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p In contrast to the Utopian Socialists, most of whom were theoreticians isolated from the struggle of the working masses, Marx and Engels were not only theoreticians but also the leaders of the growing revolutionary movement of the proletariat, of all working people. They devoted their brilliant intellects, mighty creative energy and outstanding abilities as organisers to the noble cause of emancipating the working people, to the cause of establishing socialism and communism. Having sided with the oppressed class, with the proletariat, they evolved a theory, which provided the working class with a spiritual weapon in its revolutionary struggle against capitalism, against social conditions that humiliate and mutilate man, with a powerful vehicle for transforming reality by man for man. The strength of scientific communism lies in its organic tie with revolutionary action, with practice, in the fact that it serves the proletariat and all working people in their struggle against capitalism, for socialism and communism.

p This theory springs from a profound study and generalisation not only of science but also of socio-historic practice, of the revolutionary action of the masses in which its creators were directly and actively involved.

p In 1847 Marx and Engels set up the League of Communists with the purpose of uniting the scattered communist groups, politically enlightening the workers and helping them to master communist ideas. The Communist Manifesto, drawn up by them on instructions from the League, proclaimed the birth of scientific communism. Besides its purely theoretical importance, it was the first programme of the world’s first Communist Party. Explaining the substance of the new teaching in simple language, it called upon the workers to unite for the struggle to emancipate man, to destroy capitalism by revolution.

p The Manifesto slated that in order to be strong enough to achieve victory at the decisive moment, the proletariat must create its own political party. As the vanguard of the working class, this party spreads communist ideas among the workers and organises and leads them in the revolutionary struggle.

p Marx and Engels were leaders of the International 41 Workingmen’.s Association—the First International (1864-72). Founded by them in September 1864, it was the first organisation of the workers of several European countries. There were Russian revolutionaries in it, who in 1870 set up a Russian Section. Marx represented this section in the General Council.

p The First International laid the foundation for an international organisation of the working class with the aim of preparing for the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. In the Inaugural Address of the First International it was stressed that the great mission of the working class was to seize political power, and that this could only be achieved if there was unity in its ranks, if it was organised, if in its revolutionary actions it was guided by the scientific theory of social development.

p The Second International was set up in 1889 with the active participation of Engels. Initially, it too helped to unite the workers’ parties and spread Marxist ideas among the masses.

p Marx and Engels closely followed the revolutionary actions of the masses. After generalising the experience of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of 1848-49 in Western Europe, they wrote that the working class should not entertain the illusion that the supremacy of capital over labour could be broken by a bourgeois republic. They maintained that a bourgeois revolution could be followed by a proletarian revolution, which would alone emancipate the working man. Their study of the experience of revolutions led them to the highly significant conclusion that the bourgeois state machine had to be smashed. This became one of the cornerstones of the theory of scientific communism.

p This conclusion gave birth to another extremely important problem, namely, what would replace the bourgeois state machine after it was smashed? The solution was prompted by practice, by the revolutionary experience of the masses. In the spring of 1871 the revolutionary proletariat of Paris accomplished the world’s first proletarian revolution, which established a working people’s state, the famous Paris Commune. It was the prototype of the state of the future that could accomplish the transition from the old to the new society. “Look at the Paris 42 Commune,” Engels wrote. “That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

p The Paris Communards implemented the demands of the Communists. They sought to put an end to the old, rotten and outworn capitalist world and establish the rule of the working man, to do away with exploitation of man by man and make it a firm principle that work was the duty of all people. The Commune brought to life unparalleled initiative by the masses, who, to attain their lofty ideals, were, as Marx and Engels put it, prepared to storm the heavens. Marx and Engels did not hold aloof from this struggle. They offered the Communards advice and directed their activities.

p The Commune came to grief for a number of reasons, primarily the organisational and theoretical immaturity of the working class, the absence of a proletarian Party and the lack of contact with the peasant masses. However, its value to the theory and practice of scientific communism is inestimable.

p While evolving the theory of scientific communism and providing the working-class movement with practical leadership, Marx and Engels waged a relentless struggle against bourgeois ideology and against those who dragged at the back of the movement behind a screen of loud communist phraseology or, willynilly, brought grist to the bourgeois mill. They spoke sharply against petty-bourgeois opportunism and sectarianism, whose aim was to tear the working class and its Party away from the broad masses. They repeatedly emphasised that in the mortal struggle against capitalism the working class could be victorious provided it rallied the masses to its banner.

p At the head of the Communist League they resolutely opposed the “Leftists”, who demanded immediate revolutionary action without taking the trouble to analyse the real balance of class forces. They combated adventurism and conspiratorial tactics that paid no heed to the need for serious and comprehensive preparations for a revolution, for thoughtful and painstaking work among the working people.

p The founders of scientific communism also opposed the successors of Utopian socialism, who clung to the obsolete theories of the Utopians, failing to see the tremendous 43 changes that had taken place in social life, particularly the growth of (he revolutionary activity of the working {•lass, and ignoring the tasks that these changes had put before the proletariat. Particularly serious harm was being inflicted on the working class by the appeals to reform capitalism without hurting its economic and political foundations.

p During the initial years of the First International Marx and Engels thus waged a struggle agaist the followers of the French petty-bourgeois politician Pierre Joseph Proudlion (1809-65). Calling themselves Proudhonists, they were opposed to the political struggle and the setting up of a dictatorship of the proletariat, believing that the growth of the co-operative movement of petty proprietors would transform capitalism into socialism without a revolutionary struggle or a revolution. They could not see that under capitalism the co-operative movement did not liberate the working people from exploitation.

p After they had ideologically crushed the Proudhonists, Marx and Engels levelled their criticism against a new threat to the working-class movement—against pettybourgeois revolutionism, particularly anarchism, one of whose founders and leaders was the Russian emigre Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76). Bakunin and his followers claimed they were not opposed to revolution, but in fact they inflicted enormous harm on the revolutionary movement. Their conspiracies and demands for immediate insurrection doomed the unprepared workers to defeat. They ignored the economic prerequisites for a revolution, declaring that for a revolution to be successful it was enough for the working people to believe in their rights and for a small group of leaders to display the maximum will-power. The Bakuninists held that the state and not capitalism was the chief evil, and were, therefore, opposed to the setting up of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They regarded communism as a conglomeration of unchangeable and eternal primary cells and associations that were not subject to the operation of the laws of social development. In their criticism of the Bakuninists, Marx and Engels showed that subjectivism, disregard for the laws of social development and absolutisation of the human will were incompatible with revolutionary reforms, with a conscious 44 direction of social processes. They saw that the success of a revolution depended not on the determination of a handful of conspirators nor on political fireworks, but on painstaking and persevering efforts to unite the working class, on the proletariat’s revolutionary consciousness and on efficient organisation.

Thanks to their efforts, scientific, communism became predominant in the international revolutionary movement of the working class as early as the 1870s. The working class has fixed its gaze on Marxism, which has become its powerful ideological and theoretical weapon.