Historical 28.3 (2020) 76–81

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The Permanenz Locution in its Immediate Rhetorical Context Textual Appendix for Lars T. Lih, ‘Why Did Marx Declare the Revolution Permanent?’

Introduction

The usual way of discussing Marx’s pronouncements in 1850 about ‘Die Revolution in Permanenz’ is to rip them out of their original habitat in Marx’s text, to put them on display in isolation like animals in a zoo, and then to draw far-reaching conclusions. The problem with this approach is easily revealed by looking at the Permanenz locution in its immediate rhetorical context. In each case, Marx starts off with a detailed, even virtuoso, dissection of the radical rivals to his own brand of revolutionary (non-revolutionary socialists in France, non-socialist revolutionaries in Germany). In contrast to all these ri- vals stands ‘’. The contrast made by Marx has nothing to do with cylindrical predictions about the tempo of revolution or the amount of time between various ‘stages’. Rather, the essential contrast is between the lim- ited aims of his ‘petit-bourgeois’ rivals and the radically transformative aims of revolutionary socialism. The is urged to keep its eyes on the prize, even while fighting to accomplish subsidiary revolutionary tasks. Marx also in- sists on the necessity of public declaration of these radical aims as an essential method for preserving the independence of the proletarian party.

1 Class Struggles in France, Chapter iii

Little by little we have seen peasants, the petit bourgeois [Kleinbürger], the middle classes in general, stepping alongside the proletariat, driven into public conflict with the official republic and treated by it as enemies. Revolt against bourgeois dictatorship, need of a modification of society, adherence to democratic-republican institutions as organs of their movement, grouping around the proletariat as the decisive revolutionary power – these are the com- mon characteristics of the so-called party of , the party of the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/1569206X-28031484 THE PERMANENZ LOCUTION – APPENDIX ON ‘WHY DID MARX’ 77 red republic. This party of anarchy, as its enemies christened it, is no less a co- alition of different interests than the party of order. From the smallest reform of the old social disorder all the way to the complete overhaul of the old social order, from bourgeois to revolutionary terrorism – as far apart as this lie the extremes that form the starting point and the end point of the party of ‘anarchy’. Abolition of the protective tariff – socialism! For it strikes at the monopoly of the industrial faction of the party of order. Regulation of the state budget – socialism! For it strikes at the monopoly of the financial faction of the party of order. Free admission of foreign meat and grain – socialism! For it strikes at the monopoly of the third faction of the party of order, large landed property. [Thus] the demands of the free-trade party – that is, of the most advanced English bourgeois party – appear in France as so many socialist demands. Voltaireanism – socialism! For it strikes at a fourth faction of the party of order, the Catholic. Freedom of the press, right of association, universal public edu- cation – socialism, socialism! They strike at the overall monopoly of the party of order. So swiftly had the march of the revolution ripened conditions that the friends of reform of all shades, the most moderate claims of the middle classes, were compelled to group themselves around the banner of the most extreme party aiming at overthrow, around the red banner. Yet as manifold as was the socialism of the different large sections of the party of anarchy – according to the economic conditions and the total revolu- tionary requirements of the class or fraction of a class that arise out of these conditions – in one point it is in harmony: in proclaiming itself the means of emancipating the proletariat and the emancipation of the latter as its goal. Deliberate deception on the part of some; self-deception on the part of the others, who promote a world transformed according to their own require- ments as the best world for all – as the realisation of all revolutionary claims and the abolition [Aufhebung] of all revolutionary collisions. Behind the general socialist phrases of the ‘party of anarchy’, all of which sound rather alike, there is concealed the socialism of [free-trade newspapers such as] the National, the Presse, and the Siècle, a socialism that more or less consistently wants to overthrow the rule of the finance and to free industry and trade from their hitherto existing fetters. This is the socialism of industry, of trade, and of agriculture, the interests of which are frustrated by their rulers in the party of order, since these interests no longer coincide with the private monopolies of the rulers. This – to which, as to every variety of socialism, certain sections of the workers and the petite

Historical Materialism 28.3 (2020) 76–81