Page:Zelda Kahan - The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels (1920).pdf/16

12 struggles of the Trade Unions (for higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions of work and so forth), they are not yet sufficiently imbued with Socialist ideals and ideas. All their strivings are directed to bettering the condition of the workers within the framework of capitalist society. The Chartists are theoretically backward, but, nevertheless, they are in the main real proletarians imbued with the living fighting spirit.

The Socialists of the time, on the other hand, are more far-sighted, but they come mostly from the bourgeoisie and are mainly pacifist, tame, and live on abstract ideals. They see and lament the demoralisation of the lower classes, but they do not realise that the germ of future progress lies in these classes, and that the real demoralisation of the possessing classes, induced by their private interests and hypocrisy, is far greater.

The Socialists do not recognise historical development. They deplore the bitterness displayed by the workers against the bourgeoisie, and they desire and hope to bring about their own Communist ideals by means of wholly fruitless moral suasion and philanthropy.

But if Socialism is to become a living part of the working-class movement, Engels maintains, it must adopt the revolutionary spirit of the Chartists, just as the Chartists need the far-sightedness and clear theoretical understanding of the Socialists. Or, in other words. Socialism must be essentially a proletarian movement, and the proletarian movement must be Socialist ere the working class can gain its emancipation from capitalism.

And although we have travelled far since then, although the workers have gained all the political aims of the Chartists, have indeed gained well-nigh all that there is to be gained within the framework of capitalist society by purely political means, and political action has become more a method of propaganda and agitation than a means of improving to any great extent the lot of the worker, yet it is truer than ever to-day that the working-class movement, unless imbued with Socialist ideals, unless it is consciously working for the overthrow of capitalism and the attainment of a Socialist system of society, will never accomplish its real aim: the emancipation of the worker from its slavery.

Conversely, not only will the Socialists who rely on the moral conversion, on a change of heart of the bourgeoisie as a class, never make any progress, but so long as the Socialist parties, who do rely on the working class, are not an integral part of the general labour movement, so long as they are content to stand outside, hugging their moral and intellectual superiority, and preaching to and at the workers instead of being within and part of the labour movement itself, so long will most of their work and their sacrifices be in vain.

In the conclusion of his book, Engels expresses the opinion that England is not far from an outbreak of revolution. And it was this