The Abdication of the Bourgeoisie

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This article carried by the Sozialdemokrat aroused profound interest in the socialist quarters in many countries: on October 11, 1889, it was reprinted by the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung; on October 12, in a slightly abridged English translation, by The Labour Elector, on October 26 (with insignificant editorial changes and under the heading, “Was die Bourgeoisie nicht kann und was die Arbeiter können”), by the Berliner Volks-Tribüne, as well as by other newspapers in Germany and the USA. In 1890, the article was translated into Russian and published in the Cou,uajit>-deM.oKpa, No. 1, 1890.

This article was published in English in full for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Articles on Britain, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.

Of all the national bourgeoisies, it is undoubtedly the English one that has up to now preserved the keenest sense of class, i.e., sense of politics. Our German bourgeoisie is stupid and cowardly; it has not even been able to seize and hold onto the political power the working class won for it in 1848; in Germany the working class must first sweep away the remnants of feudalism and of patriarchal absolutism, which our bourgeoisie was duty-bound to eradicate long ago. The French bourgeoisie, the most mercenary and pleasure-seeking of all, is blinded to its future interests by its own greed for money; it lives only by the day; in its frenzied thirst for profit it plunges itself into the most ignominious corruption, declares that income tax is socialist high treason, can find no way of countering any strike other than with infantry salvoes, and thus manages to bring about a situation where in a republic with universal suffrage the workers are left with hardly any other means of victory than violent revolution. The English bourgeoisie is neither as greedily stupid as the French, nor as pusillanimously stupid as the German. During the period of its greatest triumphs it has constantly made concessions to the workers; even its most dyed-in-the-wool contingent, the conservative landowning and finance aristocracy, was not afraid to give the urban workers suffrage on such a scale that it is purely the fault of the workers themselves that they have not had 40 to 50 representatives of their own in Parliament since 1868. And since then the entire bourgeoisie—the Conservatives and the Liberals combined—has extended this wider suffrage to the rural areas as well, has roughly equalled out the size of the constituencies and thereby placed at least another thirty constituencies at the disposal of the working class. Whereas the German bourgeoisie has never had the ability to lead and represent the nation as its ruling class, whereas the French proves daily—and just again at the elections—that it has completely lost this ability—and yet there was a time when it possessed that ability to a higher degree than any other middle class—the English bourgeoisie (into which the so-called aristocracy has been absorbed and assimilated) exhibited until recently a certain talent for doing justice to its position as leading class at least to some degree.

This now seems to be changing more and more.

Everything connected with the old government of the City of London — the constitution and the administration of the City proper—is still downright medieval. And this includes also the Port of London, the leading port in the world. The WHARFINGERS, the LIGHTERMEN and the WATERMEN form regular guilds with exclusive privileges and in part still don medieval costumes. These antiquated guild privileges have in the past seventy years been crowned with the monopoly of the dock companies, and thereby the whole huge Port of London has been handed over for ruthless exploitation to a small number of privileged corporations. And this whole privileged monstrosity is being perpetuated and, as it were, made inviolable through an endless series of intricate and contradictory Acts of Parliament through which it was born and raised, and in such a manner that this legal labyrinth has become its best rampart. But while these corporations presume on their medieval privileges in dealing with ordinary traders and make London the most expensive port in the world, their members have become regular bourgeois, who besides fleecing their customers, exploit their workers in the most despicable manner and thus profit simultaneously from the advantages of medieval guild and modern capitalist society.

Since, however, this exploitation took place within the framework of modern capitalist society, it was, despite its medieval cloak, subject to the laws of that society. The big swallowed the small or at least chained them to their triumphal chariot. The big dock companies became the masters of the guilds of the wharfingers, the lightermen and the watermen, and thereby of the whole Port of London, thus opening up the prospect of unlimited profits for themselves. This prospect blinded them. They squandered millions on stupid installations; and since there were several such companies, they engaged in a competitive war, which cost further millions, produced more senseless structures and pushed the companies to the brink of bankruptcy, until finally they came to terms two years ago.

In the meantime the London trade had passed its peak. Le Havre, Antwerp, Hamburg and, since the new sea canal had been built, also Amsterdam, drew a growing share of the traffic that had formerly centred on London. Liverpool, Hull and Glasgow also took their share. The newly built docks remained empty, dividends dwindled and partly disappeared altogether, shares dropped, and the dock managers, arrogant, purse-proud snobs, stubborn and spoilt by the good old times, were at their wits’ end. They did not want to admit the true reasons for the relative and absolute decline in the traffic of the Port of London. And these reasons, insofar as they are of a local character, are purely and simply their own arrogant perversity and its cause, the privileged position, the medieval, long outdated constitution of the City and Port of London, which by right should be in the British Museum, next to the Egyptian mummies and the Assyrian stone monsters.

Nowhere else in the world would such folly be tolerated. In Liverpool, where similar conditions were taking shape, they were nipped in the bud and the entire port constitution was modernised. But in London traders surfer because of it, grumble and—submit to it. The bourgeoisie, the bulk of whom have to pay the costs of these fatuities, yield to this monopoly, even if unwillingly, but yield just the same. They no longer have the energy to shake off this demon that in time threatens to stifle the living conditions of all of London.

Then the dock workers’ strike breaks out. It is not the bourgeoisie robbed by the dock companies that rebel, it is the workers exploited by them, the poorest of the poor, the lowest layer of the East End proletarians, who fling down the gauntlet to the dock magnates. And then, at last, the bourgeoisie realise that they too have an enemy in the dock magnates, that the striking workers have taken up the struggle not only in their own interests, but indirectly also in the interests of the bourgeois class. That is the secret of the public sympathy for the strike and of the unprecedentedly generous money contributions from bourgeois circles. But thus far and no further. The workers went into action to the accompaniment of acclamation and applause from the bourgeoisie; the workers fought the battle to the end and proved not only that the proud dock magnates could be defeated but by their struggle and victory also stirred up public opinion to such an extent that the dock monopoly and the feudal port constitution are no longer tenable and will soon really have to move to the British Museum.

The job should have been done by the bourgeoisie long ago. They were unable or unwilling to do it. Now the workers have taken it in hand and now it will be done. In other words, in this case the bourgeoisie have renounced their own part in favour of the workers.

Now a different picture. From the medieval Port of London we move on to the modern cotton spinneries of Lancashire. We presently find ourselves at a juncture where the cotton harvest of 1888 is exhausted and that of 1889 has not yet come onto the market, that is, speculation in raw materials has the best prospects at present. A rich Dutchman called Steenstrand has, with other cronies, formed a “ring” to buy up all the available cotton and to boost prices accordingly. The cotton spinners can retaliate only by cutting consumption, that is, by shutting down their mills for several days a week or altogether, until the new cotton is in sight. They have been trying to do this for six weeks. But now as on previous occasions it refuses to work. This is because many of the spinners are so heavily indebted that a partial or complete standstill would push them to the brink of ruin. Others even want the majority to stop and thereby to boost the price of cotton yarn; while they themselves intend to continue operating and to profit from the higher yarn prices. A good ten years’ experience has shown that there is only one way to enforce a shut-down of all cotton mills—no matter for what ultimate purpose—namely, by introducing a wage cut of, say, 5 per cent. Then there is a strike, or a lockout by the mill-owners themselves, and then, in the struggle against the workers, absolute unity prevails among the mill-owners, and the machines are brought to a standstill even by those who do not know whether they will ever be able to set them going again.

As things stand, a wage cut is not advisable today. But how otherwise can a general closure of the mills be brought about, without which the spinners will for about six weeks be delivered, bound hand and foot, to the speculators? By a step which is unique in the history of modern industry.

The mill-owners, through their central committee, “semiofficially” approach the Central Committee of the Workers’ Trade Unions with a request that the organised workers in the common interest, force the obstinate mill-owners to shut down by organising strikes. Messrs mill-owners, admitting their own inability to take concerted action, ask the once so hated workers’ trade unions kindly to use coercion against them, the mill-owners, so that the mill-owners, induced by bitter necessity, should finally act in concert, as a class, in the interests of their own class. They have to be forced to do so by the workers, for they themselves are unable to bring this about!

The workers consented. And the workers’ threat alone sufficed. In 24 hours the “ring” of cotton speculators was smashed. This shows what can be done by the mill-owners, and what by the workers.

Thus, here, in the most modern of all modern large-scale industries, the bourgeoisie proves to be just as incapable of asserting its own class interests as in medieval London. And what is more, it openly admits it, and by turning to the organised workers with the request that they force through a major class interest of the mill-owners against the will of mill-owners themselves, it not only abdicates, but recognises in the organised working class its successor, which is called upon to rule and is capable of doing so. It proclaims itself that even if every single mill-owner is able to manage his own mill, it is the organised workers alone who are now able to take the management of the entire cotton industry into their own hands. And this means, in plain language, that the only occupation left to the mill-owners is to become paid business managers in the service of the organised workers.

F. Engels