Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Unfortunately, as economic and social developments in advanced industrial countries moved in the un-Marxian directions we have mentioned, the unionized laborers and their Social Democratic political parties continued to accept the Marxist ideology or at least to utter the old Marxist war cries of “Down with the capitalists!” or “Long live the revolution” or “Workers of the world, unite!” Since the Marxist ideology and the Marxist war cries were more easily observed than the social realities they served to conceal, especially when labor leaders sought all publicity for what they said and profound secrecy for what they did, many capitalists, some workers, and almost all outsiders missed the new developments completely and continued to believe that a workers’ revolution was just around the corner. All this served to distort and to confuse people’s minds and people’s actions in much of the twentieth century. The areas in which such confusions became of great significance were in regard to the class struggle and to nationalism.

We have pointed out that the class struggles between capitalists and the laboring masses were of great importance in the early stages of industrialism. In these early stages the productive process was more dependent on hand labor and less dependent on elaborate equipment than it became later. Moreover, in these early stages, labor was unorganized (and thus competitive), while capitalists were unmonopolized (and thus competitive). As the process of industrialization advanced, however, wages became a decreasing portion of productive costs, and other costs, especially the costs of equipment for mass production, for the technical management required by such equipment, and for the advertising and merchandising costs required for mass consumption, became more and more important. All of these things made planning of increasing significance in the productive process. Such planning made it necessary to reduce the number of uncontrolled factors in the productive process to a minimum while seeking to control as many of these factors as possible. An industry which had hundreds of millions of dollars (or even billions) in equipment and plant, as did the steel industry, automobiles, chemicals, or electrical utilities, had to be able to plan, in advance, the rate and the amount of usage that equipment would receive. This need led to monopoly, which was, essentially, an effort to control both prices and sales by removing competition from the market. Once such competition had been removed from the market, or substantially reduced, it became both possible and helpful for labor to be unionized.

Unionized labor helped planning by providing fixed wages for a fixed period into the future and by providing a better trained as well as a more highly disciplined labor force. Moreover, unionized labor helped planning by establishing the same wages, conditions, hours (and thus costs) on an industry-wide basis. In this way unionized labor and monopolized industry ceased to be enemies, and became partners in a planning project centered on a very expensive and complex technological plant. The class struggle in Marxian terms largely disappeared. The one exception was that, in a planned industry, the managerial staff could compare wage costs with fixed capital costs and might decide, to the resentment of labor, to replace a certain amount of labor by a certain amount of new machinery. Labor tended to resent this and to oppose it unless consulted on the problem. The net result was that rationalization of production continued, and advanced industrialized countries continued to advance in spite of the contrary influence of the monopolization of industry which made it possible, to some extent, for obsolete factories to survive because of decreased market competition.

The effects of nationalism on the Socialist movement was of even greater significance. Indeed, it was so important that it disrupted the Second International in 1914-1919. Marx had insisted that all the proletariat had common interests and should form a common front and not fall victim to nationalism, which he tended to regard as capitalistic propaganda, seeking, like religion, to divert the workers from their legitimate aims of opposition to capitalism. The Socialist movement generally accepted Marx’s analysis of this situation for a long time, arguing that workers of all countries were brothers and should join together in opposition to the capitalist class and the capitalist state. The Marxian slogans calling on the workers of the world to form a common front continued to be shouted even when modern nationalism had made deep inroads on the outlook of all workers. The spread of universal education in advanced industrial countries tended to spread the nationalist point of view among the working classes. The international Socialist movements could do little to reverse or hamper this development. These movements continued to propagate the internationalist ideology of international Socialism, but it became more and more remote from the lives of the average worker. The Social Democratic parties in most countries continued to embrace the international point of view and to insist that the workers would oppose any war between capitalist states by refusing to pay taxes to support such wars or to bear arms themselves against their “brother workers” in foreign countries.

How unrealistic all this talk was became quite clear in 1914 when the workers of all countries, with a few exceptions, supported their own governments in the First World War. In most countries only a small minority of the Socialists continued to resist the war, to refuse to pay taxes, or to serve in the armed forces, or continued to agitate for social revolution rather than for victory. This minority, chiefly among the Germans and Russians, became the nucleus of the Third, or Communist, International which was formed under Russian leadership in 1919. The Left-wing minority who became the Communists refused to support the war efforts of their various countries, not because they were pacifists as the Socialists were but because they were anti-nationalist. They were not eager to stop the war as the Socialists were, but wished it to continue in the hope that it would destroy existing economic, social, and political life and provide an opportunity for the rise of revolutionary regimes. Moreover, they did not care who won the war, as the Socialists did, but were willing to see their own countries defeated if such a defeat would serve to bring a Communist regime to power. The leader of this radical group of violent dissident Socialists was a Russian conspirator, Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin (1870-1924). Although he expressed his point of view frequently and loudly during the war, it must be confessed that his support, even among extremely violent Socialists, was microscopic. Nevertheless, the fortunes of war served to bring this man to power in Russia in November 1917, as the leader of a Communist regime.

The Bolshevik Revolution to 1924

The corruption, incompetence, and oppression of the czarist regime was forgotten at the outbreak of war in 1914 as most Russians, even those who were sent into battle with inadequate training and inadequate weapons, rallied to the cause of Holy Mother Russia in an outburst of patriotism. This loyalty survived the early disasters of 1914 and 1915 and was able to rally sufficiently to support the great Brusilov offensive against Austria in 1916. But the tremendous losses of men and supplies in this endless warfare, the growing recognition of the complete incompetence and corruption of the government, and the growing rumors of the pernicious influence of the czarina and Rasputin over the czar served to destroy any taste that the Russian masses might have had for the war. This weakening of morale was accelerated by the severe winter and semistarvation of 1916-1917. Public discontent showed itself in March 1917, when strikes and rioting began in Petrograd. Troops in the capital refused to suppress these agitations, and the government soon found itself to be helpless. When it tried to dissolve the Duma, that body refused to be intimidated, and formed a provisional government under Prince Lvov. In this new regime there was only one Socialist, Minister of Justice Alexander Kerensky.