Translation of a talk by Freerk Huisken, 2018

Democracy and revolution:
How democracy as a form of capitalist rule keeps the state’s people on an anti-communist course

Today, debating “revolution” or even its necessity has something of a spectral quality. The contrast couldn’t be more vast between this type of concern and a society in which the absolute majority of its citizens regularly vote for democracy and the capitalist economy it manages. Today, it is once again permissible to be “for Germany,” and the black, red and gold is no longer frowned upon. Nationalism, if one just calls it patriotism and colors it as brightly as possible, is part of the prevailing mindset across all classes. There are no good reasons for this. And this isn’t even concealed: governments, for example, regularly publish “poverty reports” which state that “the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.” And one can read in bourgeois newspapers about how, for example, the “low-wage sector,” introduced by the Social Democrats, is living up to its name domestically and doing its part in driving entire populations in southern Europe to ruin. Not to mention all the other collateral effects of this globally enforced economic system that brings about hunger and refugees, wars and emvironmental poisons. But what are the bad reasons that turn – naturally – capitalism’s dissatisfied service providers into “good Germans” whose patriotism today spans the spectrum from the “welcome culture” to xenophobia?

My central thesis is that all the freedoms with which democracy has blessed modern humanity – from the right to free development of the personality to the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of choice – are among the constitutional institutions through which citizens develop into supporters of this form of rule and make themselves subservient to capitalism of their own free will.

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1.

In 1845, F. Engels remarked in his Elberfeld speech to a very mixed audience that a “constantly expanding proletariat” was becoming an “ever more threatening power in our society” and therefore “a social revolution cannot be avoided.” Whatever Engels specifically meant by this, he certainly did not mean to suggest that the struggle for universal suffrage should be on the agenda of communists and socialists because the political decision-making power of the state would almost automatically fall to the working class, which could then abolish capitalism from above, by state decree, so to speak. Others drew this conclusion, or something similar, after Engels. And in this conclusion they were wrong in several ways.

1.1. First of all, it is foolhardy to conclude from the social hardships of the working class that they would unite around a revolutionary standpoint on their economic situation, that is, once they had achieved universal suffrage they would vote unanimously as a class for socialist or communist parties, and thus also vote unanimously for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. This is a false conclusion because the socio-economic situation of wage earners, i.e. the objective situation, is one thing. But the conclusions that wage earners draw from this situation, how they explain their hardship, is another thing. That is entirely a matter of their subjective judgment. As is well known, there have been and still are a plethora of very different ways of explaining one’s own economic situation; and, accordingly, there are very different proposals for ending proletarian hardships: there have been and still are such divergent suggestions as forming cooperatives, trusting in God, working harder, deporting immigrants, electing work councils, and whatever other reform proposals there are for the world of work – in addition to abolishing private ownership of the means of production. Which judgment gains acceptance and which proposal makes sense depends solely on how workers understand their situation; and that always means having learned to understand it. Equating the socio-economic situation of wage laborers with communist class consciousness is a rather fatal mistake and, despite all experience to the contrary, has still not gone extinct.

1.2. The next flaw involves universal, equal and secret voting rights. Those who advocate for it, and even celebrate it as an achievement, insist that the votes of all the other voters are just as important as their own, regardless of the fact that these voters also include their economic and political opponents: capitalist entrepreneurs, landowners and their political protagonists, representatives of the churches and the nobility, and so on. Via universal suffrage, the voter is therefore compelled to abstract from all social, economic, political and other differences and contrasts among the electorate in the act of voting. In the act of voting, all these voters are considered equal with their vote and every vote, no matter how it is justified, is recognized in the election. Anyone who wants to bring the proletariat to power by means of universal suffrage so that it can proclaim revolution by an act of state is quickly made aware that its interests are equally recognized in a democratic election alongside the opposing interests of the capitalist private owners whose basis is to be removed.

1.3. This might not be very suitable for the proletarian. Nevertheless, by voting he has in any case surrendered his interest to the rule over him for the time being. He has submitted to this by freely agreeing to vote, regardless of the political composition of the government, i.e. regardless of the role ‘his party’ now plays in parliament. Anyone who, after the election, comes to the conclusion that he was envisioning it quite differently, namely as a prelude to the abolition of a mode of production that is damaging to him, and who then decides to renounce obedience to the elected power established by a democratic act, should immediately stop voting.

1.4. It should then come as no surprise that, despite the universal and equal nature of the electoral process, the conflicts that continue to exist and primarily determine economic life are not argued out in democracy, but ‘reconciled’ by means of state policy. The irreconcilable interests are prescribed legally binding procedural forms which are intended to make the conflicts functional. The well-known rights and freedoms fought for by workers’ organizations, and which are still praised by them to this day, play a central role in this: freedom of association and collective bargaining law. The state only elevates them to a valid legal form on the condition that, in pursuing workers’ interests, they not only do not damage the interests of their economic opponents, but are also positively take them into account. In essence, this contradiction in terms means that workers’ parties and labor unions have thus made nothing other than the continued existence of the working class under the economic rule of capital the basis of any further struggle to improve the existence of wage laborers.

1.5. These victories, which were won by workers’ parties – supported in each case by union actions –through democratic politics and thus wrested from the opposing side, represent a discrediting of the cause to which they dedicated themselves in the struggle for universal suffrage. For the degree of attention with which the ruling state power devotes itself to the needs of the working class is measured by the political objective of maintaining a useful working class, i.e. one that is able and willing to work, against the results of capitalist exploitation. Their support and education – via the school system and an institutionalized public sphere – must be ensured for this purpose. But that’s not all: the democratic state also knows that it is obligated out of self-interest to ensure the political loyalty of that part of the national population which, as the majority, represents the power base of democratic rule. How well this has been achieved is shown by the changing view of democracy – including that of the working class and its associations: from a revolutionary means of upheaval to the incarnation of social values, the preservation of which is then suggested to the masses as a worthwhile goal. To this day, the degree of participation in the election of a government – however composed – by the voters is a measure of the loyalty of politically equal citizens.

2.

Furthermore, parties that once set out to use universal suffrage as a revolutionary instrument of struggle developed into peoples’ parties: that is, into parties that, by downgrading the needs of the working class into material for a concern with bourgeois equality, not only rejected the – increasingly platonic – class struggle, but also consistently offered themselves to everyone who has been made into equals by the right to vote, i.e. to the people as parties which are responsible for them.

2.1. Once they had come to power inside the state by winning universal suffrage, the interest of these workers’ parties in securing and expanding their participation in state power – always in the interests of the working class, of course, as the hypocrisy continues to this day – became a priority. The fight for votes is therefore permanently on the political agenda: anyone who wants state power fights for every vote, i.e. they not only do not disdain support from other strata and classes, but campaign for it. In an election, one vote counts just as much as any other; and that is why its importance is solely in being counted together. Which is why a workers' party – like any other – demonstrates in politics and election campaigns that it exists for the people, for pursuing the concerns of everyone, however contradictory they may be, in an abstract way for the common good.

2.2. Accordingly, voters are not addressed as what they are in terms of their economic situation, i.e. as wage laborers, but from the outset as citizens – as equals among equals. And this is unfortunately how the majority of voters – including proletarian voters – behave. The view that a party can only take care of their material needs by participating in government has given way to the view that needs only belong in the election platform if they are politically justified, i.e. do not represent a particular class interest, but a general, i.e. national, interest. In return, the once oppressed, disenfranchised proletariat, i.e. those excluded from power, can now be proud of their role as fully recognized citizens whose participation in state-making is even demanded through participation in the election.

2.3. And not only that: because with the right to vote and a few other civil liberties, interests – including those of wage laborers – are not suppressed, but enjoy formal recognition. In a democracy, all citizens may – as the constitution permits – and should strive for their livelihood freely and equally, entirely on their own and the means that the impersonal body of laws guarantees them as their property; they may and should do everything under the general proviso of the democratically achieved and acclaimed common good. At the same time, they are bound to the political-economic twin of democracy, the capitalist economy; free, equal, and entirely dependent on their respective property, regardless of whether it is a factory, a piece of land, a block of shares or that strange ‘property’ that the wage laborer calls ‘his own’ in the form of his ability to work and allows the owners of companies to make use of their labor for a wage that perpetuates this relationship. The worker in a democracy therefore experiences that the equal legal recognition enjoyed by all interests is something different from equality in the validity of economic interests themselves; and that the freedom of everyone to look after only their own interests in making money entails hardships for those whose ‘property’ is the absence of property which can’t be endured – certainly not for a worker’s entire life.

2.4. The workers' parties, with their lust for state power, sometimes come into conflict with organizations that have not renounced class struggle and do not want to rely on democracy or democracy alone. The social democrat Noske once demonstrated how this conflict is played out, using state power against rebellious workers’ councils in a way that right-wing opponents of the republic never experienced. The military severity that the state power deployed against “the street” was neither a coincidence nor due to the moral depravity of individual social democrats. This is what happens when a government turns against forces that do not just talk about their means of power against the established state power. It then sees itself being attacked in its inner sanctum, the internal sovereignty secured by a democratically legitimized monopoly of power. It then demands respect for this monopoly of power precisely from those organizations that – with the very best of reasons – deny its exclusive right to represent workers’ interests.

Anyone who remembers the slogan “Who betrayed us, Social Democrats?!” is right in this context, to the extent that this slogan was and still is used. They are wrong if they think it is true. Because anyone who talks about “betrayal” still implies that the traitor shares the same goal in the struggle, while the social democratic parties have long since abandoned it.

And that’s not all that has changed to this day. The “legacy of fascism” has turned democrats of all stripes, including social democrats, into national enemies of every form of communism. The ban on the KPD in 1956, issued by the Federal Constitutional Court – the democrats had written something similar into their party law after 1949 – and enforced with police violence, is a testament to this. And to this day, governing democrats have not let anything go wrong when it comes to allowing people to vote and express their opinions freely, even demonstrations and strikes.

Conclusion: Democracy and its political-economic twin, the democratically administered capitalist economy, function so smoothly here because all those who suffer damages in it and from it have not only learned a basic democratic lesson, but have also taken it to heart: they not only do not put the pursuit of their material interests above the established necessities of the state, but they embrace their subordination to them in the everyday act of earning money and every four years in the act of voting. The experience of wage laborers, that their material interests are not served by this, is affirmatively handled, but of course not compensated by the recognition they enjoy as full members of society who are entitled to vote and to devote themselves freely and equally to the acquisition of money – when and where it is allowed!?

Nota bene: Democracy has provisions ready in case sections of the population do not like how democracy instrumentalizes the will of the citizens to the interests of the national economy and “take to the barricades” against it. After 1949, with the consent of all the people’s parties, the constitution included a law to suspend the freedoms granted to the citizens in the event of a “state of emergency.” Democracy, as the people's parties themselves make clear, is nothing other than an expedient procedure for securing and exercising rule for the cause of the nation. They themselves declare that their claim to be a community of values is ideology. Consequently, for those in power, partisanship for the internal and external affairs of the nation take precedence over their interest in the special form of rule known as ‘democracy’. That’s why they can introduce forms of rule reminiscent of fascism – secured by constitutional law – if they see the nation's cause under threat. And just as quickly as democrats become fascists to save the nation, they can become democrats again in the blink of an eye once the emergency laws have had their effect.