Communism, Revolution, & a Free Poland

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Communism, Revolution, And A Free Poland

by Karl Marx

Speech delivered in French

commemorating 2nd anniversary of Krakow Uprising

Brussels, February 22, 1848

Gentlemen:

There are striking analogies in history. The Jacobin of 1793 has become the

communist of our day. When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland among

themselves in 1793, the three powers relied on the Constitution of 1791 which theyhad unanimously condemned for its alleged Jacobin principles.

And what did that Polish Constitution of 1791 proclaim? Nothing but a

constitutional monarchy: legislative power in the hands of the representatives of the

country; freedom of the press; freedom of conscience; open court proceedings;

abolition of serfdom, etc. And all that was then called Jacobinism! Thus, gentlemen,

you see that history was moved forward. What was then Jacobinism has today

become liberalism, and in its most moderate form at that.

The three powers marched with history. In 1846, when they incorporated

Krakow into Austria and robbed the Poles of their last vestige of independence, they

designated as communism what had previously been called Jacobinism.

But, what did did the communism of the Krakow revolution consist of? Was it

communist because it wanted to restore the Polish nationality? One could as well say

that the war which the European Coalition waged against Napoleon was communistic

and that the Congress of Vienna [1815] was made up of crowned communists. Or

was the Krakow revolution communistic because it wanted to install a democratic

government? Nobody would accuse the millions of citizens of Bern and New York of

communistic impulses.

Communism denies the necessity of the existence of classes; it wants to

abolish all classes, all class distinctions. The Krakow revolution wanted to extirpate

only the political distinctions among classes, it wanted to give equal rights to allclasses.

So, in what respect, finally, was this Krakow revolution communistic?

Perchance because it wanted to break the chains of feudalism, to liberate

property from feudal obligations and to transform it into modern property?

If one asked French property owners, "Do you know what the Polish

democrats want? The Polish democrats want to introduce in their country the form of

property that exists among you", the French property owner would answer, "That is

very good". But if one says to the French property owner, as Guizot did, "The Poles

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want to abolish the form of property you established by your Revolution of 1789 and

which still exists among you", then they exclaim, "What! They are all revolutionists,

communists! The scoundrels should be destroyed" The abolition of corporations and

guilds, and the introduction of free competition -- this is now called communism in

Sweden. The [Paris daily] _Journal des Debats [Politiques et Litteraires]_ goes even

further: the abolition of revenues guaranteed to 200,000 voters by corrupt law as asource of income, which the _Journal_ considers rightfully acquired property, this it

calls communism. Undoubtedly the Krakow revolution wanted to abolish a certain

kind of property. But what kind of property? The kind that in the rest of Europe can

no more be abolished than the Swiss _Sonderbund_ [federation] -- because neither

one exists any more.

Nobody will deny that in Poland the political question is tied up with the

social one. For a long time they have been inseparable from each other.

Just ask the reactionaries about it! Did they fight during the Restoration

purely against political liberalism and the Voltaireanism that was necessarily dragged

along with it?

A very famous reactionary author has openly admitted that the loftiest

metaphysics of a de Maistre and a de Bonald reduces itself in the last analysis to a

money question -- and is not every money question directly a social question? The

men of the Restoration did not conceal the fact that in order to return to the policies of

the good old days one must restore the good old property, the feudal property and the

moral property. Everybody knows that fealty to the monarch is unthinkable without

tithes and socages.

Let us go back further. In 1789, the political question of human rights

absorbed in itself the social rights of free competition.

And what is it all about in England? Did the political parties there, in all

questions, from the Reform Bill [June 7, 1830] to the abolition of the Corn Laws

[June, 1846], fight for anything other than changes of property, questions of property,

social questions?

Here in Belgium itself, is the struggle between liberalism and Catholicism

anything else than a struggle between industrial capital and big landownership?

And the political questions that have been debated for 17 years, are they not at

bottom social questions?

Thus no matter what position one takes -- be it liberal or radical or

conservative -- nobody can reproach the Krakow revolution with having entangled asocial question with a political one!

The men at the head of the revolutionary movement in Krakow were most

deeply convinced that only a democratic Poland could be independent, and that a

Polish democracy was impossible without an abolition of feudal rights, without an

agrarian movement that would transform the feudally obligated peasants into modern

owners. Put Russian autocrats over Polish aristocrats; thereby you have merely

naturalized the despotism. In exactly the same way, in their war against foreign rule,

the Germans have exchanged one Napoleon for 36 Metternichs.

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If the Polish feudal lord no longer has a Russian feudal lord over him, the

Polish peasant has not a less feudal lord over him -- indeed, a free, in place of an

enslaved, lord. The political change has changed nothing in the peasant's social

position.

The Krakow revolution has set all of Europe a glorious example, because it

identified the question of nationalism with democracy and with the liberation of the

oppressed class.

Even though this revolution has been strangled with the bloody hands of paid

murderers, it now nevertheless rises gloriously and triumphantly in Switzerland and in

Italy. It finds its principles confirmed in Ireland, where O'Connell's party [the Irish

Confederation, founded January 1847] with its narrowly restricted nationalistic aims

has sunk into the grave, and the new national party is pledged above all to reform and

democracy.

Again it is Poland that has seized the initiative, and no longer a feudal Poland

but a democratic Poland; and from this point on its liberation has become a matter of

honor for all the democrats of Europe.

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Communism, Revolution, & a Free Poland