From the Reasonable System to the Logic of Economic Development

Zur Demokratiediskussion in der englischen und deutschen Arbeiterbewegung

Abstract

Among the „utopian“ socialists, there was a fundamental difference of opinion concerning the relevance of democratic government for the establishment of a just society without exploitation. Marx and Engels took the side of the democrats. In the Communist Manifesto, the fundamental position of the democrats - that the political power of the majority was the essential precondition for government in the interest and in favour of the majority - was integrated into the Marxist perspective. For the rest of their lives, Marx and Engels tried to orientate the labour movement towards the objective of „winning the battle for democracy“ as the precondition of attaining the ultimate aim, the emancipation of labour. This perspective found its way into all the programmatic declarations of working-class parties infl.uenced by Marx and Engels, in which general suffrage formen and full political rights headed the list of political demands. The difficulty of achieving these demands resulted in a general tendency to rely on the growth of industry and of the industrial working class as a guarantee of the impending socialist transformation of society.