p Marx and Engels were the first in the history of social thought to formulate the key proposition about the role in social development of the 105 political organisation of the working class and of its party. That was the only way to bring out in full the great social energy of the working class. History had not known any political organisation of working people comprising the world oppressed class, instead of separate detachments, showing a scientifically based prospect of struggle and setting the concrete tasks and ultimate goals in this struggle, which it guided. Before the emergence of the political party of the working class, the latter had been fragmented into various socialist and semisocialist sects. The fundamental turning point in world history, heralding the ultimate victory of the exploited over their exploiters, came when the working class set up its political organisation and formulated its revolutionary ideology. The proletariat began to unite into well organised and disciplined ranks for a sustained struggle against capital. Lenin wrote: “There was nothing even approximately resembling this among the peasant serfs, not to speak of the slaves."  [105•25 

p What then was the fundamental distinction between the political organisation of the working class and all other organisations of the past, and why did the emergence of the political party of the proletariat mark a fundamental turning point in world history and in the development of revolutionary theory?

p Considering the period of antiquity, Lenin wrote: “The slaves, as we know, revolted, rioted, started civil wars, but they could never create a class-conscious majority and parties to lead the struggle, they could not clearly realise what their aims were, and even in the most revolutionary moments of history they were always pawns in the hands of the ruling classes."  [105•26  The uprising of the slaves led by Spartacus merely created a military organisation which broke up once the insurgent armies were put down. Whenever the slaves succeeded in taking over for a longer period, they set up on a limited territory “states” headed by their own “kings” and isolated from the rest of the mass of slaves. These states disappeared when crushed by the superior military force of the slave-owners. Nor were the serfs capable of setting up a sound political organisation, even if the peasant wars were a higher stage of the revolutionary struggle than the uprisings of the slaves. Spontaneous revolutionary action by masses of peasants led to the establishment of various insurgent organisations restricted to the areas of the uprising, but never produced any political parties. These were mainly army organisations of the insurgent peasants confined to the time and place of the uprising. With the proletariat still weak, the masses of peasants ever more frequently followed in the wake of the bourgeoisie which directed them for its own class interests.

p “Mankind moved towards capitalism,” Lenin says, elaborating his 106 idea about the historical development of the political organisation of the exploited classes, “and it was capitalism alone which, thanks to urban culture, enabled the oppressed proletarian class to become conscious of itself and to create the world working-class movement, the millions of workers organised all over the world in parties—the socialist parties, which are consciously leading the struggle of the masses."  [106•27 

p The origins of the great victories scored by the working people in the present period lie in the period when the proletariat built up its forces, became aware of itself as a class and set up its political organisation—a party which is capable of giving a conscious lead in the massive struggle. Only with the emergence of the political organisation of the working class, carrying on the struggle under the banner of scientific communism, did historical progress become a powerful force and was the lever discovered to overturn the world of exploitation and oppression. From then on the working class developed into an independent political force, capable of radically transforming social relations through its struggle at the head of the working people. In the course of the struggle, the working class and the peasantry set up an alliance constituting a factor of tremendous social and political importance. The proletariat attracted to its side various sections of the working people and the progressive intelligentsia.

p The potentialities and prospects for the working people’s liberation struggle underwent a fundamental change. The emergence of the revolutionary theory and the party of the working class marked a new stage of epoch-making importance in the ideological development and the liberation struggle of mankind as a whole.

p The proletariat’s class struggle developed from separate flareups to such powerful political revolutionary action as the uprising of the workers of Paris in 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. The origination and history of Marxism are at the same time the history and development of the political organisation of the working class from the Communist League to the First International and then on to the establishment of Social-Democratic parties in various countries. The development of scientific communism is inseparable from the history of the proletariat’s political organisation and its parties.

p In the period when scientific communism was emerging the proletariat was being lured by many a will-o’-the-wisp to stray from the right path. In the 1820s and the 1830s, the working class was being given all sorts of advice by spokesmen of various petty-bourgeois trends seeking to dissolve the proletariat in the mass of the “people”, and also by liberal bourgeois leaders who wanted to intensify bourgeois influence on the working class and to convert the proletariat into a pliant tool of 107 bourgeois liberalism. In order confidently and boldly to advance, the proletariat had to discard all this advice and to strike “a deadly blow at all these vociferous, motley and ostentatious forms of pre-Marxian socialism".  [107•28  Among the complicated problems faced by the working class were these: how was it to act in the political arena? What forms and methods of struggle was it to use? What were its immediate and ultimate goals in the struggle it had started? How was it most effectively to organise its forces to win in the ranging battle? There were no ready-made answers to these questions. These were to be provided by socialist theory.

p In the working-class organisations which had then emerged the following main lines appeared, showing that the question of the correct revolutionary theory had become the most vital and historically most important question. On the one hand, there were already signs of efforts to set up mass political organisations of the working class. The National Chartist Association was set up in Britain in 1840, marking an important stage in the development of the working-class movement.

p On the other hand, various secret societies alongside diverse conspiratorial political outfits involving workers were being set up—characteristically—in France. They revived the tradition of Babeuf’s “Conspiracy of Equals" movement during the French bourgeois revolution. These visions were most forcibly expressed by the impassioned revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, who together with his followers believed that the hour of the second great revolution had struck and that the immediate task was to set up a revolutionary dictatorship.

p Another propagandist of revolutionary ideas, revolutionary dictatorship and social equality was Theodore Dezamy, and the ideas were being spread by periodicals like L’Egalitaire and L’Humanitaire. The Egalitarian Workers’ Secret Society was set up under the impact of these ideas. Engels, following the activity of this society from his home in Britain, said that its members were completely ignorant of “history and political economy".  [107•29 

p In 1848, Marx and Engels put forward the great and fruitful principle of revolutionary struggle, the principle of working-class unity, both within the country and in the international arena. Since then, the working-class movement has developed under the banner of unity and on the basis of the principles of proletarian internationalism. In the lifetime of Marx and Engels the survivals of the old, petty-bourgeois notions were still strong and the principle of unity was fiercely attacked by the Bakuninists, while the Blanquists relied on groups of conspirators instead of the working class as a whole.

p Engels assessed the activity of this brand of revolutionaries as follows: “Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organised men would be able, at a given favourable moment, not only to seize the helm of state, but also by a display of great, ruthless energy, to maintain power until they succeeded in sweeping the mass of the people into the revolution."  [108•30  But revolution cannot be made without the masses. The absence of a revolutionary theory had a negative effect on all the practical activity of the revolutionaries.

p No brand of Utopian communist theory could provide an ideological basis for the establishment of a sound political, revolutionary organisation of the working class, for its organisational and propaganda work among the masses, for a definition of the strategy and tactics of the proletariat’s political struggle. The fairly vague ideas and convictions about the principles on which the future society was to be structured did not, of course, make up any coherent revolutionary outlook and existed side by side with idealistic bourgeois illusions.

p The Utopian socialists assumed that their socialism would develop without any political struggle within the entrails of capitalism. They had hopes that the rich would donate their riches for the establishment of a new social system, and believed that classes could be reconciled through the spread of socialist ideas. Both Saint-Simon and Fourier had assumed as much, and their ideas were carried further in theory and practical activity by their followers. Louis Blanc, the French Utopian socialist of the mid-19th century, has gone down in history as an ardent advocate of a reconciliation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Attacking the Mensheviks in Russia years later, Lenin called them advocates of “Louis Blanc-ism”.

p Thus, the proletariat, which had become aware of itself as a class about to start a resolute struggle in complicated historical conditions had need of a coherent revolutionary outlook which Utopian communism, to say nothing of Utopian socialism, was unable to provide.

The history of the League of the Just shows very well the existence of such a need. This “half-propaganda association, half-conspiracy”,  [108•31  consisting mainly of Germans, emerged in 1836 and by the early 1840s operated as a ramified international organisation with its center in London and branches (lodges) in France, Germany, Switzerland and other countries. But its social doctrine was highly indefinite and its members were, in general, very careless about theory, political economy in particular. They were influenced by Weitling’s Utopian communism, 109 which had had a progressive role to play at its initial stage but by the mid-1840s had become a heavy drag on the development of that part of the working-class movement which was still under its influence. Engels wrote: “The tracing of communism back to primitive Christianity introduced by Weitling—no matter how brilliant certain passages to be found in his Gospel of Poor Sinners—had resulted in delivering the movement in Switzerland to a large extent into the hands, first of fools like Albrecht, and then of exploiting fake prophets like Kuhlmann.... As against the untenability of the previous theoretical views, and as against the practical aberrations resulting therefrom, it was realised more and more in London that Marx and I were right in our new theory."  [109•32  In 1847, a majority of its members declared their acceptance of the theory formulated by Marx and Engels and invited them to join the Union and to set forth their views as a manifesto. That same year it took the name of the Communist League and in place of the old motto—“All Men Are Brothers"—it adopted the new slogan: “Workers of all countries, unite!" The Manifesto of the Communist Party, the scientific programme for struggle by the world’s proletariat for its emancipation, appeared in February 1848.