The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-09-23
BY v. ]. JEROME.

TOR, before all else, Marx was
revolutionist." These memorable
words uttered by Engels at the grave
side of his comrade and co-worker,
Karl Marx, hold the full content of
Marx -work-his revolutionary
teachings as a guide to revolutionary
action.
Marx work as organizer went
hand lin hand with his work as
theoretician. In 1S47 he and Engels
founded the first international Com
munist Party = the Communist
League, whose Rules and Constitution
opened significantly with the article:
1.-The aim of the League is the
overthrow Of the bourgeoisie, the
establishment of the rule of the
proletariat, the abolition of the
bourgeois social order founded upon
class antagonisms, and the inauga-
ration of a new social order wherein
there shall be neither classes nor
private property"
1t was for this League that Marx
and Engels wrote the famous Mani
festo of the Communist Party, known
popularity as the Communist Mani
festo. The Manifesto embodied their
revolutionary theory in progammatic
form. Adopted as the program of
action by the revolutionary party
which Marx and Engels organized
and led, the Communist Manifesto
has remained the classic guide to
revolutionary action for the workers
of all countries. The program
adopted by the Communist Interna-
tional, which was founded by Lenin
in 1918, is its direct continuation and
further development in the epoch of
Imperialism and proletarian revolu-
tons.
Marx pointed out that the emanci-
patton of the working class is the
historic task of the working class it
self. But this does not mean that
the proletariat can Hberate itself
from capitalism in the course of
spontaneous action. The class army
of the workers can engage in effect
i've warfare, can achieve victory only
if it produces from it's ranks the
revolutionary vanguard, the Party, to
give to the class struggle leadership
and direction, to unity all the other
working class organizations in the
struggle for one common objective.
In the words of the Communist
Manifesto:
Thus, in actual practice, Com
munists form the most resolute
and persistently progressive sec
ton OF the working class parties
of all lands, whilst, as far as theory
is concerned, being in advance of
the general mass of the proletariat,
they have come to understand the
deterninants of the proletarian
movement and how to foresee its
course and it's general aims"
The role of the Party is therefore
to win the majority of the working
class for revolutionary struggle
against capitalism, to bring forward
in alliance with that class and under
its leadership all the toiling masses
of the countryside and the city in
common struggle for the overthrow
Of capitalism.
1t was the Manifesto of the Com
munist Party which sounded the
slogan: workers of all lands unite!
You have nothing to lose but your
chains. You have a world to win!"
MARX and Engels guarded zealously
WI the integrity of the revolutionary
party. Throughout the period of the
First international, and after it had
ceased to exist, they struggled against
the sectarian and reformist elements,
against the petty bourgeois anarchism
of the Bakouninists, against the rank
opportunism of the Lassalleans,
against reformist British trade union
ism. When the opportunists, those
who paved the way for the present.
day social-fascists, began to rear
their heads, Marx and Engels dashed
them with merciless criticism. The
Critique of the Gotha Program,
Engels criticism of the Erfurt Pro-
gram, as well as numerous articles
and letters by Marx and Engels, are
devoted to correcting the failure of
the Party to live up to it's role of
vanguard. 1t was his keen insight
into the logical consequences of OPP
portunism that enabled Engels, as
far back as 1882, to make the power
full prediction that in the event of a
European war, "our party in Ger
many would be swept and split by
a stream of chauvinism, and the
same would happen in France"