The following and
subsequent Parts 2 and 3 is an abridged re-working of some of the writings of
Herman Gorter, an early 20th Century Dutch revolutionary socialist.
Part 1
The Socialist Task
The brutal power of capital steam-rollers over the weak. The
capitalists seek money and power. All the peoples of the world, all the
individuals, all people are forced to submit to it. Humanity’s happiness and
independence are disappearing. Mankind is being transformed into things. No
longer individuals, but things which are subjects of capital. They are pulled
and dragged by the furious omnipotence of capital and are transformed into the
appendices of machines. In the world of the capitalists the frantic greed for
money, for power and for hedonistic pleasure increases. Corruption and
boundless luxury are on the rise. Madness and mental illnesses become more
common.
Among the working class the intensity and exploitation of
labour increases. The intensity of the class struggle increases. And so does
the power of the employers, the governments, the multinationals and
corporations. Against all these powers, the power of the workers is diminished,
the burdens which weigh them down get heavier and their lives become more
fraught with hardship. The trade union struggle is more difficult, the
parliamentary struggle becomes more problematic. Social welfare legislation has
come to an end. Rather than the beauty of local customs there are no longer any
differences between Russian, German, French and English culture. The
differences that once existed have been leveled by capital.
The rich are themselves poor slaves: in effect, they are not
the masters of their destiny. They must do what they do not want to do and are
afraid to do. The crushing power of capital, master of destiny, pushes them
forward. Capital launches them, insane with rage, one against the other. Like
beasts that do not know what they are doing they try to tear each other and the
world apart. But they must act this way
because capital, in its latest phase of its expansion, wants them to. The
workers futilely attempt to resist. They join together and fight for their
emancipation, in vain. They are dragged along with everyone else. They are, for
the most part, weak, without understanding, without clarity. When the trade
unions and the workers’ political parties seek improvements, they are nothing
but associations of slaves who want improvements in their servitude. How many
workers are really fighting for their general emancipation? Few enough. Very
few. The trade union movement, which fights only for small gains, and which
obtains no satisfaction except thanks to small concessions on the part of the
employers and by means of contracts signed with the latter, considerably
reinforce this process. The capitalists and the workers are the puppets of
material forces which are infinitely greater than themselves. The process of
production, more powerful and more terrible than ever, dominates them entirely.
Great art is dead. Great painting is dead. The great poetry
of all countries is dead. Great prose is dead. Great architecture is dead.
Music is nothing but the shadow of its former self. What survives is without
heart, without love. Art now ranges from the hard, cruel capitalist sensations
to the soft and maudlin petit bourgeois sensations, and to a cowardly
mysticism. It no longer contains a single elevated or universal thought. In its
desperation, in its individualism, it has gone to the extreme and has often deviated
into madness. Any higher culture, ardor
of the soul and the spirit, moral beauty, is suppressed to a very low level by
consumerism. Culture among the workers, culture in the sense of the fight for
freedom is a very rare, almost non-existent phenomenon. Science remains aloof
from society and is like a plant that can live without soil and water. Workers
do not participate in scientific culture.
There are moments in the class struggle when only the
antagonism between capital and labour can be taken into consideration; then,
whoever treats this antagonism as of secondary importance and, considering all
the chances and difficulties, ends up abstaining from action and from the
struggle, would betray the cause of the proletariat. There are moments when defeat
is preferable to avoiding danger. There are moments when retreating from an
imminent threat guarantees a future defeat, and there are moments when
everything must be sacrificed to guarantee the future. There are moments when
one has to fight in spite of all difficulties. And we are currently living
through just such a moment. Capitalism is for the first time coming forward
with all its forces, with its supreme force, to conquer the world by destroying
the environment, threaten the continued survival of the human species by
unrestrained global warming and climate change. This is the moment when the
people must show that it has recognized this necessity. This is the moment to
declare and to begin the struggle because once one has started to bow one’s
head, the struggle becomes infinitely more difficult. Yet the masses do not
understand this. They bows their head for lack of sense, for lowly desires of
small advantages which it will not be able to obtain, and for cowardice. The
workers kow-tow like the slaves they are. We make no effort to fight for
freedom and the consequences for the world may well be irreversible. How can
the world’s population renounce their own interest in such a fashion and put
itself at the service of the 1%? The international working class acts in such a
way from ignorance. The working class as a whole and the individual worker need
a higher level of consciousness if they want to take action.
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