebears; orthodox Marxism and revolutionary syndicalism can be regarded as descendants of the “Marxist” and “anarchist” factions that caused the schismatic collapse of the First International (International Workingmen’s Association, 1864-1876). Their opposition has even been linked to a fundamental difference in “national temperament,” with 6 German “organization” and “discipline” contrasted to the “individualist” and “anarchic” French.1 Given that these doctrines were diametrically opposed in both strategic and philosophical terms, sharing neither institutional nor ideological grounds, it may be asked why my analysis seeks to juxtapose and compare them. Here I would firstly argue that both doctrines confronted the same political-historical predicament – that is, the growth of the European workers’ movement to an unprecedented, mass-organizational scale during the late-nineteenth century. From the 1870s onwards, the workers’ movement was radically reshaped through the establishment of socialist parliamentary parties across Europe and a steady increase in trade- union membership and strike activity, further buttressed by advancements in the administrative and journalistic apparatuses of these organizations. We would expect the revolutionary doctrines of the Second International period to reflect the specific problems and potentialities raised by the transformative growth of the workers’ movement; furthermore, the SPD and CGT were generally recognized as world-leading examples of this general tendency. Accordingly, this study will approach German orthodox Marxism and French revolutionary syndicalism as doctrinal expressions of the historic emergence of the European workers’ movement as a mass- organizational force. Furthermore, my analysis will attempt to show how this institutional aspect of both doctrines fundamentally shaped their visions of proletarian revolution. “Scientific socialism” and “direct action” are often regarded as absolute, monolithic, and somewhat simplistic revolutionary beliefs: on one hand, the conviction that proletarian revolution was a objective inevitability due to the laws of capitalist development; on the other, the conviction that the unmediated activity and organic association of the proletariat would suffice to overthrow 1 Milorad M Drachkovitch, Les socialismes français et allemand et le problème de la guerre, 1870-1914 (Geneva: Droz, 1953), 345. 7 capitalist society. As such, their textual manifestations are often approached as dogmatic assumptions or rhetorical strategies deployed by individual ideologues. However, by placing them in the context of the mass-organizational development of the revolutionary workers’ movement, my analysis will attempt to demonstrate that both of these apparent revolutionary convictions were rooted in more complex, ambivalent, and fluid textual structures, through which “proletarian revolution” was implicitly conceptualized as a sociopolitical mass- phenomenon. For obvious reasons, the concept of the “mass” or “masses” will be central to this analysis. The “mass” holds two broad aspects of potential significance in the context of revolutionary doctrine. Firstly, it may refer to the sociopolitical phenomenon of the “crowd,” often associated with urban or industrial modernity, whose unique energies could either empower or imperil the revolutionary movement. Secondly, the “mass” may refer to a kind of literary problematic confronted by revolutionary theorists – that is, the task of “mass communication,” of disseminating their ideas to a mass audience and adapting them for popular comprehension. These aspects of revolutionary “mass” politics both had an significant presence within the writings of German orthodox Marxism and French revolutionary syndicalism. Both doctrines’ conceptions of proletarian development were shaped by assumptions regarding the political and intellectual capacity of the social mass. Christian Borch has noted the attention given to “crowd and mass semantics” by a number of revolutionary theorists during the Second International period, which he links to the discipline of “crowd sociology” that emerged at around the same time; whilst sociological studies of the crowd were often the work of “conservative scholars” (such as Gustave Le Bon) who primarily sought “to diagnose [the crowd as] an alleged threat to bourgeois society,” revolutionary discussions of mass action 8 “turned the crowd into a category that … could be activated in the overthrow of the bourgeois order.”2 In the Second International context, faith in the revolutionary capacity of the proletarian masses is often identified with the advocates of spontaneous “mass strike” or “general strike” tactics – mainly represented by the revolutionary syndicalists and renegade Marxists who opposed the parliamentary orthodoxy of the SPD. From this perspective, the orthodox adherents of Social Democratic struggle were more conservative in their attitude towards the masses, believing them to require the party’s theoretical guidance and practical organization in order to achieve a revolutionary transformation of society. In seeking to bypass political mediation and thus elevate the autonomous activity of militant workers, the revolutionary syndicalists seemed to place greater trust in the revolutionary mass. However, a complication must be introduced here. Many revolutionary syndicalists “displayed an open contempt for … the crowd,” viewing the masses as impressionable and reactionary, particularly in terms of their acceptance of bourgeois-democratic political values.3 Syndicalist “direct
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