MIA > Archive > Wilhelm Liebknecht > Voices of Revolt
Written: In German, March 1872.
Published in English: 1928.
Translated by: Unknown (name not provided).
Source: Voices of Revolt: Speeches of Wilhelm Liebknecht. International Publishers, first edition, 1928, New York, USA. 96 pages.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, November, 2022
This speech was outlined by Liebknecht during his imprisonment in a fortress after his conviction. He had intended to deliver a similar speech at the trial, but by reason of the maltreatment of one of his legal defenders by the presiding judge, Liebknecht, Bebel[a] and [Adolf] Hepner had renounced the privilege of pronouncing a speech in their own defense, on the ground that the defense had been deprived of freedom of speech.
The Social-Democratic Party does not appeal to compassion; it appeals to the compelling interest of society. “All guilt is avenged in this world”[4] — and the vengeance is meted out in the measure of the guilt. The injustice of society takes dreadful revenge on society. All political and social catastrophes and calamities may be traced back without exception to this single ultimate cause. The injustice of society is the Pandora’s Box from which all the ills, all the diseases of society proceed in an unending train.
What is it that produces the terrible crises which periodically — with appalling regularity — shatter the temple of bourgeois prosperity, and bring trade and industry to a standstill, inject ruin and distress into immense communities, what else is it than the present system of production with its economic anarchy, its conscienceless exploitation of labor, its mad competition, its fraudulent speculation? What is it that drives the worker to a strike, that forces him in moments of savage desperation to mount the barricades — is it anything else than a feeling of injury endured? Is there a rebellion, a revolution, whose recruits had not been trained by social misery?
And as for war — is it conceivable that the nations would be cutting the nations’ throats if every citizen of the state could be sure that he would gather the fruits of his labor under the protection of righteous institutions? As for pestilence — you may ask the physicians whether epidemic diseases would be possible under healthy conditions, I mean just social conditions, righteous social conditions. As for crime — ask the judges how many criminals would remain if poverty and defective education were eliminated. Not one! Except perhaps a few irresponsible idiots and madmen.
People are fond of terming us subversive characters. Very well; do you think you would like to preserve the commercial and industrial crises? Do you wish to retain the class struggle in all its phases, from a comparatively harmless strike to a raging street battle? Do you wish to preserve unchanged rebellion, revolution — in the sense in which the state attorney used the word — war, pestilence, crime? Very well, then, conserve the present-day society, with its injustice — as long as you can; it will not be very long. Injustice will soon become an economic and political impossibility; justice will be a necessity.
The continuance of the present-day mode of production is not compatible with the continued existence of society. Capitalist large-scale production was a step in progress; it has now become an obstacle. It can no longer fulfill the economic needs of society, i.e., of the generality — in fact, it hardly meets the needs of the tiny minority of privileged persons who love to term themselves “society”. Altogether aside from the unjust distribution of the products of labor, capitalist production is incapable of furnishing the necessary materials for a human scale of living to all the members of society, and it must — if only for this reason, be replaced by a higher form of production which shall fulfill these requirements. But they can only be fulfilled by a universal social production, a socialist organization of labor, which will apply the concentrated total capital of society to the advantage of the totality.
Any man who would to-day propose the abolition of machines, the reintroduction of the medieval petty industry, would be considered a madman, for every one knows that the petty production of those days has been replaced by a higher, more efficient mode of production: large-scale industry. But any one who would have said, in the Middle Ages, or even in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, that petty production was too expensive, too inefficient, that it must be swept aside by an industrial revolution which will bring another mode of production to the helm, such a man would be regarded as — something like us. Any one who would propose, fifty years from now, a reintroduction of the present conditions, will be extremely liable to become intimately acquainted with the interior of a madhouse. And we, who demand a reformation of present conditions, are in danger of becoming acquainted with the interior of prisons.
Yet, it is just as certain and necessary that the present-day mode of production be replaced by a higher mode of production as that the medieval production was replaced by the present-day production. It is not we who are Utopians, impractical dreamers, as men like to term us. It is rather they who consider transitory forms to be eternal, and seek to preserve them from destruction by the use of force. “The Communists,” says the Communist Manifesto,[b]— a document included in the evidence against us, “do not set up any special principles in accordance with which they would mold the proletarian movement. The theoretical theses of the Communists are in no way based on ideas, on principles, invented by one world reformer or another. They are merely the general expression of the actual conditions of an existing class struggle, of an historical movement unfolding before our eyes.” . . .
[4.] Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden: The final line of one of the stanzas of the harper's song in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (by Goethe).
[a.] Bebel, August (1840-1913): German Socialist leader, anti-militarist; his autobiography has been published in an English translation; a volume of this series is devoted to his speeches.
[b.] Communist Manifesto: The first popular declaration of the principles and program of Scientific Socialism, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and printed in 1847.
Last updated on 08 July 2023