Remembering the Great Teacher of the Proletariat Friedrich Engels on His 201st Birth Anniversary (November 28, 2021)
What can Engels Teach the Neo-Narodnik “Communists” and the Nationalist “Marxists” Today?
Abhinav
Friedrich Engels, a great teacher of the proletariat and bosom friend of Karl Marx, was born on November 28, 1820. Along with Marx, he developed the theories of dialectical and historical materialism as well as of scientific socialism. Marx and Engels together led the world proletariat movement until the death of Marx in 1883 and after that Engels continued the task until 1895. Besides establishing the universal principles of Marxism, Engels also carried out research works in the fields of history, ideology, anthropology and natural sciences in the light of these principles, which are undoubtedly essential and indispensable readings even today for the students of these fields.
In the context of the present situation of our country, Engels’ several works are worth reading, but the one I can particularly think of is ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’. Many Narodnik and Nationalist Communists of our country who are occupied with representing the interests and demands of kulaks, rich farmers, upper-middle peasantry should especially read this small but extremely important work. This work made a significant contribution to the Marxist thought on the agrarian and peasant question and later became the basis of Lenin’s understanding on this question.
On the bicentennial of Engels’ birth, I am sharing few excerpts from the same work.
Engels first underlines the fact that who actually are the poor peasants, the class which happens to be the most important ally of the proletariat in the countryside. This is extremely pertinent to understand because these days all farmers are being termed as poor peasants and thus the ongoing farmers’ movement is being romanticized. Engels defines the poor peasant in this manner:
By small peasant we mean here the owners or tenant—particularly the former—of a patch of land no bigger, as a rule, than he and his family can till, and no smaller than can sustain the family. This small peasant, just like the small handicraftsman, is therefore a toiler. (Marx-Engels, Selected Works, in three volumes, Volume-3, part-2, p.368)
It means that in the countryside, only that peasant is the ally of the proletariat who does not exploit wage labour on a regular basis and the basis of whose livelihood is not the exploitation of labour of others. This peasant population is destined to be prolitarianized, in general. As Engels remarks:
“…in brief, our small peasant, like every other survival of a past mode of production, is hopelessly doomed. He is a future proletarian.”
However, Engels reminds us that despite this, the poor peasant does not immediately lend an ear to the communist propaganda and agree to the necessity of collective farming. Engels writes:
As such, he ought to lend a ready ear in socialist propaganda. But he is prevented from doing so for the time being by his deep-rooted sense of property. The more difficult it is for him to defend his endangered patch of land, the more desperately he clings to it, the more he regards the Social-Democrats, who speak of transferring landed property to the whole of society, as just as dangerous a foe as the usurer and lawyer. How is Social-Democracy to overcome this prejudice? What can is offer to the doomed small peasant without becoming untrue to itself? (ibid, p.369)
While answering this, as follows, Engels advocates acquainting the poor peasants with the truth of their inevitable lot since the beginning:
Let us say it outright: in view of the prejudices arising out of their entire economic position, their uprising and their isolated mode of life, prejudices nurtured by the bourgeois press and the big land-owners, we can win the mass of the small peasants forthwith only if we can make them a promise which we ourselves know we shall not be able to keep. That is, we must promise them not only to protect their property in any event against all economic forces sweeping upon them, but also to relieve them of the burdens which already now oppress them: to transform the tenant into a free owner and to pay the debts of the owner succumbing to the weight of his mortgage. If we could do this, we should again arrive at the point from which the present situation would necessarily develop anew. We shall not have emancipated the peasant but only given him a reprieve.
But it is not in our interests to win the peasant overnight, only to lose him again on the morrow if we cannot keep our promise. We have no more use for the peasant as a Party member, if he expects us to perpetuate his property in his small holding, than for the small handicraftsman who would fain be perpetuated as a master. These people belong to the anti-Semites. Let them go to the anti-Semites and obtain from the latter the promise to salvage their small enterprises. Once they learn there what these glittering phrases really amount to, and what melodies are fiddled down from the anti-Semitic heavens, they will realize in ever increasing measure that we who promise less and look for salvation in entirely different quarters are after all more reliable people. (ibid., p.381)
Those who advocate safeguarding the property of those farmers, too, who exploit wage labour but at the same time are looted by the usurers and middlemen, Engels has a clear advice for them. Criticizing the preamble of the agrarian program of 1892 adopted in Marseilles by the French socialists, Engels writes:
The ‘preamble’ thus imposes upon socialism the imperative duty to carry out something which it had declared to be impossible in the preceding paragraph. It charges it to “maintain” the small-holding ownership of the peasants although it itself states that this form of ownership is “irretrievably doomed”. What are the fisk, the usurer, and the newly-arisen big landowners if not the instruments by means of which capitalist production brings about this inevitable doom? What means “socialism” is to employ to protect the peasant against this trinity, we shall see below.
“But not only the small peasant is to be protected in his property. It is likewise” (according to the Marseilles program) “expedient to extend this protection also to the producers who, as tenants or sharecroppers (Metayers), cultivate the land owned by others and who, if they exploit day labourers, are to a certain extent compelled to do so because of the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected”.
Here, we are entering upon ground that is passing strange. Socialism is particularly opposed to the exploitation of wage labour. And here it is declared to be the imperative duty of socialism to protect the French tenants when they “exploit day labourers”. (this is literally what the text states!) And that because they are compelled to do so to a certain by “the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected”!
How easy and pleasant it is to keep on coasting once you are on the toboggan slide! When now the big and middle peasants of Germany come to ask the French Socialists to intercede with the German Party Executive to get the German Social-Democratic Party to protect them in the exploitation of their male and female farm servants, citing in support of the contention the “exploitation to which they themselves are subjected” by usurers, tax collectors, grain speculators and cattle dealers, what will they answer? (ibid., p.374-75)
This applies quite literally to the Narodnik communists and the Nationalist “Marxists” of India today. Clearly, what they are practicing has nothing to do with Marxism. It is in fact Neo-Narodnism and in the latter case it is being manifested by the tendency, which we have called Trot-Bundism, i.e. a strangely idiotic mix of Trotskyism and Nationalism.
Engels makes it very clear that any individual may join the party by adopting the proletarian political position, but as a class, apart from the class of agricultural workers and poor and lower-middle peasants, no other class can be considered as ally in the countryside by Communist Party. Let’s see what Engels has to say:
I flatly deny that the socialist workers’ party of any country is charged with the task of taking into its fold, in addition to the rural proletarians and the small peasants, also the idle and big peasants and perhaps even the tenants of the big estates, the capitalist cattle breeders and other capitalist exploiters of the national soil. To all of them, the feudality of landownership may appear to be a common foe. On certain questions, we may make common cause with them and be able to fight side by side with them for definite aims. We can use in our Party individuals from every class of society, but have no use whatever for any groups representing capitalist, middle-bourgeois, or middle-peasant interests. (ibid., p.376-77)
In the same article, Engels further clarifies that when the Communists will assume state power, then the lands of the poor peasants will not be seized forcibly, rather they will be convinced by examples that their lives can be freed from poverty, adversity, uncertainty and insecurity only through collective farming. First, they will be convinced to enter into co-operative farming and later more advanced forms of the collective farming. Engels writes:
Secondly, it is just as evident that when we are in possession of state power, we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without compensation), as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners. Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then, of course, we shall have ample means of showing to the small peasant prospective advantages that must be obvious to him even today. (ibid., p.382)
Engels writes further:
The main point is, and will be, to make the peasants understand that we can save, preserve their houses and fields for them only by transforming them into co-operative property operated co-operatively. It is precisely the individual farming conditioned by individual ownership that drives the peasants to their doom. If they insist on individual operation, they will inevitably be driven from house and home and their antiquated mode of production superseded by capitalist large-scale production. That is how the matter stands.
….
Neither now, nor at any time in the future, can we promise the small-holding peasants to preserve their individual property and individual enterprise against the overwhelming power of capitalist production. We can only promise (after ascending to the state power–the author) then that we shall not interfere in their property relations by force, against their will. Moreover, we can advocate that the struggle of the capitalists and big landlords against the small peasants should be waged from now on with a minimum of unfair means and that direct robbery and cheating, which are practiced only too often, be as far as possible prevented. In this we shall succeed only in exceptional cases. Under the developed capitalist mode of production, nobody can tell where honesty ends and cheating begins.
….
Accordingly, we can do no greater disservice to the Party as well as to the small peasants than to make promises that even only create the impression that we intend to preserve the small holdings permanently. It would mean directly to block the way of the peasants to their emancipation and to degrade the Party to the level of rowdy anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it is the duty of our Party to make clear to the peasants again and again that their position is absolutely hopeless as long as capitalism holds sway, that it is absolutely impossible to preserve their small holdings for them as such, that capitalist large-scale production is absolutely sure to run over their impotent antiquated system of small production as a train runs over a pushcart. If we do this, we shall act in conformity with the inevitable trend of economic development, and this development will not fail to bring our words home to the small peasants. (ibid., p.383-385)
Then Engels moves on to the question of the middle-peasant and talks about its dual character. Engels says that the section of the middle-peasantry which is closer to the poor peasants can be easily convinced about the above-mentioned points; however, the section closer to the big and rich farmers also politically act according to their position. This means that it is important to distinguish the lower-middle peasants from the upper-middle peasants. Engels writes:
We now come to the bigger peasants. Here as a result of the division of inheritance as well as indebtedness and forced sales of land we find a variegated pattern of intermediate stages, from small-holding peasant to big peasant proprietor, who has retained his old patrimony intact or even added to it. Where the middle peasant lives among small-holding peasants, his interests and views will not differ greatly from theirs; he knows, from his own experience, how many of his kind have already sunk to the level of small peasants. But where middle and big peasants predominate and the operation of the farms requires, generally, the help of male and female servants, it is quite a different matter. Of course a workers’ party has to fight, in the first place, on behalf of the wage-workers — that is, for the male and female servantry and the day labourers. It is unquestionably forbidden to make any promises to the peasants which include the continuance of the wage slavery of the workers. But, as long as the big and middle peasants continue to exist, as such they cannot manage without wage-workers. If it would, therefore, be downright folly on our part to hold out prospects to the small-holding peasants of continuing permanently to be such, it would border on treason were we to promise the same to the big and middle peasants. (ibid., p.385-86)
Is it not true the Narodnik Communists and Trot-Bundist Nationalist “Marxists” are repeating the same folly and the same betrayal with the agrarian working class and the poor peasants of India, which Engels has talked about here? Does not supporting the reactionary demand of remunerative prices (MSP) raised by the rich farmers-kulaks who exploit wage labour on a regular basis by those who call themselves Communists fall under the category of outright treachery that Engels has mentioned here? Whether this betrayal is carried out in the name of federal rights or by harping on the threat of corporate capital, it will be called treachery, nonetheless.
Engels further writes about the big and upper-middle peasants:
The same applies to the big and middle peasants. It goes without saying that we are more interested in their male and female servants and day labourers than in them themselves. If these peasants want to be guaranteed the continued existence of their enterprises, we are in no position whatever to assure them of that. They must then take their place among the anti-Semites, peasant leaguers, and similar parties who derive pleasure from promising everything and keeping nothing. We are economically certain that the big and middle peasants must likewise inevitably succumb to the competition of capitalist production, and the cheap overseas corn, as is proved by the growing indebtedness and the everywhere evident decay of these peasants as well. We can do nothing against this decay except recommend here too the pooling of farms to form co-operative enterprises, in which the exploitation of wage labour will be eliminated more and more, and their gradual transformation into branches of the great national producers’ co-operative with each branch enjoying equal rights and duties can be instituted. If these peasants realize the inevitability of the doom of their present mode of production and draw the necessary conclusions they will come to us and it will be incumbent upon us to facilitate, to the best of our ability, also their transition to the changed mode of production. Otherwise, we shall have to abandon them to their fate and address ourselves to their wage-workers, among whom we shall not fail to find sympathy. (ibid., p.386-87)
As far as the question of very rich farmers and kulaks with large landholdings is concerned, Engels says that the solution is quite easy in their case. Engels writes:
Only the big landed estates present a perfectly simple case. Here, we are dealing with undisguised capitalist production and no scruples of any sort need restrain us. Here, we are confronted by rural proletarians in masses and our task is clear. As soon as out Party is in possession of political power, it has simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors, just like the manufacturers in industry. (ibid.,p. 387)
Now in the light of above two extracts by Engels, let us review the political practice of the Narodnik Communists active in the ongoing farmers’ movement and the Trot-Bundist sidekicks who are supporting it (since they can only be in the capacity of supporting role!). The former of these, i.e. the Narodnik Communists, are ready to wage a militant fight for the demands of the rich farmers and kulaks; however they never even talk about raising the demands of the agricultural labourers and poor peasants of Punjab. When recently during the Lockdown these rich farmers and kulaks set a maximum ceiling limit to the agricultural wages and forcibly imposed it on the workers in view of the reduction in the supply of labour-power and increment in the agricultural wage, then these so-called Communists went completely silent on this. Even today they do not raise the question before the rich farmers and kulaks in the ongoing farmers’ movement that while making the demand of MSP, why do these rich farmers not raise the issues of minimum wage, eight-hour workday and (in the event of long work-contract) weekly holidays and other labour laws for the agricultural labourers working on their farms? Engels has termed this behaviour by the Communists as treachery on the peasant question, irrespective of the guise under which it is being carried out, be it in the name of opposition to the monopoly capital or in the name of federal rights of the states.
Lastly, it is important to remind that there are some people who get thrilled and overjoyed by looking at the magnitude and size of movements. We, too, oppose the suppression of the democratic rights and the state repression of the farmers participating in the ongoing farmers’ movement. But it is clear that this movement represents the interests of rich farmers, upper-middle peasants, kulaks and the middlemen. This can be shown and proven with facts. So, there arises no question of a communist agreeing to the class character and the charter of this movement. Irrespective of what anyone says, everyone knows that the central demand of the current movement is saving the regime of MSP and increasing it. This demand is out and out against the interests of the working class as well as the poor peasantry as the latter either does not get any MSP or if it does in the exceptional situations then any increase in MSP harms it more than it benefits because this class is the the net buyer and not seller of the agricultural produce. So, even if this movement gathers hundreds of thousands in its processions, it cannot become a progressive movement of the proletariat and the poor peasantry, rather it is the contradiction of the big corporate capitalist class and the rural bourgeoisie who are fighting over the principal right to appropriate the surplus labour of the rural poor.
The class character as well as the progressive or reactionary character of a movement is not decided by its magnitude, else we will have to reconsider many movements from across the world such as the openly Right-wing/fascist Ram Mandir movement, Nazi movement or various movements of the small proprietors which though were not directly Right-wing but because they were romanticist, backward-looking and millenarian, they were historically reactionary movements whose interests were against the working class and the poor toiling masses.
It is also extremely important to mention another thing here. I believe that except the revolutionary situations, in the daily class struggles of capitalism, on immediate basis, movements of those classes gather and will gather faster and bigger crowds, who have not lost everything yet and who have something or a lot to lose. For example, there is immediately a big gathering in the movements of traders on the question of hundred percent FDI in retail and similarly large gatherings take place in the movements led by farmers in response to the danger lurking around the MSP. The reason is that these movements do not challenge the whole capitalist order (neither on short-term, nor on long-term basis), rather these are the movements within the system by those classes who are struggling for a bigger share in the surplus value created by the proletariat.
Movements of these classes attract large crowds on immediate basis also because they have the resources which enable them to mobilize immediately and fight militantly. The working class must undertake a long preparation even for a two-day strike because a large section of this class neither has any accumulated capital, nor any savings. It is generally not possible for workers to march towards capital city with six-month worth of ration in tractors, trucks, lorries and cars. This is also a fact which cannot be denied by anyone. It is also easier to push the cemented boulders put up on the roads by the police with the aid of tractors, on which not only NDTV-brand liberals but even Communists went gaga! The classes, who have resources and wealth at their disposal for waging movements in order to safeguard their profit or property, also see greater mobilizations, exhibit more militancy on immediate basis and their movements appear to be more spectacular. Many glimpses of individual acts of heroism can be seen in these movements instantly, which, too, is not at all surprising at all.
Last point which must be highlighted in the context of the movements of all small and middle proprietors is that these classes have a share or partnership, even if junior, in the power and they have a considerable clout and influence within the bourgeois electoral politics as well. Whenever there is a movement of rich farmers, we have repeatedly seen some ministers or leaders furnishing their resignations, opposition parties joining the bandwagon to support them, all regional kulak and rich farmers’ parties rallying in their support. Do you remember even a single workers’ movement, when a leader or minister has resigned from the government? Has any minister or leader of any bourgeois electoral party ever resigned on the appalling amendments made in the labour laws during the last three decades? No! Why not?? The total population of the urban and rural workers ranges between 57 to 59 crores; poor peasants number around 10 crores. Rich and upper-middle farmers hardly account for merely 3 to 4 crores of the entire population. Then why does the bourgeois parliamentary politics gets shaken with their movement to save their profits and privileges and for protection from the big monopoly capital? Workers are shot dead in Gwalior, common working masses are fired at in Tuticorin, Maruti workers are left to rot in jails for years by completely throwing all façade of natural justice to the wind; however, why do not we ever witness any such tremors or political seismic activities then? Imagine if tomorrow more than 55-lakh workers of Delhi decide to encircle the capital city the way rich farmers and kulaks are doing today, then will they, too, be greeted with water cannons and tear-gas shells? No! Had the workers of the NCR mobilized, organized and carried out a unified movement against the changes in the labour laws (which is not immediately expected in the scenario of disintegration within the working class movement) by laying siege to the capital city, then it is more likely that we would have witnessed some big firing or shoot-out incident by now. We are not at all saying that the state power should behave that way with the present movement. Clearly, we are against all kinds of state repression and even against the use of water cannons and tear-gas shells on farmers in order to prevent the current movement from reaching Delhi. However, the difference in the reaction of the state power representing the big monopoly capital to the movement of rich farmers-kulaks and to the movement of the workers is a plain truth and every political person regardless of where she/he is standing, should ask herself/ himself whether it is true or not and they will get the answer that it is true.
Because of the reasons stated above, the classes who have not lost everything yet, and who still have a lot to lose, they, in the non-revolutionary situation, i.e., in the everyday class struggles going on in the capitalist system and society, are in a position to carry out movements with much greater mobilizations immediately, can wage militant movements exhibiting instances of individual heroism, can pull off more spectacular movements on immediate basis; Moreover, even a section of capitalist class supports or uses them because of their own reasons, a section of the bourgeois media is also sentimental about them and state power too does not adopt the same repressive measures against them which it always does against any big and militant movement of the workers.
In the revolutionary situation and in the decisive class war, working class leaves behind all other classes in terms of mobilization, organization, leadership and individual as well as collective examples of heroism in its revolutionary movement and history is a witness to it because it is the class which has nothing to lose and a world to win. Generally, its methods of struggle and movement are different in the everyday economic struggles; however the lack of various resources notwithstanding, the working class has presented unparalleled examples of bravery, sacrifice, mobilization and organization in some of the historical movements on the economic issues too.
To sum up, while advocating the democratic rights of the present farmers’ movement and opposing its state repression, the communists must not forget the fundamental issues to which Friedrich Engels had drawn our attention. The class character of a movement is decided by its leading forces, its charter of demands and the interests represented by it, not by its magnitude or size. There is a community of communists suffering badly from a sense of defeat in India which, sitting in the confines of its room, indulges in self-thrill at every other movement on social media. Any crowd on the streets gets it excited and gives it goose bumps. It would have been better had these communists left this task to the petty-bourgeois romanticist revolutionaries, but possibly these “Communists” are themselves the same petty-bourgeois romanticist revolutionaries, whose several species are to be found in the political world of our country today such as Narodniks, neo-Narodniks, Nationalists, Trot-Bundists, Liberal Left, Left Liberal, etc.!
In such a scenario, reading the above work by Engels can act as a very effective vaccine against such kinds of contagions and to remind of the above splendid work, I could not find any better occasion than the bicentenary of Engels’ birth.
(Translated into English by Abhilash KP)
On the Birth Anniversary (26 December, 1893) of Mao Tse-tung
“A landlord is a person who owns land, does not engage in labour himself, or does so only to a very small extent, and lives by exploiting the peasants. The collection of land rent is his main form of exploitation; in addition, he may lend money, hire labour, or engage in industry or commerce. But his exaction of land rent from the peasants is his principal form of exploitation…
“Usurers are persons who rely on exploitation by usury as their main source of income, are better off than the average middle peasant, and shall be put in the same category as landlords.
“The rich peasant as a rule owns land. But some rich peasants own only part of their land and rent the remainder. Others have no land of their own at all and rent all their land. The rich peasant generally has rather more and better instruments of production and more liquid capital than the average and engages in labour himself, but always relies on exploitation for part or even the major part of his income. His main form of exploitation is the hiring of labour (long-term labourers). In addition, he may let part of his land and practice exploitation through land rent, or may lend money or engage in industry and commerce. Most rich peasants also engage in the administration of communal land. A person who owns a fair amount of good land, farms some of it himself without hiring labour, but exploits other peasants by means of land rent, loan interest or in other ways, shall also be treated as a rich peasant. Rich peasants regularly practice exploitation and many derive most of their income from this source.”
– Mao Tse-tung
(‘How to Differentiate the Classes in Rural Areas’, October 1933)
