In defence of

MARXISM
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© In Defence of Marxism
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p3
The struggle
against reformism

p7
Lessons
from Greece

p21
The German
Peasants’ War

p31
Morality and the
class struggle

p40
Figaro and the
French Revolution
Bernie Sanders and
Joe Biden, October 2024

THE STRUGGLE
AGAINST REFORMISM
Editorial Board capitalism. Periodical slumps throw the In the wake of the 2008 crisis, mil-

T
whole system into crisis. And in the pe- lions of workers and youth turned to the
he central thread of our lead riod of capitalism’s decline, these slumps left, spurring the rise of new movements
article in this issue, Lessons from have become deeper and longer-lasting. across the world. Syriza in Greece, Pode-
Greece, is the problem of re- mos in Spain, Corbyn in Britain, Mélen-
formism: the belief that the ills Crisis chon in France, and Sanders in the US all
of society, such as war and pov- The twentieth century revealed how attracted mass support by calling for rad-
erty, can be eliminated gradually, without quickly reformism turns into its oppo- ical change – often invoking ‘socialism’.
the revolutionary overthrow of the capi- site. In Europe, the birthplace of Social However, all shared the illusion that
talist system. Democracy, the period of prosperity was capitalism could be fixed through clever
This most commonly expresses itself eventually replaced by mass unemploy- policies and state intervention. Despite
in the argument that the workers’ move- ment, civil war and, in many places, fas- their socialist rhetoric, their aim was to
ment should limit itself to fighting for cism. regulate capitalism, not abolish it. Aus-
whatever is most immediately achieva- By binding the aims, the methods, and terity was, and is, seen as a choice, driven
ble. With each small victory, it is argued, even the outlook of the workers’ move- by nasty ‘neoliberal’ ideology, not as the
the working class becomes both better off ment to the structures of capitalism, the necessary result of capitalist crisis.
and more powerful, passing slowly but reformists were unable to defend past None have delivered a single meaning-
surely along the road towards its emanci- gains, let alone win new ones. Worse, ful reform. In Britain, Corbyn capitulated
pation. Any discussion of the ‘final goal’ many collaborated in imperialist wars to right-wing pressure on antisemitism
of the movement, such as socialism, thus and attacks on workers to maintain the and ‘Brexit’, leading to the destruction of
becomes academic. stability of their own capitalist states. his movement.
To many, this appears as a more real- Trotsky wrote in 1935: Sanders has endorsed every candidate
istic and ‘practical’ alternative to fighting “Without reforms there is no reform- put forward by the Democratic establish-
for socialist revolution. After all, it prom- ism, without prosperous capitalism, ment since 2016, in the name of “keeping
ises change without the risk of violence or no reforms. The right-reformist wing out Trump”.
instability of any kind. becomes anti-reformist in the sense In Greece, Syriza won a historic man-
At times these arguments may even that it helps the bourgeoisie directly or date to oppose austerity, only to capitulate
have a ring of truth to them. During peri- indirectly to smash the old conquests to the demands of international finance
ods of substantial capitalist upswing, the of the working class.”1 capital, with horrifying consequences for
bosses have been able to afford a number Today, the crisis of capitalism also ex- the Greek masses.
of significant democratic and social re- presses itself as the crisis of reformism. In every case, faced with serious re-
forms, at least in the advanced capitalist Since the end of the post-war boom in sistance from the ruling class, the left re-
countries. The period of the rise of Social the 1970s, the gains of the working class formist leaders retreated.
Democracy, leading up to the First World have been slowly and painfully stripped As a result, the ‘left’ has been com-
War, was one such period. As was the so- back all over the world. Reform has turned pletely discredited. But the rage at the
called ‘glorious thirty years’ that followed to counter-reform. The same Labour Par- base of society has not disappeared. In-
the end of the Second World War. ty that introduced ‘cradle to grave’ welfare stead, a significant section of the working
But history shows that peaceful and in the 1940s is now trying to slash £5 bil- class has therefore turned to figures like
gradual progress is impossible under lion in disability support payments. Trump, ‘Reform UK’, and ‘Alternative für

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Deutschland’, in the hope that they will the ruling class, such as its moral code, the bourgeois state. This is the “first letter
offer a way out of the crisis. become universal ‘values’ and ‘morality’ of the communist alphabet”, to use Trot-
in general. sky’s expression.
Betrayal In short, to the reformist the capitalist But, as a child of six could tell you, there
Why did this happen? The reason can be order is order itself – the only order that are other letters in the alphabet. And it is
summed up in the words of Trotsky: exists, and the only that can exist. There- necessary to draw a clear distinction be-
“Whoever worships the accomplished fore, anything that threatens the collapse tween the reformism of the leaders of the
fact is incapable of preparing the of this order is unthinkable. working class, and the striving for reform
future.” 2 This is why reformist leaders often by the workers themselves.
The outlook of all reformists is character- fear the very movements they unleash. Often the two will coincide. Reformists
ised by the crudest form of empiricism. For them the working class is not a revo- will offer reforms, and workers will follow
Indeed, the reformists themselves proud- lutionary force to be mobilised to topple their lead in the hope of achieving tangi-
ly boast of their ‘pragmatism’. They take the existing order; it is a mass to be ‘rep- ble improvements. Some Marxists might
as their starting point the immediately resented’. Mass mobilisations and strikes be tempted to dismiss the ‘reformist illu-
available ‘facts’, and then base their entire therefore amount to little more than bar- sions’ of the masses. Their solution is to
strategy on this foundation. gaining power in perpetual negotiations inform the workers that they are making
The ownership and control of the with the bosses. a mistake, that their leaders will betray,
economy by the capitalist class is an un- As soon as the foundations of the sys- and that they should not waste their time
deniable fact; the existence and power tem are threatened, the reformists retreat electing reformist politicians.
of the bourgeois state is, likewise, a fact. in panic. With leaders such as these, the This is all well and good in the ab-
In the so-called ‘liberal democracies’, the working class can expect nothing but de- stract. After all, such an argument would
passage of legislation through parlia- feats in the present period. be based on a profound truth – that re-
ment, universal suffrage, trade unions formism in a period of capitalist crisis
and so on, are all a part of the facts of life. Sectarianism cannot provide the reforms demanded
That the working class exists is some- Through the scientific study of the class by the masses. But it would still be utterly
thing that most reformists would ac- struggle throughout history, Marxism self-defeating and false, precisely because
knowledge as fact. But the idea that the has established that the evils of capital- it is so abstract.
working class could replace the bourgeois ism cannot be done away with without the To simply lecture the working class on
state and run society by itself is rejected conscious overthrow of capitalism by the the need to overthrow capitalism, without
as ‘utopian’. Why? Because the workers working class. connecting this general truth to the con-
are not already doing it. Therefore, the first duty of genuine crete demands of the living movement, is
Accordingly, the bourgeois state be- communists is to fight for the class inde- the hallmark of sectarianism. As Trotsky
comes ‘the state’ in general; bourgeois de- pendence of the workers’ movement. This explained:
mocracy becomes ‘democracy’ in general; includes the need to expose and resist all “The sectarian looks upon the life of
capitalist relations become ‘the economy’ attempts to bind the movement to the society as a great school, with himself
in general; the ideological principles of capitalist system and its institutions, like as a teacher there. In his opinion the
working class should put aside its less
important matters, and assemble in
solid rank around his rostrum: then
the task would be solved.”3

Consciousness
It is not enough to assert that workers
must become revolutionary. It is neces-
sary to understand how revolutionary
consciousness actually develops. And it
develops dialectically, in dramatic leaps,
driven by the struggle to change society in
practice, not in theory.
This is especially the case in mo-
ments of crisis, when capitalism cannot
afford even basic reforms.
In 1922, the Communist International
observed:
“Given the general situation of the
workers’ movement today, any seri-
ous mass action, even if it starts with
only partial slogans, will inevitably
bring to the forefront the more gen-
eral and fundamental questions of
revolution.”4
Four years later, more than 3 million
British workers participated in a gen-
eral strike, under the slogan: “Not a
penny off the pay, not a minute on the
day”. What began as a defensive struggle
against the onslaught of the bosses be-
came a direct confrontation between the

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working class and the full force of the Petrograd, April 1917 – the Bolsheviks’ slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets!’
British state, in which the workers could can be seen carried by workers
have taken power. Opposite: A rally in support of Gustavo Petro in Bogotá, March 2025 (AP / Alamy)
The potential for similar leaps exists
in abundance all over the world today. In Spurred by Petro’s call, popular assem- What the leaders had intended as a
Colombia, millions of people elected Gus- blies called cabildos were formed to organ- simple vote to strengthen their position in
tavo Petro as the country’s first ever left- ise the movement. The most militant lay- negotiations brought the masses to their
wing president on the promise of a series er in the assemblies began calling for an feet in a movement that could have bro-
of reforms to working conditions, health- indefinite Paro Nacional (national strike), ken with capitalism entirely and sparked
care, pensions and more. echoing the insurrectionary movement a revolutionary wave in Europe.
Petro has made it clear that he wants that defeated the right-wing government But it is precisely here where the ques-
to establish a form of ‘human capitalism’ of Ivan Duque in 2021. tion of leadership becomes decisive.
in Colombia, not socialism. Nevertheless, Fearing the potential for a mass revo- As in Greece, a reformist leadership
millions of workers support his govern- lutionary movement, the Colombian rul- can offer no way forward. The contradic-
ment and its reform programme, because ing class has made a temporary retreat, tion between the words and deeds of re-
they see it as an attempt to meet their ur- allowing Petro’s labour reform bill to pass formists is raised to an unbearable pitch,
gent demands for a better life. through Congress in June. But as the crisis and the movement is thrown into crisis.
The problem is, Colombian capitalism of capitalism deepens in Colombia, the
is incapable of meeting these demands. manoeuvres of the ruling class will con- The role of Communists
Therefore, the ruling class has fought a tinue, and the radicalisation of the mass- One might ask, if the workers have been
furious rearguard battle, in the media, es could easily grow – setting them on a so radicalised by this point, why don’t
Congress and in the courts, to block and collision course with the limits of Petro’s they just dismiss their leaders and take
frustrate the reforms. reformism. power themselves?
When Petro called for mass mobilisa- There are points in the class struggle If the workers could just improvise a
tions to support a referendum, or consulta when the workers say, “We will not back revolutionary leadership then a revolu-
popular, on a number of his reforms, he down!” Lenin identified this as one of the tionary party would be unnecessary, and
had absolutely no intention of going be- essential conditions for a revolution. Such frankly we would already be living under
yond the limits of bourgeois democracy. a point was reached in Greece in 2015. socialism.
Rather, he hoped to use the pressure of When the Syriza government called a The role of the revolutionary party is
the masses to force a compromise from referendum on the austerity package de- not to oppose revolution to reform; it is
the ruling class. But Petro’s intentions are manded by the country’s creditors, all of to provide the bridge between the two. As
not necessarily the same as those of the the demands of the Greek masses became Rosa Luxemburg explained in her pam-
workers and youth. concentrated in a single word: “Oxi!” – “No!” phlet, Reform or Revolution:

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 Lenin and Trotsky, May 1920

“Between social reforms and revolution telling workers to abandon the reform- If we are unable to attract the most ad-
there exists for [Marxists] an indissol- ists, Lenin announced publicly that these vanced workers and youth to our banner
uble tie.”5 parties should take power themselves, then any claims to be a revolutionary al-
But in order to pass from words to deeds but reject any collaboration with the rul- ternative to the present leadership will be
the party must be able to win the con- ing class and its agents. This was very ef- exposed as hot air. The struggle against
fidence of the majority of the working fective because it reflected exactly what reformism today is nothing other than the
class. Questions of strategy thus flow into most workers wanted at that time, and it struggle to overcome our own isolation.
problems of tactics. showed that the reformists could not ful- In countries where revolutionary
Communists must be able to see the fil the workers’ demands in practice. communists are only just beginning to
world through the eyes of the working Likewise, the Bolsheviks’ demands organise, the task of winning the van-
class. We must take as our starting point for a Constituent Assembly and the dis- guard of the working class remains only
the consciousness of the masses as it is tribution of land to the peasants were a future prospect. But even here we must
now, including any illusions they might not socialist demands at all; they were train well-rounded Marxist cadres, real
have – in reformist leaders, democratic drawn directly from the demands of the communists, who are not only able to
demands, the national question, etc. – and masses. But the Bolsheviks gave them identify the errors of the workers’ lead-
connect these with the need for the work- a revolutionary, transitional character ers, but grasp the feelings of the workers
ing class to control society. when they explained that the only way themselves. It is only in this way that we
If communists consider that the these demands could be achieved is if can truly strengthen the forces of com-
masses are mistaken in their demands or the workers and peasants took power munism worldwide.
choice of leaders then we must tell them through the soviets (councils) they had To understand the relationship be-
the truth. But not by lecturing from the created in the struggle, and carried them tween the struggle for reforms, reform-
sidelines. First, we must demonstrate out themselves. ism, and revolution, is the touchstone of
that we are prepared to fight alongside Lenin’s advice to the Bolsheviks was: any revolutionary tendency. Any that fails
them on whatever ground they choose “Patiently explain!” In this way, the to understand this can at best play the role
to fight. workers drew their own conclusions, and of a communist propaganda society, but
This was the approach put forward by turned to the Bolsheviks as the only par- never that of a party of proletarian rev-
Marx and Engels; this is what Trotsky ar- ty that could actually deliver the reforms olution.
gued for throughout his life, above all in they were fighting for. Without this, the This is our task. If we are to succeed, we
The Transitional Programme; and it was this October Revolution would never have must absorb the lessons of the past. ■
approach that allowed the Bolshevik Par- taken place.
ty to carry out the greatest revolution in
history, in October 1917. Our task References online at
In the spring of 1917, the majority of The coming period will contain many marxist.com/
workers looked to reformist parties like opportunities for revolutionary commu- idom-50-references
the Mensheviks. Rather than simply nists, but it will also contain stern tests. or scan the QR code

6 Return to contents
 Alexis Tsipras at a pre-election
rally in Athens, January 2015 (AP / Alamy)

LESSONS FROM GREECE

In 2015, the politics of reformism were put to the test in Greece in a dramatic showdown with the institutions
of European finance capital. In this article, Arturo Rodriguez looks back at this period to explain the causes of
the crisis, how the masses mobilised to defeat the austerity packages imposed on the country, and how this

M
inspiring movement was betrayed by the Syriza leadership.

arxist revolutionaries as cheaply and efficiently as possible, but trillion, almost the same size as the entire
are regularly dismissed the exploitation and restricted consump- US economy.
as utopian dreamers by tion of the working class means that the But the flip side of credit is debt, and
‘sensible’ reformist pol- ever-expanding mass of commodities debts must be paid back, with interest.
iticians, who claim they thrown onto the market cannot be prof- Things thus turn into their opposite;
can lastingly improve the living con- itably absorbed. This contradiction inev- credit booms lead to debt crises. This was
ditions of the working class within the itably results in crises, in which part of the character of the slump in 2008.
framework of capitalism. But the mo- the productive forces are paralysed and The economic gallop of the 2000s end-
ment the system enters into crisis, all the destroyed. ed in the ditch of a crisis. The recession
illusions of the reformists burst like soap Such crises cannot be abolished un- began in the United States, then jumped
bubbles, with disastrous consequences for der capitalism, but Marx noted that the to Europe, and later spread to the so-
the masses. system has various ways of postponing called ‘developing’ countries and China.
Today, the crisis of capitalism is also them for some time. Nevertheless, di- However, it had national peculiarities,
the crisis of reformism. This is not just a alectically, these temporary solutions which attained their sharpest expression
theoretical hypothesis. It has been prov- only pave the way for even deeper slumps in Europe.
en by recent experience. Ten years ago, in the future.
reformism was dramatically put to test in The system’s most important in- Imperialism
Greece. The events of the first Syriza gov- strument to temporarily avoid crises is Another basic contradiction of capitalism
ernment in 2015 are full of lessons for the credit, which can artificially expand the is that the international character of the
working class. market. This is precisely what happened economy comes up against the division
following the 2000-01 recession in the of the world into bourgeois nation states.
Capitalist crisis US and Europe. The productive forces long ago became
Capitalism is a system riddled with con- Cheap credit was thrown at consum- too vast for these narrow borders.
tradictions, one of the most important be- ers at a frantic pace. Outstanding house- The burden of national borders on
ing its tendency towards overproduction. hold debt in the US, for instance, almost the development of the productive forc-
Competition forces capitalists to produce doubled between 2000 and 2007 to $13.8 es is most glaring in Europe, a continent

Return to contents 7
fragmented into a jumble of small states. to ‘peace, prosperity and European uni-
Capitalism, which developed first in this ty’. Even a common currency was attained
continent, quickly came up against the with the introduction of the euro in 1999.
limits of the small European states. In fact, the means by which the European
Reaching this limit, the most ad- capitalists sought to overcome their own
vanced among them carved out massive national limitations were preparing the
global empires. So when an ambitious way for a pan-European crisis.
latecomer, Germany, found its industry German industry was, and is, far more
straitjacketed by its own limited national productive than the Greek, Spanish and
borders, it was forced to attempt to carve Portuguese industries. But inside the Eu-
an empire for itself at the expense of the rozone, the Greek, Spanish and Portu-
continent’s old hegemons, Britain and guese capitalist classes could not devalue
France. The result was two world wars in their currencies to cheapen their exports
the twentieth century. and boost competitiveness, as they had
The German bourgeoisie failed to eco- done in the past. German goods there-
nomically dominate Europe through war, fore increasingly tended to push out
but it achieved the same end peacefully in Greek industry.
the second half of the twentieth century Without currency devaluation, the
through the European Union. This, how- Greek ruling class instead embarked on
ever, involved a lot of horse-trading with a policy of ‘internal devaluation’, with a
the continent’s other ruling classes, and programme of major privatisations (in-
above all French capitalism, which had cluding most of the banks) and attacks on
emerged greatly weakened from the Sec- the gains won by the working class in the
ond World War. 1970s and 80s. The rules on ‘fiscal disci-
In a phase of economic expansion, this pline’ imposed by the Maastricht Treaty,
arrangement could hold together. The Eu- which established the European Union credit to create new fields for investment
ropean Common Market (later the Sin- in 1993, only created a further pressure to prolong the boom and expand the mar-
gle Market) provided a ready market for to cut back on things like healthcare and ket. In Greece, household loans increased
Europe’s industrial giants, of which the social services. by 393 per cent between 2001 and 2008,
strongest were, and are, German. At the In return, Greece received access to while business loans more than doubled
same time, the French ruling class was able cheap credit as long as the boom con- in the same period.
to draw on the strength of the German tinued. Entry into the eurozone made it This rapid expansion of credit not
economy to subsidise its own, whilst pro- much easier for Greek banks to borrow only helped to prop up demand and
jecting investment and influence south, at lower interest rates than in the past, keep businesses afloat; it also allowed
particularly to its former African colonies. which prompted a orgy of lending. the banks to make super-profits. The
To the European capitalists this all Prior to the 2008 crisis, European cap- Greek Central Bank reported in 2005
seemed like they’d found the royal road italism, like everywhere else, dished out that the banks’ after-tax profits had
gone up by 198 per cent in a single year.
“Tomb of the Unknown Citizen: In memory of the thousands At that time, Greece had the highest lev-
who lost their lives in an undeclared economic war (2010-2013)”, el of banking profitability in the whole
posted near where Dimitris Christoulas committed suicide at of the Eurozone.
Syntagma Square But it wasn’t just the Greek bankers
Opposite: The second day of a 48-hour general strike in Athens, 29 that were making a killing during the
June 2011 – tear gas was used against the crowds (dpa picture alliance / Alamy) boom years. Attracted by easy profits, a

Greece between 2008 and 2015:

1,258,000 unemployed in 2015
(25% of the population)
50% of under 25s unemployed in 2015
15% in extreme poverty in 2015 (up from 2.2%)
180% debt-to-GDP ratio (up from 109%)
27% fall in GDP
28% of businesses closed
14% fall in minimum wage
15-44% cut to pensions
40% fall in average disposable income
47% rise in the suicide rate

See references 24-33 for sources

8 Return to contents
number of French, German and Dutch designated the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, 40 per cent, and pensions by 50 per cent.
banks massively expanded their lending Greece and Spain), with France not far Unemployment peaked at 27 per cent in
to Greek banks. Foreign banks also ac- behind). 2013, and basic social services virtually col-
quired controlling shares in Greek banks Without immediate intervention, a se- lapsed. Workers and part of the petty bour-
in order to make the most of the opportu- ries of defaults could have threatened the geoisie were driven to misery and despair.
nities in the country. existence of the euro, and even of the Eu- The ruling classes of Europe claimed
ropean Union itself. The European ruling that the ‘profligate’ people of Greece, un-
Collapse class therefore stepped in to save the sys- like the ‘industrious’ people of northern
The collapse of the American investment tem, but would make sure that it would be Europe, had ‘lived beyond their means’.
bank, Lehman Brothers, in 2008 pre- the working class who footed the bill. The Greek ruling class itself joined in in
cipitated a collapse of the international blaming the ‘fecklessness of the masses’
credit market. Banks stopped lending The Troika for the crisis.
and sought to recover whatever cash they Greece was bailed out for the first time In fact, in the decade up to 2005, Greek
could, as they suddenly discovered that by a ‘Troika’ comprising the European workers worked the most hours per year
billions of dollars of ‘assets’ on their bal- Commission, the European Central Bank of any country in Europe, at an average
ance sheets were worthless. Almost over- (ECB), and the International Monetary of 1,900 per worker, followed by Spain.
night, Greek banks found themselves cut Fund (IMF). In exchange, they demand- The myth of ‘lazy Greek workers’ injected
off from the cash they needed to keep ed savage austerity measures and priva- chauvinism into the situation, but it was
themselves afloat. tisations, set out in a ‘memorandum of false from start to finish.
Facing the collapse of the entire Greek understanding’. The Troika sent its ap- The real causes of the crisis were to be
banking sector, the government an- paratchiks to the ministries in Athens to found in the contradictions of European
nounced a €28 billion bailout. A sizeable oversee these cuts on the ground. capitalism itself, and in the blind specu-
chunk of the banks’ debts were thus lifted Yet this bailout could not bring Greek lation of the banks, which the Troika was
onto the shoulders of the state. debt under control. It threw Greece deep- now endeavouring to save, scapegoating
A year later, the social-democratic PA- er into recession, since its austerity cut Greek workers in the process.
SOK government of Giorgos Papandreou demand from the economy. Papandreou The Troika did not bail out Greece to
announced a budget deficit of around 12.5 planned to hold a referendum on a second ensure the sustainability of Greek public
per cent. International rating agencies bailout (so as to shift the responsibility finances. Only a tiny fraction of the bail-
immediately downgraded Greece’s credit for austerity onto the masses), but was outs went to the state coffers, with most
rating, which in turn pushed up the gov- blackmailed not to do so by the German being pocketed by the country’s creditors.
ernment’s cost of borrowing. The Greek and French governments. This was, in fact, an indirect bailout of
state ended up having to borrow at rates Papandreou ended up resigning in European banks, mostly French and Ger-
of 10 per cent, just to pay the interest on late 2011. A ‘technocratic’ government man (but also Greek), which had bought
its €300 billion debt. under Loukas Papademos was then im- up to €200 billion of Greek public debt.
By early 2010, it had become impossi- posed without an election, and obediently In doing this, the Troika’s main concern
ble for the Greek state to finance itself on signed a memorandum for a second bail- was the viability of the international fi-
the international credit market. Greece out, which demanded further austerity. nancial system.
was effectively bankrupt, and its govern- There are endless indicators about the In absolute terms, Greek debt was
ment was compelled to ask for ‘help’. exceptional devastation that the Troika small. Yet it was politically significant.
European capitalism had broken at wreaked on Greek society. They resemble Had Greece’s debts been pardoned, oth-
its weakest link. But Greece was joined those of a country ravaged by war. The er countries would have been encouraged
by a long chain of weak links in south- country’s GDP declined by 27 per cent. to renegotiate their obligations, includ-
ern Europe that were contemptuously Average disposable income fell by almost ing heavyweights such as Spain, Italy, or

Return to contents 9
even France. This, in turn, posed a serious
risk to the international banking system,
threatening to drag the world economy
deeper into crisis.
The capitalists were perfectly aware
of this danger, and thus refused to make
concessions.
There was also an internal dynamic
within Greece that the reformists, espe-
cially the far-left ones, never got their
heads around. Through the Troika bail-
outs, the Greek state recapitalised the
country’s ruined banking system. This
was therefore also a bailout of the Greek
financial system, and, through it, of the
Greek ruling class. This is why the Greek
bourgeois never wavered for a second in
their defence of the memoranda, even if
austerity pulverised the Greek economy.
The Greek ruling class, weak and de-
pendent, needs the umbrella of the EU and
of western imperialism, and will diligent-
ly bow down to all its diktats. Therefore,
resistance against austerity was not in the
‘national interest’. It was a class struggle
that would come up against Greece’s for-
eign overlords but also against its own
bourgeoisie, as events would soon reveal.
Mass meeting at Syntagma Square, June 2011 (Ggia / Wiki)
The struggles of 2010-2014
The Troika bailed out Greece to save the people with no future, will one day take weapon in the hands of the workers,
world financial system, imposing harsh up arms and hang the traitors of this was turned by the Greek trade union bu-
austerity. However, the bourgeoisie’s at- country at Syntagma square, just like reaucracy into a routine charade so their
tempts to attain economic stability up- the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945.”1 members could let off steam.
ended the political equilibrium. Meanwhile, among the riot police, a pro- Spontaneous movements such as the
Indeed, the Greek working class did cess of internal selection took place, in occupation of the squares in the spring
not take these attacks lying down. It which only those who positively thrived of 2011 soon fizzled out, as they lacked a
waged historic struggles. In all key mo- off bludgeoning workers and youths re- programme and a plan for action. After
ments, the initiative was in its hands. mained in the force. The fascist outfit, a phase of frantic street mobilisations in
Once again, the workers proved in prac- Golden Dawn, began recruiting among 2010-14, the masses therefore began to
tice their immense power. the police. “Over the last three years there look for a way out on the electoral front.
The years 2010-14 were marked by [have been] many incidents in which fel-
mass demonstrations and almost 40 gen- low officers tolerated violence by Gold- The rise of Syriza
eral strikes lasting 24-48 hours each, ri- en Dawn members”, admitted a police Since the late 1970s, most Greek workers
ots, neighbourhood struggles, grassroots spokesman.2 had voted for the social-democratic party,
organising, etc., which at times reached Golden Dawn thugs attacked left-wing PASOK.
an insurrectionary tenor. activists and migrants. Their activities PASOK had emerged in a time of rev-
In the summer of 2011, directly in- provoked a fierce counter-response, es- olutionary struggle of the Greek workers
spired by the revolutionary events in pecially after the murder of leftist rapper in the wake of the fall of the military jun-
Egypt that brought down the US-backed Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013. Tens of ta in 1974. Back then, reflecting the degree
dictator Hosni Mubarak, hundreds of thousands of anti-fascists came out to the of radicalisation, its leaders, such as An-
thousands occupied Syntagma square streets to protest against Golden Dawn in dreas Papandreou, even spoke in revolu-
in Athens and other squares across the a mood of anger and defiance. The ruling tionary-sounding language.
country. Again in the winter of 2012, class was forced to rein in these thugs out PASOK’s deeds, however, were far
half a million surrounded the parlia- of fear that they might create an uncon- from revolutionary. But its connection to
ment building. trollable explosion. the workers was nonetheless cemented by
The masses breathed in tonnes of tear Under the whip of the crisis, ordinary the reforms it introduced during the years
gas, and rained petrol bombs on the po- working people tried to seize the coun- of ‘prosperity’ in the 1980s.
lice in pitched battles. Dramatic episodes try’s fate into their own hands. In the pro- However, the crisis from 2010 blew the
punctuated the street fighting, like the cess, they drew radical conclusions about party’s base of support to smithereens.
public suicide of the pensioner Dimitris their own power and about the nature of Far from granting reforms, it carried out
Christoulas in political protest against the crisis. savage attacks. It plummeted in opinion
the regime and against penury. In his The masses came up against a major polls, and by 2014 it tottered on the brink
powerful suicide note, he wrote: obstacle, however: the lack of revolution- of collapse. Its traditional adversary, the
“I see no other solution than this digni- ary leadership. centre-right party New Democracy, fared
fied end to my life, so I don’t find my- The majority of the trade union lead- little better.
self fishing through garbage cans for ers played a lamentable role. The gener- Conditions seemed ripe for the Com-
my sustenance. I believe that young al strike, which is usually a formidable munist Party of Greece (KKE) to take off.

10 Return to contents
This was a mass working-class organisa- small formation on the fringe of political possible to attain this within the frame-
tion with heroic traditions going back to life, which obtained 4.6 per cent of the work of capitalism (and of the euro and
the struggle against fascism in the 1940s. vote in the 2009 elections. the EU).
Its sectarianism, however, and its passive The masses seized upon it, however, Their formula to end austerity was to
outlook stemmed its development. precisely because it was an untested po- tax the Greek oligarchs, who keep their
In the heroic struggles from 2010 to litical outsider, and one, moreover, that assets in tax havens; to nationalise the
2014, the false policy of the KKE succeed- used very radical language. It promised banks and use them to fund public in-
ed in cutting adrift many of the best class to end austerity, revert privatisation, vestment (despite the banks being bank-
fighters from the general stream of radi- cancel the memoranda, bring the banks rupt!); and to demand a kinder deal from
calisation of the masses. under public ownership, and even spoke the Troika. The latter demand is like ask-
The party’s trade union federation, about the “structural crisis of capital- ing a tiger to become vegetarian. In truth,
PAME, for instance, often held sizeable ism”.4 It seemed to offer a clean break Tsipras did not really believe his own
rallies on the many general strike days. with the past. programme, which, according to one of
But it did so separately from the often In May 2012, under the new leadership his top allies, was just “a rallying call for
much larger rallies organised by GSEE, of Alexis Tsipras, Syriza shot up to 16.8 our troops”.5
on the excuse that the latter trade union per cent in the polls. In the June rerun it The problem was that austerity was not
leaders had, until just yesterday, been as- increased to over 26 per cent, becoming a consequence of ‘neoliberal dogmas’ or
sociated with PASOK. the main opposition to the hated right- ‘German wickedness’, as the Syriza lead-
The party likewise dismissed many wing New Democracy government of An- ership claimed, but rather flowed as a re-
of the enormous protests in Syntagma tonis Samaras. sult of the crisis of capitalism.
Square on the grounds that the masses It called for a Left government involv- The only way to break with auster-
were waving the Greek flag and not the red ing the communists and other smaller ity was to break with capitalism. This
flag. They failed to understand the mood leftist parties, a message which resonat- meant defaulting on the debt and na-
of national defiance, given that the Greek ed with millions who wanted to see what tionalising the big corporations to plan
nation was being crushed by German they saw as non-essential differences put the economy to satisfy social needs
imperialism. They even went so far as to aside in order to kick out the establish- rather than private profit.
scold mass occupations of the squares in ment parties. The reactionary and corrupt Greek
the summer of 2011 as “mobilisations that This prepared the ground for Syriza’s state could not carry out such a break,
entire bourgeois and opportunist political rise to power in January 2015, when it won which is only possible by harnessing the
forces surrounded with affection”.3 36.3 per cent of the vote, and only came energy and the creativity of the working
After the fall of Papandreou in 2011, two seats short of an absolute majority. class. It would have required new insti-
a succession of rickety governments al- Syriza promised to audit the debt and to tutions; it requires workers’ control and
ternated in power. Looking for a way out, reverse austerity and privatisations. Tsip- workers’ power.
the masses oriented towards a political ras’ so-called ‘Thessaloniki programme’ Such a transformation, however, can-
underdog: the Coalition of the Radical contained many positive pro-worker de- not be consolidated within the bounds
Left, ‘Syriza’. mands about wage rises, benefits, sub- of a small, impoverished country such
This party traced its origins to a 1960s sidies, pensions, and public investment. as Greece. It would have had to spread to
splinter of the Communist Party. It was a Yet the leaders of Syriza believed it was the rest of Europe and further afield. To

Return to contents 11
 Petrol bombs thrown at riot police
during a 24-hour nationwide
general strike, Athens, 18 October
2012 (ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy)
Opposite: Police attacking anti-
austerity demonstration in Athens,
April 2014 (Nikolas Georgiou / Alamy)

survive, the Greek socialist revolution come to realise that their most basic de- promise I would not go back on my word.
needed an internationalist policy. mands are incompatible with the entire We support you, but don’t you dare do a
For the cynical leaders of Syriza, capitalist system, which must be over- U-turn, because if you do we shall round
such a programme was regarded as un- thrown. on you, was the unanimous message.”6
realistic. For them, socialism and revo- Therefore, the rise of Syriza was highly
lution are, at best, a hazy aspiration for consequential, as it opened an important Blackmail
the distant future, but they are never a new phase in the class struggle. Yet, as As soon as Syriza came to power on 26
practical perspective. we shall explain, it cannot be automati- January 2015, it immediately came under
Events, however, would quickly prove cally assumed that the masses will draw irresistible pressure from capitalism.
that the reformists were the real uto- the correct conclusions from experience. Feeling the breath of the ruling class on
pians. As Syriza came closer to power What is required is the presence of a size- his neck, Tsipras entrusted key ministries
in 2012-15, it began to water down its able revolutionary party with an adequate to outspoken moderate reformists, such
programme, which was already quite policy, which can win over the masses, as Giorgos Stathakis for the Ministry of
moderate. This is no accident. The party help them overcome their reformist il- Economy and Yanis Dragasakis as dep-
began to come under the pressure of the lusions, and lift the struggle to a higher uty Prime Minister. On the other hand,
ruling class, which began to ‘correct’ its plane, towards a victorious revolution. he placed some figures from the party’s
irresponsible promises. What stands out in Greece, neverthe- left-wing faction in secondary ministries
Communists, however, must always less, was the advanced level of under- in order to share out responsibility and
differentiate the treacherous leaders of standing of the masses. Life teaches, and cover his left flank.
reformist parties from their honest sup- 2010-14 had been formative years. Voters The fact that Syriza fell short of an
porters. gave Syriza an enthusiastic mandate, but absolute majority in Parliament meant
Usually, in their search for a way out of not a blank cheque. They maintained a Tsipras was forced to seek a coalition. He
the crisis, the masses first look towards critical outlook. As such, despite its im- struck an alliance with the right-wing
reformism, which promises an easy and pressive electoral growth, Syriza always nationalist politician Panos Kammenos
painless solution to their problems. The had relatively low membership figures, from the Independent Greeks.
political education of the masses does especially in its youth wing. Tsipras failed to make an open demand
not come from books, but from life. Only “On polling day”, recalled a prominent on the KKE to support his government,
through experience, by putting the re- Syriza candidate, “people would walk up backing up this call with a mass cam-
formists to test in practice, can the masses to me, pat me on the back and make me paign. In fact, he was quite happy to team

12 Return to contents
up with Kammenos, thus obtaining a con- the EU, the ECB, and the IMF will go down Above all, the capitalists’ pressure was
venient excuse for the betrayals he could in the annals of international relations economic. The bourgeoisie use their own-
see coming. In this operation, he was in- for its cynicism and callousness. In nor- ership of the economy to impose their will
advertently assisted by the sectarianism mal times, diplomacy under capitalism is on unruly governments, by threatening to
of the KKE leadership, which wanted to shrouded in a veil of formalities and Ae- starve the system of capital. In particular,
have no dealings with Syriza and thus sopian language that conceals the domi- the ECB threatened to pull the plug on the
cleared the way for Tsipras to team up nation of a handful of imperialist bullies recapitalisation of the Greek banks, using
with Kammenos. in world relations. But the intensity of the the stability of the banks as a sword of
As soon as they took office, Tsipras and eurozone crisis revealed the truth, that Damocles over the government in Athens.
his ministers had to embark on numerous small nations such as Greece are expected All the respectable ‘international insti-
trips to Brussels and Frankfurt for nego- to dance to the tune of the great powers. tutions’ – the EU, the ECB, the IMF – were
tiations with the country’s lenders. Af- The events of 2015 laid bare the real mobilised to strangle Syriza. The ruling
ter two bailouts, the Greek state was still workings of capitalist ‘democracy’: par- class also carried on an uninterrupted
tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. Its liaments and elections are all well and political campaign against the new gov-
banking system was under tremendous good as long as the fundamental interests ernment. It was subjected to a carefully
strain and required liquidity assistance of the bankers and the capitalists are not orchestrated barrage of propaganda from
to sustain its day-to-day operations. The called into question. If workers dare to the European and Greek capitalist media,
Troika used this vulnerability to black- elect a government that challenges these who worked hand-in-glove with Europe-
mail Syriza. interests, it will find itself being bul- an Commission officials.
The sickening words uttered to the lied until it is cowed into submission or The attacks not only came from abroad
Syriza envoys by the head of the Euro- brought down. but, as a Syriza minister recounts, also
pean Stability Mechanism, the German When the bourgeoisie in the West talk from the Greek state itself.
Klaus Regling, give a sense of the tone of ‘democracy’ and ‘sovereignty’, as they The Greek Central Bank openly col-
of the ‘negotiations’: “You must never, now frequently do over Ukraine, remem- laborated with the Troika in its attempt
ever default on the IMF. Suspend all ber the way they crushed Greece. These to manhandle Tsipras. The Greek secret
pension payments instead. This is what words are just fig leaves for their rapa- services tapped ministers’ phones and
you must do.”7 cious interests. It must be said, however, leaked information to undermine the
The treatment meted out to the dem- that Syriza’s constant concessions only government. President Pavlopoulos, a
ocratically elected Greek government by whetted the capitalists’ appetite. right-winger from New Democracy whom

Return to contents 13
 then went on to renege on its promises, by
withholding funds owed to Greece.
The most worrying aspect of this sur-
render was that the government hailed
it as a victory, claiming they had ‘won
the battle’. By insisting that it was pos-
sible to achieve an ‘honourable com-
promise’ through negotiation, the Syr-
iza leaders sowed confusion among the
working class.

Yanis Varoufakis
The key figure in the negotiations with the
Troika was finance minister Yanis Varou-
fakis. As a famous academic, Tsipras ex-
pected him to secure a favourable deal in
Brussels.
For years Varoufakis had stood to the
right of the Syriza leadership. He recalls
in his book, Adults in the Room:
“My preference was for Syriza to
present voters with a basic, progres-
sive, Europeanist, logically coherent,
non-populist programme as a foun-
dation on which to build an image of
a credible future government, one
capable of negotiating the country’s
escape plan with the EU and the IMF.
[…] When I read the economic poli-
cy segment of Syriza’s 2012 electoral
manifesto, my irritation was such that
I stopped after a few pages.”8
While he defined himself as an ‘erratic
Marxist’, he admitted he had ditched his
leftist views to save the system. “It is the
Left’s historical duty, at this particular
juncture, to stabilise capitalism; to save
European capitalism from itself”, he said.9
His plan appeared very moderate: re-
structure Greek public debt, postpone
repayments until certain growth targets
were met, set lower budgetary surplus
targets, and decouple Greek banking debt
from the state, with banks in default be-
ing taken over by the EU. Ultimately, he
expected the ECB to bankroll the Greek
Tsipras himself had nominated in order As early as February 2015, the Troika state by printing money.
to appease the bourgeoisie, also added to demanded new negotiations to release To achieve this, he intended to exploit
the pressure in the summer, threatening a pending bailout payment. It began to the tensions between ECB President
to bring down the government. make draconian demands on Tsipras, Mario Draghi’s expansionist bond-buy-
Not only are the reformists’ econom- who came to power promising an end ing schemes and the German Bundes-
ic ideas of ‘taming’ the capitalist system to austerity but who found himself in- bank’s conservative agenda; and to pit
utopian, but so are their political ideas, stead confronted with a new, more brutal the Americans (who were less exposed
believing as they do that the bourgeois memorandum. to Greek debt) against the hawkish Ger-
state can be used to change society. The expulsion of Greece from the mans, combining all this with clever me-
Yet the state is not a passive instrument eurozone was threateningly wielded dia stunts.
passed on to the winner after elections. It before Tsipras. Under capitalism, this Mr. Varoufakis went into these nego-
has a distinct class character: it protects would have meant a return to the drach- tiations with his head full of the abstract
the interests of the rich and the powerful. ma, the sudden devaluation of the Greek models of ‘game theory’. It was all seem-
This comes to light especially in times currency, and the country’s dramatic ingly very clever, but it utterly neglect-
of intense class struggle, when the state impoverishment. ed reality outside the negotiating room,
shows its true colours. Or rather, the state A temporary deal was struck in late and above all the balance of class forces
tends to split along class lines, with its February that promised to release a pend- across Europe.
upper echelons openly siding with the ing bailout tranche. This deal pushed the Syriza barely tried to capitalise on the
bourgeoisie and its lower rungs draw- Greek government down a slippery slope enormous support it garnered from the
ing towards the workers. Ultimately, the of concessions. The deal forced Syriza to masses, both in Greece and abroad. There
working class must create new organs of continue previous ‘reforms’ and refrain were numerous demonstrations against
power to transform society. from ‘unilateral’ measures. The Troika the Troika in these months, in Greece and

14 Return to contents
elsewhere in Europe, including the encir-
clement of the ECB offices in Frankfurt.
But these mobilisations were local initia-
tives rather than part of a concerted plan
by the leadership of Syriza. They never
contemplated the possibility of calling
mass demonstrations anywhere. Instead,
they staked everything on Varoufakis’
‘shrewdness’.
In Varoufakis’ view, austerity further
depressed the Greek economy and helped
undermine its capacity to finance itself,
creating an endless doom loop that im-
perilled the general stability of capital-
ism. The Troika’s policies, he claimed,
were “organised folly”.10
The problem with Varoufakis, as with
other such petty-bourgeois economists, is
that he believes that capitalism can be put
on a sound footing through reform. Yet
capitalism does not listen to reason.
The bourgeoisie is not swayed by ap-
peals to reason, democracy or morality.
Each capitalist and each national gang
of capitalists is driven by the pursuit of
profit, not the general stability of the sys- A banner for the NO campaign, where the vote is smashing the wall of
tem. Each acts quite rationally from the austerity measures, including “layoffs”, “pension cuts” and “privatisations”
point of view of its own interests. Opposite: Tsipras at a NO rally (ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy) and Yanis Varoufakis in
Varoufakis one-sidedly isolated an as- Berlin, February 2015 (Reynaldo C Paganelli / Alamy)
pect of the crisis, disregarding the gen-
eral picture, and drew all the wrong con- would sit back and observe a landscape they could expect to be turned into a ru-
clusions. While austerity did sink Greece of blank stares. It was as if I had not ined banana republic.
deeper into depression, thus making it spoken, as if there was no document in For its part, the ECB tightened the
harder for it to repay its debt, it was much front of them. […] I longed for my aca- screws on the Greek banks by placing
more important for the bourgeoisie to demic days, when disagreements were limits on its liquidity assistance, i.e.
protect the interests and authority of the resolved through the power of argu- the lifeline to help keep the banks sol-
world financial system, by turning Greece ment rather than brute force.”11 vent. In response, the government was
into a sacrificial lamb. forced to introduce capital controls to
The potential splits between Washing- The referendum prevent a chaotic bank run. This in-
ton and Berlin that Varoufakis expected By the early summer, Tsipras and Varo- cluded limitations on cash withdrawals
failed to materialise. Syriza was confront- ufakis found themselves in a tight spot. from ATMs.
ed by a united capitalist front. When their The money promised in February was In Greece, the right-wing opposition
interests are at stake, the different na- not delivered, but Greece kept paying parties made manoeuvres for a parlia-
tional gangs of capitalists put their differ- its debt. mentary coup, in cahoots with the pres-
ences to one side. Varoufakis offered more and more ident (again, appointed by Syriza!), who
The rise of Syriza posed a political concessions, crossing all his ‘red lines’. called for the formation of a “broad front
threat for the bourgeoisie. Yielding to But the Troika would not yield. On 25 of democratic forces”.12 The whole Greek
the requests of Europe’s first radical left June, it proposed a scandalous new mem- establishment, including the Orthodox
government in decades would have en- orandum (a revised version of Varoufakis’ Church hierarchy and the owners of the
couraged similar demands elsewhere, es- final barrage of concessions) with even big football clubs, threw its weight behind
pecially from Podemos in Spain. Political more savage austerity and counter-re- the YES campaign for accepting the Troi-
and economic considerations became in- forms added on top. If Syriza signed, it ka’s memorandum.
tertwined. Syriza, and the Greek people, would trample on all its promises. If we are to believe Varoufakis (and
had to be taught a lesson. Time and money were running out. we have no reason not to do so), Tsipras
Varoufakis’ ‘clever’ proposals were Cornered, Tsipras announced a referen- hoped the NO vote would lose or, at best,
well-suited for university seminars and dum on the Troika deal for 5 July. win narrowly, which would make it easier
other impressionable audiences, but were As Varoufakis explains in his memoirs, for him to sign a humiliating deal.
completely unfit when it was a question Tsipras called the referendum as a des- If fear and despair reigned in the
of actual struggle against a class enemy. perate bluff, hoping it would force enough headquarters of Syriza, the mood on
As he rather candidly admitted later: concessions to allow Syriza to sell the the streets was altogether different. The
“My team and I worked very hard to put deal. But far from unnerving the Troika, working class rose to the challenge he-
forward proposals based on serious the referendum aroused the fury of the roically. In the early months of 2015, the
econometric work and sound econom- international capitalists, who redoubled workers had largely stood by, carefully
ic analysis. Once these had been tested their pressure: financial, political, and in following the negotiations. Now they en-
on some of the highest authorities in the media. tered the scene in full force.
their fields, from Wall Street and the Greeks were told that if they reject- Between 27 June, when the referendum
City to top-notch academics, I would ed the memorandum, they would be ex- was called, and 5 July, when it took place, a
take them to Greece’s creditors. Then I pelled from the euro, outside of which revolutionary mood developed in Greece

Return to contents 15
Mass NO rally at Syntagma Square, July 2015 (AP / Alamy)

through the direct interference of the In the words of a Greek bourgeois com- Marxists have unbreakable confidence
masses in events. Varoufakis recalls the mentator: in the working class. This is not blind
mood on the eve of the vote: “The outcome of the referendum re- faith. It is based on the understanding of
“Students forced to emigrate by the cri- vealed some extremely dangerous be- the role of the workers in capitalist socie-
sis who had returned to cast their votes haviour on the part of the electorate, ty. They hold the levers of the economy in
begged me not to give up. A pensioner which expressed itself along class lines their hands. Due to their concentration,
promised me that he and his sick wife [...] bringing a conflict that should have cohesion, economic weight, the cooper-
did not mind losing their pensions as remained confined to the Parliament ative character of their labour, and their
long as they recovered their dignity. and, perhaps, television shows into the antagonism with the bourgeoisie, they
And everybody, without a single ex- streets.”14 have the potential to develop a consist-
ception, shouted at me: No surrender, On the night of 5 July, when the results ent socialist consciousness, to overthrow
whatever the cost!”13 came out, thousands gathered in Syn- capitalism, and to rebuild society on a
Neighbourhood assemblies, local com- tagma square in Athens to celebrate their higher basis.
mittees, grassroots propaganda cam- victory. Yet this was not just a celebration. When provided with a clear objective,
paigns, and countless rallies gave a The working people of Greece were ral- workers can realise their enormous latent
powerful impetus to the NO vote. In the lying for a battle that, in their eyes, was power and show the most self-sacrific-
capital, this was capped by some of the only just beginning. They had flexed their ing militancy. The events of July 2015 re-
largest demonstrations in the history of muscles and gotten a sense of their own vealed this once again.
Greece, including a rally of almost half a strength. The slogan of the crowds was The retrospective lamentations of cyn-
million people on 3 July. This movement Oute vima piso! ‘Not a step back!’ ical leftists, who seek to divert blame for
was largely spontaneous. In a TV interview after the vote, min- the subsequent defeat away from the left
Tsipras, feeling the groundswell, ac- ister Lafazanis recounted how he was reformist leadership and instead to blame
tively tried to hold back the NO campaign, stopped by a woman on the street who the workers themselves, cannot conceal
cancelling rallies and dampening expecta- told him: “I don’t care if I end up eating the fact that the Greek working class rose
tions. Meanwhile, the YES campaign failed from the garbage, but you shall not re- as one man and defied the imperialist in-
to gain significant traction on the streets. treat!”15 This encapsulated the mood in stitutions of world capitalism.
Against the entire pressure of the the country.
capitalist propaganda machine, against The masses understood the interna- Betrayal
economic terror, and, indeed, against the tionalist character of the task at hand. The masses celebrated and readied for
vacillations of the government, the Greek Above all, they appealed to the workers struggle, but Tsipras despaired. On the
people massively voted NO. of Spain, who were increasingly placing night of the referendum, his residence
This was above all a working-class vote, their hopes on the left-wing party Pode- “felt as cold as a morgue, as joyful as a
highest in the proletarian neighbour- mos. This party had risen from nothing, cemetery”, recalls Varoufakis.17 Tsipras
hoods of Athens, Thessaloniki, and other in parallel to Syriza, on the back of enor- found himself between the hammer of
urban centres, while the YES vote won in mous protests by the indignados begin- the Troika, which demanded its pound
the most affluent districts. ning in 2011. They hoped that the Spanish of flesh, and the anvil of the masses, who
Yet the NO campaign carried along a workers would follow them in their revolt had expressed themselves so unambigu-
sizable layer of the petty bourgeoisie, against the bankers, the capitalists, and ously in the referendum and were out on
the students, professionals, farmers, their Troika representatives. the streets.
intellectuals, etc. In all, 61.3 per cent of “Syriza, Podemos, venceremos [we Tsipras scrambled to Brussels to get a
voters rejected the Troika deal, giving shall win]”, was chanted in the squares.16 new deal. After the referendum, the cap-
Tsipras a powerful mandate for a radical Had Syriza been a revolutionary party, italist class was divided. A wing around
rupture. All things considered, this was it could have swept away capitalism in German Finance Minister Wolfgang
a vote for revolution, backed up by mass Greece, which would have sent reverber- Schauble and his Eastern European min-
mobilisations. ations across Europe and beyond. ions wanted to expel Greece from the

16 Return to contents
eurozone. However, German Chancellor The Left Platform Bringing down Tsipras in July was en-
Angela Merkel was wary of the economic Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, tirely possible, as he became completely
and political impact this would have. The comprised various factions and tenden- isolated in Syriza. Tsipras lost the Central
US and the French capitalists were also cies. The largest caucus was the Left Committee (109 out of 201 signed a state-
opposed to ‘Grexit’. Partly as a result of Platform, a loose faction that brought ment against the deal), he lost the party
these divisions, Tsipras was now present- together different personalities and branches, and the Syriza youth. Even the
ed with an even harsher memorandum groups. party’s top body, the secretariat, protest-
than in June. Controlling over a third of the party ed.
On 12 July, Tsipras signed the dotted Central Committee, the Left Platform was The Left Platform and its allies should
line, trampling on all his promises, on his a force to be reckoned with. It had around have called for an extraordinary congress,
electoral mandate, and on the referen- 30 MPs and had one ministry in the Tsip- which they had a fair chance of winning.
dum result. Since many Syriza MPs re- ras cabinet, which was taken up by its Although in July the Left Platform sug-
belled (32 voted against and 11 abstained), main figurehead, Panagiotis Lafazanis. gested convening a party congress, they
Tsipras had to lean on the right-wing op- Many of their cadres were sucked into the did so timidly and without mobilising the
position parties to get the memorandum state administration, fostering careerist rank and file. Moreover, they called for
through Parliament. illusions and denting their will to stand a ‘permanent party congress’, that is, a
Betrayal is inherent in reformism, es- up to Tsipras. gathering of the previous congress dele-
pecially in left reformism. This is because For the first five months, Lafazanis gates that would not have had the power to
it promises much more than it can deliver and the Left Platform failed to provide elect a new leadership. Only the Commu-
within the narrow horizons of capitalism, a coherent analysis of events. Openly or nist Tendency (today the Revolutionary
to which it cannot envisage an alternative. tacitly, they accepted the government’s Communist Organisation, Greek section
In their attempt to reconcile them- different concessions, including the Feb- of the RCI) called for a serious struggle to
selves with the capitalists, the reform- ruary deal with the Troika and the ap- bring down the leadership through an ex-
ists will always ultimately ditch their pointment of right-winger Pavlopoulos traordinary congress.
programme. When tested in action, the as president, all while refusing to organ- Once Tsipras called the September
gap between words and deeds makes ise the left of Syriza. elections, the Left Platform began to or-
dishonesty an integral part of reform- While a few representatives of the Left ganise a new party. This amounted to a
ism, as it tries to distort and conceal its Platform voiced some criticism, they nev- friendly divorce with Tsipras. Why did
capitulations. er took their opposition to its logical con- they do this? The answer to this question
For critics such as Varoufakis, Tsipras clusion: open agitation within the party is related to the broader political limita-
betrayed because he was dishonest and and amongst the working masses for the tions of the Left Platform.
because of his insecure character. But his repudiation of the debt. The Left Platform encompassed differ-
moral bankruptcy was a consequence of After the referendum, when Tsipras ent hues of opinion, but the main plank
his political bankruptcy. U-turned on his promises, the Left Plat- of its programme can be summed up as
To prepare the ground for this betrayal, form MPs and their allies refused to vote exit from the euro and the EU within the
Tsipras reshuffled his cabinet and pressed for the memorandum. Having lost his framework of capitalism. Greece should de-
Varoufakis to resign. To his credit, Varou- parliamentary majority, Tsipras called fault on its debt, Lafazanis and company
fakis denounced the third memorandum, new elections. argued, issue new currency to capitalise
and warned it was better to leave the euro- After that, Lafazanis announced the its banks and nationalise them, and use
zone than sign such a deal. Left Platform’s split from the party. For its monetary sovereignty to implement
However, Varoufakis was just an ‘errat- all their indignation, this was a defeatist some pro-worker policies and stimulate
ic’ economist who did not have the capac- attitude that actually made things much capitalist development.
ity, or the will, to organise an opposition easier for Tsipras. The left of the party The expropriation of the capitalist
to Tsipras. Others were better placed to do refused to wage a serious battle to wrest class was clearly never part of the plan. In
this. They failed miserably in this task. control from Tsipras’ wing. essence, this is a more ‘leftist’ variant of

Return to contents 17
Syntagma Square, Athens, June 2015 (ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy)
Opposite: “No” in German, Athens, June 2015 (dpa picture alliance. / Alamy)

reformism, which envisioned a new type Greek society, with a tremendous impact more strategic goal with transitional ob-
of ‘progressive’ Greek capitalism outside across Europe. jectives and demands.”18
the EU that was not ‘neoliberal’. This is a The European Union is a reactionary By a ‘strategic goal’, Kouvelakis seem-
dangerous utopia. capitalist institution. It must be brought ingly implies that socialism is a long-
The cowardice of the Left Platform and down and replaced with a European so- term objective for the distant future, but
its reluctance to fight Tsipras in earnest cialist federation. A break with Brussels unrealistic for the present.
flowed from their lack of a revolutionary was therefore necessary. In turn, Tsipras and his apologists sim-
programme. But to start off with the demand for ilarly blamed the “unfavourable balance
Certainly, if Greece had stood its Grexit was to fudge the real issue: social- of forces in Europe”19 for forcing them to
ground in the negotiations with the Troi- ism or capitalism? The confused reformist accept a new bailout. Let us examine this
ka, it would have been pushed out of the programme put forward by the leaders of ‘balance of forces’ that overawed the re-
euro. But the ensuing economic chaos the Left Platform was utterly insufficient. formists.
could have been stemmed through rapid They did not believe in socialism and had The first thing that stands out in their
and audacious socialist measures: the ex- no faith in the working class. Nor did they fatalism is that the reformists, even of the
propriation not only of the banks but of believe in themselves. most ‘leftist’ variety, never considered the
the commanding heights of the economy, This is why they left the scene without leadership of the working class as an ac-
the planning of production to meet the putting up a real fight: because they were tive factor in the ‘balance of forces’.
basic needs of the people, and the intro- afraid of taking over. They were content On the contrary, they seem to consid-
duction of a state monopoly on imports to leave the hot potato in Tsipras’ hands, er leadership as a mirror that passively
and exports. These measures would have forming a small left-reformist party that reflects the ‘objective’ situation in soci-
raised the question of which class holds would safeguard their parliamentary ety. If the workers have bad leadership,
power in Greek society. careers. The masses could see this quite the logic goes, this is only because they
The Greek bourgeois state would have clearly and lent no credence to Lafazanis have the leadership that they deserve.
been incapable of carrying out socialist and company. This fatalism calls to mind one of Trot-
measures. The senior ranks of the army, sky’s last polemics over the defeat of the
police and civil service would have been The ‘balance of forces’ Spanish Revolution, The Class, the Party
the focus of putschist conspiracies and When confronted with their lack of a so- and the Leadership:
sabotage. Such a programme would have cialist perspective, Stathis Kouvelakis, “According to him [an author in the
called for mass mobilisations, for factory a prominent Left Platform theoretician, pseudo-Marxist periodical called Que
occupations, for workers’ control, and the argued that all talk about “some kind of Faire] a false policy of the masses can
creation of workers’ committees, relying mythical workers’ power [note his flip- be explained only as it ‘manifests a
on the energy, creativity and vigilance of pant tone] completely underestimates (a) certain condition of social forces’,
the working class. the balance of forces within Greek so- namely, the immaturity of the working
These measures would have paved the ciety, and the position of the radical left class and the lack of independence of
way for the socialist transformation of properly speaking, and (b) confuses a the peasantry. Anyone searching for

18 Return to contents
 tautologies couldn’t find in general a
flatter one. A ‘false policy of the mass-
es’ is explained by the ‘immaturity’ of
the masses. But what is ‘immaturity’ of
the masses? Obviously, their predis-
position to false policies. Just what the
false policy consisted of, and who were
its initiators: the masses or the leaders
– that is passed over in silence by our
author. By means of a tautology he un-
loads the responsibility on the masses.
This classical trick of all traitors, de-
serters and their attorneys is especially
revolting in connection with the Span-
ish proletariat.”20
As Trotsky notes, leadership is, in fact,
a decisive factor that powerfully shapes
the balance of forces. Bold revolutionary was a small country, that it risked isola- consciousness of the proletariat, the
leadership would have led to a very differ- tion, that it would undergo hardship if it attraction of backward layers to the
ent outcome in 2015. The fatalism of the went down the road of revolution. They advanced, the growing assurance of
reformists is a way to avoid responsibili- resembled the Cretan chieftain Kamban- the class in its own strength. The vital
ty for their treachery, or rather, to unload aros in Nikos Kazantzakis’ famous novel mainspring in this process is the par-
responsibility on the masses they just be- Captain Michalis, who demanded absolute ty, just as the vital mainspring in the
trayed, whom they accuse of ‘immaturity’. guarantees of victory before he would em- mechanism of the party is its leader-
The Syriza fatalists are unaware of bark on any revolt against the Ottomans, ship. The role and the responsibility
the self-defeating character of their ar- and was rightly ridiculed by his comrades of the leadership in a revolutionary
gument. The whole problem, they say, for his cowardice. epoch is colossal.”21
was that the Greek and European bal- If you are looking for absolute guaran-
ance of forces was unfavourable for a tees, you should not enter politics. Victory The KKE and the sterility of
socialist break with the Troika. Better to is the product of struggle, in which living sectarianism
hold onto power even at the cost of sac- forces contend with living forces. Certain- Amidst these great events, there was a po-
rificing our programme, they thought, in ly, the Greek revolution would have been litical force in Greece that actually stood
the hope that the ‘balance of forces’ may isolated for some time and would have for socialist revolution. The Communist
improve someday. come up against difficulties. But capital- Party of Greece (KKE) comprises some
But, in fact, the line they advocated ism is bound to break at its weakest link. of the most class-conscious workers and
only made that balance of forces much The Greek link, however, was part of youth in the country. During the years of
worse by demoralising their supporters a longer chain. A revolution would have the crisis, it put forward bold anti-cap-
at home and abroad. Indeed, the decline easily spread beyond its borders, start- italist demands. However, its sectarian
of Podemos after 2015 was in part related ing with Spain, especially if it adopted policies raised a wall between itself and
to the events in Greece. an active internationalist policy. During the masses.
The years 2010-14 had witnessed the first difficult months, solidarity from The KKE lost many votes in the 2012
unprecedented mass mobilisations. In across Europe would have hindered at- elections, as most workers oriented to-
2015, Syriza was propelled to power and tempts to choke the Greek revolution. wards Syriza, which at the time called
enjoyed the sympathy of over 80 per cent All the talk about the unfavourable for a broad government of the left. The
of the electorate. Over 61 per cent of the ‘balance of forces’ reflects the reformists’ KKE criticised Syriza from the outset, and
electorate voted against the deal, dis- lack of trust in the working class, which many of its criticisms to its reformist pro-
missing the threats and the propagan- was their only firm point of support in gramme were entirely correct. But they
da of all the powers that be. The masses their conflict with the Troika. Without were framed in a hysterical, rather than
came out on the streets, not just to cele- this, Tsipras felt himself without solid a patient way, that failed to resonate with
brate, but to fight. ground under his feet, which explains his Syriza voters that the KKE could have
When the referendum results came deep insecurity. This contempt for the otherwise won over.
out, the capitalist class was divided and working class was shared by the leaders After the January 2015 elections, the
disoriented. This coincided with a major of the Left Platform. KKE should have denounced the alliance
round of radicalisation in Spain, where The bitter truth is that the working with Kammenos, condemned the endless
left-wing party Podemos was on the rise. class was ripe for revolution in July 2015. postponement of Syriza’s programme
Revolutionary developments in Greece It was the leadership of Syriza that was in favour of negotiations, and offered its
would have shaken the whole of Europe. unripe: on the left, right, and centre of support for any pro-worker measures that
Consciousness was developing in leaps the party. The masses could have crushed would have helped revert the memoranda
and bounds. the class enemy with their little finger. and break with the diktats of the Troika.
Such sudden changes in consciousness But they were lions led by donkeys. What This would have helped unmask Tsipras,
are a prime feature of revolution, where was lacking was the subjective factor, the and, moreover, would have struck a chord
the ‘balance of forces’ evolves dynamical- presence of a sizeable revolutionary or- among many Syriza voters.
ly, week to week, day to day, and even hour ganisation. In the words of Trotsky: The KKE’s mistaken sectarian ap-
to hour. To deny that revolution was pos- “The development of the revolu- proach reached its acme in the July ref-
sible under such conditions is to deny the tion precisely consists of this, that erendum. Rather than call for a critical
possibility of revolution in general. the relationship of forces keeps in- vote for the NO, it called for a spoilt bal-
The reformists, both in Syriza and in cessantly and rapidly changing un- lot! They equated the government and
the Left Platform, retorted that Greece der the impact of the changes in the the Troika:

Return to contents 19
Anti-austerity protest at Syntagma, June 2015 (DTRocks / Wiki)

“The people, through their activity and The decomposition of Syriza expressed chiefly through abstention,
their choice in the referendum, must After signing the third memorandum, which increased by 7.5 percentage points.
respond to the deception of the false Tsipras held new elections in September With time, Tsipras’ authority crum-
question posed by the government 2015, which he won comfortably. The KKE bled. Syriza implemented the new memo-
and reject the proposal of the EU-IMF- did not make any gains, hovering around randum fully, making new rounds of cuts.
ECB and also the proposal of the SYR- 5 per cent, while Popular Unity, led by La- Unsurprisingly, he lost the 2019 elections
IZA-ANEL government.”22 fazanis, did not even make it into parlia- to Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ New Democracy,
But the people saw things differently. ment. In turn, the hated bourgeois parties which has been safely in power ever since.
At a time when Greek society was be- kept bleeding votes. Many ex-Syriza lefts speak today of a
ing divided into two opposing camps, How did Tsipras win, when he had be- ‘structural’ turn to the right in Greek so-
one supporting the Troika ultimatum, trayed all his promises and trampled on ciety. Their logic is as follows: the mass-
and the other opposing it, the position the referendum? This is equivalent to es weren’t ready for a revolution in 2015,
of the KKE was to stay aloof from this asking why Popular Unity failed. thus the objective conditions for struggle
battle, which they considered a sham. For five months, Lafazanis had been a were unfavourable for the Syriza leader-
While it is true that Tsipras regarded minister in Tsipras’ cabinet, where he had ship. After the events of 2015 the mass-
this conflict as a way of getting a strong- refrained from making open criticisms. es became demoralised, and supposedly
er hand at the negotiations, the masses Following the signing of the memoran- turned to the right.
perceived it as a chance to deliver a blow dum, Lafazanis and the party lefts in- The aim of this sophistry is to get the
against the Troika. dignantly stormed out of Syriza. But this reformists off the hook. But the truth,
In order for communists to win over split was not prepared politically. in fact, is the opposite: it was the betray-
the mass of working people, they need The Left Platform had gone along al of the reformists which prepared the
to be able to relate to this mood and to with the government, making veiled conditions for the return of the right.
help the people draw all the necessary criticisms here and there, but failing The masses fought like lions, displaying
conclusions. This is the genuine policy of to provide a coherent explanation of remarkable courage and determination.
Leninism. the situation. Moreover, its programme They rose up without their leadership
The KKE should not have suspended its for a capitalist Grexit understandably and sometimes against it. All the greater
criticisms of the Tsipras government. But failed to enthuse anyone – themselves honour is due to the Greek working class.
what the KKE leadership should have said included. Nothing more could have been asked of it.
to the hundreds of thousands who mo- Tsipras provided the most coherent ex- What was lacking was adequate revo-
bilised against the Troika ultimatum is: planation for the events of the summer: lutionary leadership, which is the crucial
we are with you, we will fight shoulder to we negotiated as hard as we could, but we factor in the situation.
shoulder against the Troika, but we have were crushed by the Troika, and, having Almost a decade after the referendum,
no trust in the leadership of Syriza. Even promised not to leave the euro, we had no none of the fundamental problems have
if we win the referendum, in order to end option but to accept the memorandum, been resolved. Although Greek debt has
austerity, we must repudiate the debt and which we promise to apply as fairly and fallen from its peak of 210 per cent of
break with capitalism. humanely as possible. GDP in 2020, it still remains extremely
The KKE thus stood on the side-lines Lafazanis and Popular Unity, who had high at 142 per cent. A new crisis is being
during a decisive class battle. It was con- kept silent in the previous months, could prepared.
sequently looked upon with mistrust by not respond convincingly to these argu- The working class is once again begin-
those who had courageously voted NO. ments. The masses do not break with their ning to move. Its revolutionary leader-
The KKE was therefore unable to cap- old organisations easily. ship must be forged before the decisive
italise on the discredit that befell the In the words of Trotsky: “only on the events take place. This is the task the Rev-
government when it signed the third basis of their own experience through olutionary Communist International has
memorandum. several stages can the broad layers of set itself, in Greece and internationally. ■
The entire policy of the KKE, in fact, the masses become convinced that a new
proved counterproductive and indirect- leadership is firmer, more reliable, more References online at
ly helped Tsipras. Through its sectarian loyal than the old”.23 Lafazanis was nei- marxist.com/
aloofness, the KKE refused to take any re- ther firmer nor more reliable. idom-50-references
sponsibility in the class struggle, throw- In the September 2015 elections, op- or scan the QR code
ing its barbs from a safe distance. position to the third memorandum was

20 Return to contents
 THE GERMAN
PEASANTS’ WAR:
A REVOLUTION TO BRING HEAVEN TO EARTH
The German Peasants’ War of 1524-26 was one of the most important episodes in the Protestant Reformation.
Five hundred years on, Lukas Kutschera explains the origins of this monumental uprising of the oppressed,
why it was defeated, and the impact it had on the history of both Germany and Europe as a whole.

T
his year marks the 500th an- The Peasants’ War was a pivotal event What began as a conflict between
niversary of the peak of the in the Protestant Reformation, which Martin Luther – the German monk and
German Peasants’ War of 1524- Friedrich Engels counted as one of the professor of theology – and the Roman
26. In the course of the war, most important stages in the struggle Catholic Church, sparked a revolutionary
the oppressed masses in both of the European bourgeoisie against conflagration in early modern Europe.
the towns and the countryside rose up feudalism, alongside the English Civil In the Netherlands, the Reformation ac-
against the decaying feudal order. The de- War (1642-51) and the French Revolution tually brought the bourgeoisie to power,
feat of the rebels in May-June 1525 would (1789-94). Indeed, he described the Ref- when the Protestant Calvinists won in-
leave an indelible mark on the history of ormation as the first bourgeois revolu- dependence from their Catholic Spanish
Germany, and of Europe as a whole. tion in history. rulers and founded the Republic of the

Return to contents 21
Seven United Provinces in 1581. Howev- The Triumph of Death (c. 1562), Pieter Brueghel the Elder
er, almost six decades before this were Opposite: The Holy Roman Empire around 1400
the mass revolts in southern and central
Previous page: Episode from the German Peasants’ War (Graf Helfenstein at
Germany, as well as Austria, Alsace and
the Foot of His Burning Castle, Mocked by Peasants) (c. 1867), Hermann Eichler
Switzerland.
The peasants decisively entered onto with whom they shared the same class lessons to anyone seeking to understand
the stage of history. And as Engels wrote: interest, to brutally suppress the peasants Marxism and the class struggle.
“behind the peasant the revolutionary and their allies.
beginnings of the modern proletariat, Thus, the first bourgeois revolution did A world in upheaval
already red flag in hand and with com- not end with the seizure of power by the Revolutions arise when the relations of
munism on its lips”.1 bourgeoisie. production – such as between landlords
As the movement developed, sections Engels took a keen interest in the Ref- and peasants, or slaves and slaveowners
of the exploited went beyond the struggle ormation. In 1850, he published the pam- – inhibit the development of humanity’s
against the church and began to attack the phlet The Peasant War in Germany, in which productive forces, namely science, indus-
feudal system itself, with some preach- he drew out the similarities between the try and technique. This contradiction was
ing an early form of communism. The historical revolution in Germany in 1525, the driving force behind the Reformation
German Peasants’ War thus anticipated and that of 1848-49. In the revolution of and the Peasants’ War.
future class struggles – between the bour- 1848, the bourgeoisie in Germany had At that time, new, more productive
geoisie and the proletariat. once again made a pact with the nobility capitalist relations were maturing. How-
The oppressed began to take their fate out of fear of the masses, instead of tak- ever, the feudal order stood in the way of
into their own hands. They organised ing the fight against feudalism to its logi- their development. Society was at an im-
themselves, tested out programmes and cal conclusion. Engels declared: passe, of which growing sections of the
methods, and drew radical conclusions “Those classes and fractions of classes population became painfully aware.
from their experiences. Tens of thousands which everywhere betrayed 1848 and In the sixteenth century, Germany was
of mostly nameless heroes lost their lives 1849, can be found in the role of trai- a hierarchically organised feudal society,
in this struggle. tors as early as 1525, though on a lower fragmented into the more than 300 small
When the masses came onto the scene level of development.”2 states of the Holy Roman Empire.
with their own demands, the Reforma- The work is a milestone in the develop- Formally, the emperor stood at the
tion in Germany split along class lines, ment of Marxism. For the very first time, head of this society. Unlike in England
between the propertied, and the proper- the method of historical materialism was or France, however, there was hard-
tyless. Luther and the urban bourgeoisie applied to events of the distant past. A ly any central authority in the empire,
sided with the Protestant nobility. The lat- study of the Peasants’ War, and of Engels’ since the level of economic develop-
ter in fact sided with the Catholic nobles, pamphlet, continue to offer important ment and the resulting interests of the

22 Return to contents
various provinces were too far apart for support the nobility, the clergy and the gouging, stretching on the rack, the
centralisation. rulers in the cities. The peasants, on the chopping of fingers and hands; to death
The secular and ecclesiastical princ- other hand, lived off the food they grew by beheading, ‘breaking on the wheel’,
es in the largest of the small German for themselves in addition to working hot irons, and ‘quartering’. When death
states profited from this. These high for their lords. at last released the peasant from his
nobles expanded their territories into There were different degrees of ex- earthly torment, the surviving depend-
almost independent absolutist states, ploitation. Serfs in Germany were almost ents had to hand over a large part of their
with standing armies and independent slaves of their landowners, with hardly inheritance to their landlord.
state bureaucracies. This enabled them any rights. There were also bondsmen At the same time, the rulers restruc-
to extend their power in relation to the who enjoyed some personal liberties, tured the judicial system in their favour.
emperor, as well as the middle and lower but still had to provide labour for their Previously, in many places, aldermen
nobility and the cities. landlord; and free tenant farmers, who from the village community conducted
This development had revolutionary only had to pay rent. However, the ev- trials themselves and according to local
consequences. Maintaining mercenaries er-increasing need of the ruling class for customary law. Now the lords employed
and officials cost money. Even those who money created an enormous pressure professional lawyers and codified the law
wanted to oppose the endeavours of the towards the disenfranchisement and in- – naturally in accordance with their own
princes, or keep up with their pomp, had tensified exploitation of the peasantry as exploitative interests.
to find the money. For example, with the a whole.
invention of gunpowder, firearms started By the end of the fifteenth century, the Bourgeois development
to become the most important means of conditions for the peasantry had become In order to make money from the surplus
warfare. But only the richest could afford intolerable. The landlords squeezed the squeezed out of the peasants, the lords
these weapons. peasants to the absolute limit. They in- had to sell it in the form of commodities.
The feudal mode of production was vented countless new taxes and services, This primarily benefited the cities and
based on the exploitation of the peas- forbade emigration, restricted the use of their bourgeoisie. Trade and manufac-
antry, originally through the payment common land in the villages, and even turing capitalism sprouted there. Whilst
of goods in kind, such as the tithe – a threw bondsmen and free peasants into the medieval guild trades were still
tax of 10 per cent of annual production, prison to force them into serfdom. Here dominant, the first beginnings of wage
paid to the clergy – and the performance the landlords could subject peasants to labour were already developing. For ex-
of unpaid labour on the landlords’ es- the most brutal of tortures with impunity. ample, in the form of the so-called ‘put-
tates, the so-called ‘Frondienst’. These Forms of the lords’ ‘justice’ ranged ting-out’ system, which was particularly
forms of exploitation were used to from ear clipping, nose cutting, eye widespread in the textile industry. Or in

Return to contents 23
mining, which flourished in what is now certain privileges. This favouring of indi- to foreigners. The clergy took money out
the regions of Thuringia and Saxony. vidual factions divided the bourgeoisie. of the pockets of the population through
The increasing extraction of precious The big bourgeoisie, or ‘patricians’, church taxes, the so-called sale of indul-
metals had far-reaching consequences – also concentrated power in their hands gences (i.e. the remission of the punish-
and not just because gold and silver sat- through their monopoly control of the ment of sins in exchange for money) or
isfied the growing demand for money. As city councils. The small and middle bour- the sale of forged images of saints and
Karl Kautsky explained in his book, Com- geoisie demanded a share in this political relics. The high clergy were also landlords
munism in Central Europe in the Time of the power. The urban labourers and the poor themselves. A significant proportion of
Reformation, mining also boosted the pro- had no civil rights and were therefore ex- the wealth went to Rome or its lackeys in
duction of goods in the countryside, in ad- cluded from any form of representation. this way.
dition to the cities where the metals were The patricians were therefore opposed by The Catholic Church thus hindered the
processed. Food was needed to supply the a bourgeois opposition and a revolution- development of productive forces in the
miners. Wood was needed for the shafts, ary-plebeian opposition of the exploited. empire. At the same time, it increasingly
railway tracks and the burning of ores. lost the social functions it had performed
In The Peasant War in Germany, Engels Shackles of progress in the past. The development of princely
wrote that Germany’s national produc- Sixteenth-century society in the Holy Ro- officialdom, the demands of rising trade
tion could not keep pace with the upswing man Empire was a “highly complicated and the invention of printing under-
in other countries. But in a letter to Kaut- mass with the most varied requirements mined its monopoly not only on reading
sky in 1889, in which he praised his analy- crossing each other in different direc- and writing, but also on education and ad-
ses of the relevance of mining, he funda- tions”.4 Nevertheless, many classes came ministration.
mentally changed his assessment: into conflict with the old order, albeit for Nevertheless, religion was the ide-
“I realised clearly [...] the extent to different reasons. ological cornerstone of society. Engels
which gold and silver production in Nothing embodied this as much as the explains:
Germany [...] provided the final im- Catholic Church, which Engels described “The dogmas of the church were at the
pulse which, between 1470 and 1530, as the “great international centre of same time political axioms, and Bible
put Germany in the lead economical- feudalism”: quotations had the validity of law in
ly in Europe, thereby making her the “It surrounded feudal institutions with every court.”6
focal point of the first bourgeois revo- the halo of divine consecration. It had The rulers used it to justify their position.
lution, in the religious guise of the so- organised its own hierarchy on the For example, the pope crowned the em-
called Reformation. The final impulse feudal model, and, lastly, it was itself peror. Theology was used as the basis for
in the sense that the guild crafts and by far the most powerful feudal lord, the study and interpretation of philoso-
the commission trade reached a rela- holding, as it did, fully one-third of the phy, politics and justice.
tively advanced stage of development, soil of the Catholic world. Before pro-
thus turning the scales in Germany’s fane feudalism could be successfully Martin Luther
favour rather than in that of Italy, attacked in each country and in detail, In the conditions of the time, it was inevi-
France or England.”3 this, its sacred central organisation, table that every social and political move-
German entrepreneurial families such as had to be destroyed.”5 ment against feudalism first had to take
the Fuggers and Welsers were among the The pomposity of the bishops, abbots on a theological form. Engels wrote:
most powerful in the world. They concen- and their army of monks fuelled the ha- “From the thirteenth to the seventeenth
trated enormous wealth in their hands, tred of the clergy among the nobility, the century, all the reformations and the
which they lent to the church, emperors bourgeoisie and the exploited in town ensuing struggles waged in the name
and princes. Because of these business and country alike. The lucrative positions of religion were, theoretically speak-
relationships, however, they were close- in the church were awarded by the pope, ing, no more than repeated attempts
ly linked to the feudal rulers and enjoyed not the German nobility. They often went by the bourgeoisie, the urban plebeians

24 Return to contents
 and the peasantry that rose in rebellion After all, the revolutionary
together with them, to adapt the old, elements also initially rallied to
theological world view to the changed Luther. Engels noted how with
economic conditions and position of his translation of the Bible, “in
the new class.”7 opposition to decaying feudal
The class content of the Reformation lay society, he held up the picture
in the struggle over the interpretation of another society which knew
of the Christian religion in favour of the nothing of the ramified and ar-
rising bourgeoisie. However, due to the tificial feudal hierarchy”.10
fierce reaction of the pope and the em- Even though Luther was
peror to his criticism of the sale of indul- purely concerned with reli-
gences, Luther became a symbolic figure gious freedom, the exploited
against the old order and thus a centre of masses interpreted his writ-
attraction not only for the bourgeoisie, ings, such as On the Freedom of
but for all oppositional forces. In January a Christian, in a secular way.
1521, Luther was expelled from the Catho- After all, the reformer had
lic Church by a papal bull of excommuni- not only preached against the
cation, and in April of that year Emperor clergy, but also against the
Charles V summoned him to the Diet of nobility. The oppressed thus
Worms, where he was called to answer for took up the cause of freedom
his heresy. from feudal despotism, which
Luther had only argued for a reform of they justified with Luther and
the sale of indulgences in his ‘95 Theses’ the Bible.
of 31 October 1517, and not for their com- Even before the Peasants’
plete abolition. He became more radical, War, peasant uprisings such as
however, as a result of his conflict with the Bundschuh movement or
Rome, and through the sympathy he re- the ‘Poor Conrad’ had become
ceived from the people. As early as 1520, more frequent, but they re-
he preached armed rebellion against the mained localised. Conditions
Catholic Church: differed too much from place to The Twelve Articles leaflet from 1525
“It seems to me that if the Romanists place for them to coalesce into Opposite: Luther Hammers His 95 Theses to
are so mad the only remedy remain- a general uprising. Their iso- the Door (1872), Ferdinand Pauwels
ing is for the emperor, the kings, and lated conspiracies tended to be
princes to gird themselves with force betrayed to the authorities, who with the arbitrary abuses of their secu-
of arms to attack these pests of all the persecuted those captured with the most lar and clerical authorities. Ideas from
world and fight them, not with words, brutal of tortures. the Reformation served as a link in the
but with steel.”8 However, with his ideas and trans- movement. In order to control the inter-
Luther not only railed against the clergy, lation of the Bible, Luther provided the pretation of Holy Scripture, the demand
but later also against the emperor and oppressed with the starting point of a for the election of pastors by the congre-
those princes who had not joined him. unified ideological framework for their gation was widespread. Protestant schol-
Parts of the nobility also joined his side various demands and goals. On this basis, ars such as Luther and his followers were
in order to enrich themselves with the the uprising was able to spread in 1525. often asked to decide on the legitimacy of
church estates, and to break with the in- The Peasants’ War began as a local af- these matters.
fluence of both pope and emperor. As a fair. In the summer of 1524, the peasants Despite his earlier radicalism, Luther
result, not only many cities but also entire in Stühlingen in the Black Forest rose up. began to play a mediating role once the
principalities became Protestant. According to legend, Landgrave Sigis- Peasants’ War began. Engels wrote:
The imperial ban was imposed on Lu- mund II ordered his subjects to collect “He resolutely attacked the govern-
ther at the Diet of Worms. This meant snail shells in the forest so that his wife ments. He said it was due to their op-
that the reading and distribution of his could use them as spools for thread. This pression that the revolts had start-
writings was forbidden. Luther himself proved to be the straw, or shell, that broke ed, that not the peasants alone were
was considered outlawed. However, Elec- the camel’s back. Armed, the peasants against them, but God as well. On the
tor Frederick of Saxony took Luther into marched in front of their lord’s castle to other hand, he also said that the revolt
his care at Wartburg Castle, where he protest against this arbitrary labour and was ungodly and against the Gospel.
worked on translating the Bible into Ger- excessive taxes. He advised both parties to yield, to
man, among other things. This close con- By April 1525, the uprising had spread. reach a peaceful understanding.”11
nection with parts of the nobility makes In southern Germany and Thuringia, as Luther shifted further to reaction, how-
it clear why Luther did not follow up his well as in parts of Saxony, Alsace, Swit- ever, when the uprising spread to Protes-
radical words with revolutionary deeds. zerland and Austria, the peasants took tant areas and became increasingly radi-
up arms and refused to provide labour or calised. A turning point was the so-called
The masses taxes. In many places, they were joined ‘Weinsberg Massacre’. On Easter Sunday,
With the Reformation, society divided by urban workers and the poor. In some 17 April 1525, peasants stormed the cas-
into three large camps, described by En- areas the bourgeoisie and lower nobility tle of Count Ludwig von Helfenstein and
gels as: “the reactionary or Catholic, the also gave support to the peasants’ de- took revenge for decades of oppression,
reformist middle-class or Lutheran, and mands – often out of coercion or a cal- exploitation and mistreatment. The count
the revolutionary”.9 However, it was only culation for power, but sometimes out of and his companions were executed.
during the course of the Peasants’ War sincere sympathy. Confronted with the revolutionary
that the division in the opposition to Ca- The rebels invoked the higher, ‘divine’ energy of the oppressed, which was also
tholicism came to the fore. law of the Bible, which they contrasted directed against his patrons, Luther

Return to contents 25
forgot all his old enmities. Now he called landlords. The Haufen (‘mobs’), as the in- people, to whom everyone shall also be
on the authorities – whether Catholic surgents’ military units were called, were subject and obedient, but with the or-
or Protestant – to show no mercy to the democratic organisations at local or re- der that the same supreme captain of
rebels. His famous inflammatory pam- gional level. They elected captains as lead- the field alone shall not determine an-
phlet, Against the Murderous, Thieving ers who were accountable to the troops. ything nor act without the knowledge
Hordes of Peasants, reads: This type of democratic control made and will of the ordered captains and
“They should be knocked to pieces, it possible to utilise the military training councillors, who are or will be ordered
strangled and stabbed, secretly and and experience of noblemen who had by the whole Haufen.”16
openly, by everybody who can do it, joined the uprising for the movement. For Such democratic alliances were revolu-
just as one must kill a mad dog! [...] example, Götz von Berlichingen ‘of the tionary in themselves. Temporarily, the
Therefore, dear gentlemen, hearken Iron Hand’, an imperial knight immortal- insurgents in entire regions held their fate
here, save there, stab, knock, strangle ised in Goethe’s play of the same name, in their own hands. The peasants, workers
them at will, and if thou diest, thou led the Neckartal-Odenwälder Haufen, and and poor themselves were able to discuss
art blessed, no better death canst thou Florian Geyer led the Schwarzer Haufen. their next steps. And where the feudal
ever attain.”12 In general, the Haufen also organised powers had been defeated, this self-or-
Luther now denied not only the Peasants’ themselves nationally, for example in Up- ganisation of the masses had the poten-
War, but also any rebellion against the au- per Swabia to form the ‘Christian Associ- tial to replace the old administration.
thorities, even though he had previously ation’. When it was founded in Memmin-
preached it himself. The reformer also gen at the beginning of March 1525, the Reform or revolution?
turned the Bible against the movement. democratic organisation of the resistance As so often in history, the decisive ques-
Engels explained that, with the gospel, in the form of an elected leadership was tion arose: reform or revolution? The
Luther sanctioned the “princedom by laid down in the ‘Federal Order’: Memmingen Christian Association also
the grace of God, passive resistance, “So from each group of this association adopted the Twelve Articles in March 1525.
even serfdom”.13 Engels spoke of a hymn a leader and four councillors shall be It was the most widespread pamphlet of
of praise “to the authorities ordained by appointed and sent; they shall have au- the Peasants’ War.
God – a feat hardly exceeded by any lack- thority to act together with other lead- Based on the oppressed masses’ inter-
ey of absolute monarchy”.14 The bourgeois ers and councillors as befits them, so pretation of the Bible, the Twelve Articles
camp around Luther had expressly op- that the congregation does not have to attacked the foundations of feudalism.
posed the uprising. be together all the time.”15 They stood for the abolition of the tithe,
In April 1525, around 1,000 represent- a reduction of the unpaid labour the serfs
The Haufen atives of the Franconian Haufen adopt- had to perform on their lords’ estates, and
The Reformation conjured up spirits that ed the ‘War Regulations’ at Ochsenfurt, the restoration of old rights, for example
terrified the propertied classes – both which stated: the right to hunt, and the use of common
Catholic and Protestant. In the Peasants’ “The supreme captain of the field shall land and forests. The election of pastors
War, the oppressed began to organise be chosen by the Common Bright by the congregation was also included as
themselves, initially against their local Haufen to have authority over all the a demand.
The reference to the Reformation and
From the title page of an anonymous pamphlet from May 1515 – the its function as a unifying element can be
peasants are on the left, the nobles and prelates are on the right, and clearly seen in this most popular writing
in the middle is a ‘wheel of fortune’, to which the papacy is bound of the Peasants’ War. The demands were
Opposite: Georg, Truchsess von Waldburg, a commander in the Swabian justified by the ‘divine law’, which made
League Army who played a leading role in crushing the peasants the articles universally applicable.
However, in the third article, which
is directed against serfdom as the most
severe form of feudal exploitation, the
compromising tone of the programme
becomes clear. Although, according to
the Bible, Jesus redeemed all people
equally through his death on the cross,
and therefore “we are free and willing”,
the article states:
“Not that we would wish to be absolute-
ly free and under no authority. God
does not teach us that we should lead a
disorderly life in the lusts of the flesh,
but that we should love the Lord our
God and our neighbour. [...] He has not
commanded us not to obey the author-
ities, but rather that we should be hum-
ble, not only towards those in authori-
ty, but towards every one.”17
The Twelve Articles expressed the masses’
hope of having a say through a compro-
mise with the authorities, although their
demands were directed against their ba-
sis of rule. The peasants were not a uni-
fied bloc. Some of them still had some-
thing to lose. In addition, the propertied

26 Return to contents
bourgeoisie was also involved in formu- revolution on their own. The programme the bourgeois opposition and the patri-
lating the demands. This was because therefore aimed to win over the nobili- cians in the cities often moved closer to-
the town of Memmingen had joined the ty and bourgeoisie to the movement by gether again. Most of the towns that had
Christian Association. making concessions. joined the uprising or remained neutral
Even though the Twelve Articles were In this sense, the programme demand- now opposed it.
the programmatic starting point for ed the overcoming of the economic frag- Meanwhile, the feudal counter-revolu-
many Haufen, the uprising often went mentation of the Holy Roman Empire by tion increasingly gained the upper hand.
beyond them in practice. The Weinsberg establishing the unity of coinage, weights Protestant and Catholic princes recog-
Massacre is just one example of how the and measures, and the abolition of cus- nised their common class interest and
Peasants’ War could develop into a rev- toms duties. This would have meant the took united action against the uprising.
olutionary war of annihilation against creation of a national market, which would In southern Germany, the insurgents
the authorities. Castles, palaces and have primarily benefited the bourgeoisie. suffered decisive defeats. The Heilbronn
monasteries were burnt to the ground Concessions were made to the nobility. delegates had to flee to escape the reac-
in many places. The serfs and bondsmen were not simply tion. Meanwhile, the Swabian League – a
There were already radical factions to be set free, but were to make redemp- military alliance of the southern German
among the insurgents at the beginning tion payments to landlords by way of com- authorities – assembled a powerful mer-
of the uprising. The ‘Letter of Articles’, pensation. Engels pointed out that this cenary army to put down the uprising.
which was written before the Twelve Arti- “aimed, finally, to transform feudal land The necessary finances were provided
cles, called for the rulers to be wiped out if ownership into bourgeois ownership”.18 by the Fugger and Welser families, who
they refused to join. Others came to rev- The Heilbronn Programme thus an- stood firmly on the side of the nobility.
olutionary conclusions through practical ticipated the liberation of the peasants in Under the leadership of Georg Truch-
experience with the intransigence and de- France in the 1790s, which was then sim- sess von Waldburg, the counter-revolu-
ceitfulness of their masters. ilarly realised in the rest of continental tion cut a swathe of destruction through
Overall, it was a dynamic situation: Europe in the nineteenth
moderates and radicals switched between century. This would have
camps, while alliances between the blocs been the best solution for
were forged and dissolved again. Local the development of cap-
particularism and political inexperience italism. Unable to afford
made it difficult to unite the movement in their ‘redemption’, most
the long term. peasants would either have had to
The rebels’ horizons often ended with mortgage their land at usurious
their own village or rural town. Traveling rates, or would have lost it alto-
was dangerous, cost money and time, and gether, creating a larger class of
was not even allowed for serfs. The mass- ‘free’, propertyless labourers, fit
es mostly had no access to education or for capitalist exploitation.
news. Further, it was primarily the local However, the Heilbronn
landlord who made life a living hell. If he Programme was not imple-
offered concessions, the exploited often mented. Threatened by the
lowered their weapons and went home – alliance of the peasants
only to be massacred afterwards. with the revolution-
Instead of realising that it was a mat- ary-plebeian faction,
ter of life and death, the rebels often re-
fused to help what should have been their
comrades-in-arms in the neighbouring
village or town. In exchange for supposed
concessions, they sometimes even partic-
ipated in the suppression of the uprising.
Added to this was the fragmentation of
society into a multitude of classes and
strata with different, often conflicting in-
terests, which hindered lasting alliances
even among the oppressed.

The Heilbronn Programme

In May 1525, however, an attempt was
made to unite the uprising into a nation-
wide movement with a common pro-
gramme. A peasant assembly was formed
in the city of Heilbronn, where represent-
atives of the various groups were sent to
discuss their common demands.
The result of these negotiations, the
so-called ‘Heilbronn Programme’, stood
for a complete upheaval of feudal so-
ciety in the wake of the Reformation.
However, it was also characterised by
the realisation that none of the estates
were developed enough to carry out this

27
 Illustration of Thomas Müntzer by
Romeyn de Hooghe, 1701
Opposite: Peasants’ leader Jäcklein
Rohrbach being burned alive in
Neckargartach, c. 1525 – a copy
from Peter Harrer (1551)

they agreed a truce, which they broke. As

a result, the rebels suffered at least 6,000
casualties, while only six mercenaries
from the princes’ army died.
Thuringia had been a stronghold of
the radicals. In Mühlhausen, the plebe-
ian opposition had overthrown the old
patrician town council in March 1525 and
transferred the government to the new-
ly elected ‘Eternal Council’, in which the
communist preacher Thomas Müntzer
played an important role.
As a reformed priest, Müntzer was in-
itially a supporter of Luther. He was even
appointed by him as the first Protestant
preacher in Zwickau in 1520. As Engels
explains:
“He did not, however, preach quiet de-
bate and peaceful progress, as Luther
had begun to do at that time, but he
continued the early violent preach-
ments of Luther, appealing to the
princes of Saxony and the people to
rise in arms.”19
An example of this was at Allstedt Cas-
tle, where he delivered the revolutionary
‘Sermon to the Princes’ to John of Saxony
and his son John Frederick on 13 July 1524.
Müntzer railed:
“We must destroy those who stand in
the way of God’s revelation, we must
do it mercilessly, as Hezekiah, Cyrus,
Josiah, Daniel and Elias destroyed
the priests of Baal, else the Christian
Church will never come back to its
origins. We must uproot the weeds in
God’s vineyard at the time when the
crops are ripe. God said in the Fifth
Book of Moses, 7, ‘Thou shalt not
show mercy unto the Idolators, but ye
shall break down their altars, dash in
pieces their graven images and burn
them with fire that I shall not be wroth
at you’.”20
In his ‘Letter to the Princes of Saxony,
Concerning the Rebellious Spirit’, Luther
now publicly turned against his former
the region. On 4 April 1525, thousands fortress in Würzburg failed. With the defeat supporter and called on the authorities
of rebels were killed in the Battle of at Königshofen on 2 June 1525, the Peas- to take action against the revolutionary.
Leipheim. With the Treaty of Weingarten ants’ War in southern Germany was over. It was at this point at the latest that a rift
of 17 April 1525, most of the Upper Swabi- occurred between the two.
an Haufen ended the fighting in return for Thomas Müntzer Müntzer fired back in December 1524
the promise that they would henceforth The rebels were also defeated in what is in the ‘Highly Caused Protective Speech’,
be allowed to convene a court of arbitra- now Thuringia. A coalition between the in which he insulted Luther as “that easy
tion in disputes with the rulers. They re- Protestant Landgrave Philip of Hesse living flesh of Wittenberg”,21 among oth-
ceived no concessions with regard to taxes and the Catholic Duke Georg of Saxony er things. He denounced the hypocrisy of
and labour. defeated them in the Battle of Frank- the prince’s servant as he covered up the
In the Battle of Böblingen on 12 May enhausen on 15 May 1525. Mercenaries exploitative lords with the Bible for his
1525, the Swabian League defeated a and horsemen faced off against peasants own personal purposes.
12,000-strong union of Haufen. Mean- armed mainly with tools. Despite this, Müntzer wanted to eradicate the root
while, attempts to storm the Marienberg the counter-revolution resorted to a ruse: of exploitation and oppression with his

28 Return to contents
vision of reformation. This led him to to take over a government in an epoch the then existing plebeians than a geni-
communist conclusions, which Engels when the movement is not yet ripe for us’s anticipation of the conditions for the
described as follows: the domination of the class which he emancipation of the proletarian element
“By the kingdom of God, Müntzer represents and for the realisation of that had just begun to develop among the
understood nothing else than a state the measures which that domination plebeians”,25 and thus had only a narrow
of society without class differences, would imply. What he can do depends social basis.
without private property, and with- not upon his will but upon the sharp- Nevertheless, Müntzer set about mak-
out superimposed state powers op- ness of the clash of interests between ing Mühlhausen the centre of the upris-
posed to the members of society. All the various classes, and upon the de- ing for the entire empire. He was in active
existing authorities, as far as they did gree of development of the material dialogue with the insurgents in southern
not submit and join the revolution, means of existence, the relations of Germany. As the counter-revolution ap-
he taught, must be overthrown, all production and means of communica- proached Thuringia, he tried to mobi-
work and all property must be shared tion upon which the clash of interests lise the people of Mühlhausen and other
in common, and complete equality of the classes is based every time. [...] towns to defeat the reaction together with
must be introduced. In his concep- Thus he necessarily finds himself in a the peasants near Frankenhausen. How-
tion, a union of the people was to be dilemma. What he can do is in contrast ever, he was only followed by 300 men
organised to realise this programme, to all his actions as hitherto practised, from Mühlhausen.
not only throughout Germany, but to all his principles and to the present After the devastating defeat, on 27
throughout entire Christendom. interests of his party, what he ought to May 1525, Müntzer was captured and
Princes and nobles were to be invited do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is severely tortured. He was beheaded out-
to join, and should they refuse, the compelled to represent not his party or side the gates of Mühlhausen; his body
union was to overthrow or kill them, his class, but the class for whom condi- impaled and his head put on a stake. The
with arms in hand.”22 tions are ripe for domination.”24 town itself was taken by the princely
When the Peasants’ War began in south- It was no coincidence that Müntzer en- troops, lost its former privileges and had
ern Germany, Müntzer felt the time was joyed greater influence in Thuringia. The to pay heavy fines. Other supporters of
ripe for revolution. He travelled through region’s mining industry and textile pro- the Eternal Council were also executed
the region, where he influenced the rad- duction, which flourished in Mühlhaus- by the reaction.
ical elements with his ideas. In Engels’ en, already employed wage labourers
assessment of the role of the communist who owned nothing but their ability to Storming heaven
agitator: work. However, the majority In the spring of 1526, the last bastion of
“There is no doubt that this propaganda of the opposition were still the Peasants’ War fell in Salzburg, Aus-
trip of Müntzer’s added much to the self-employed craftsmen tria. Like every ruling class in history,
organisation of the people’s party [the and farmers. According to the princes unleashed an orgy of violent
forces of the oppressed masses], to a Engels, the communist pro- retribution against their defeated sub-
clear formulation of its demands and gramme was “less a compi- jects. In total, the feudal counter-rev-
to the final general outbreak of the in- lation of the demands of olution murdered between 75,000 and
surrection in April, 1525”.23 100,000 rebels.
Müntzer returned to Thuringia during the The standard of living of the masses
power struggles in the Mühlhausen city did not in fact fall after the defeat in the
council. The patricians were successfully Peasants’ War, but this had nothing to
overthrown. However, the implementa- do with the clemency of the lords. Even
tion of a communist programme was out before the outbreak of the uprising, they
of the question. The measures of the new were already living at a subsistence level;
Eternal Council did not go beyond the they could not fall any further.
framework of a bourgeois-democratic re-
public. Engels declared:
“The worst thing that can befall a leader
of an extreme party is to be compelled

Return to contents 29
 However, the consequences of the de- wars – culminating in the Thirty Years’ gentlemen neglect the fact that the loss of
feat went beyond the toll of blood it took. War – plunged the empire even deeper these rights, and the local sufferings of
According to Engels: into backwardness. the peasantry, were all linked to the crisis
“From that moment the struggle de- This is why Engels spoke of the Peas- of feudalism.
generated into a fight between the lo- ants’ War as a turning point in Germany’s Müntzer and his comrades wanted
cal princes and the central power, and history. From Europe’s most progressive a revolution against this dying system.
ended by blotting out Germany, for two nation, it sank to the lower ranks. Even in They even called for the abolition of class
hundred years, from the politically ac- 1848, the German bourgeoisie lacked the society. This was impossible in the condi-
tive nations of Europe.”26 strength to assert itself against the princ- tions of the sixteenth century. However,
The Reformation had mobilised all the es without recoiling in fear of the young capitalism has created the material con-
forces that opposed the feudal order. The proletariat. Ultimately, it was the working ditions for communism. Today, unlike in
objective task was to overcome the shack- class that swept away the feudal remnants the sixteenth century, the vast majority
les that were holding back the rise of cap- in Germany with the revolution of 1918-19. are wage labourers who have nothing to
italism. The destruction of the Catholic However, Luther’s Reformation pro- lose but their chains.
Church would have been a significant vided an important impetus for the strug- Like feudalism at the time of the Peas-
step in this direction. But the bourgeoisie gle of the rising bourgeoisie internation- ants’ War, the capitalist system is now at
was not strong enough to impose its pro- ally. In Switzerland, the Netherlands and an impasse. Once again, the ruling class
gramme on the movement. England, Protestants brought feudalism alone is standing in the way of progress;
In the face of the revolutionary fervour to its knees. They mobilised the masses once again, the crisis is being passed on
of the exploited masses, the bourgeois op- for the ‘Kingdom of God’, and created the to the shoulders of the exploited. But
positional camp around Luther sided with kingdom of the bourgeoisie. the working class creates all of socie-
the princes, who mercilessly crushed the Today, many historians deny that the ty’s wealth. This gives them the power to
uprisings. Reformation and the Peasants’ War were bring Müntzer’s struggle to an end and at
However, this cemented the fragmen- a revolution. It is said that the peasants last bring heaven to earth. ■
tation of the empire. The Reformation were largely concerned with their local
developed into a struggle between the demands, not with overcoming the sys- References online at
Protestant princes against the emperor tem. They merely wanted their old rights marxist.com/
and the Catholic princes. The devasta- back, which the authorities were increas- idom-50-references
tion caused by the subsequent religious ingly curtailing. But these wise ladies and or scan the QR code
A copy from Jacob Murer’s Chronicle of the Peasant War (1525),
depicting the escape of the abbot and monks from Weissenau Abbey

30 Return to contents
 Moses Breaks the Tables of
the Law (1866), Gustave Doré

MORALITY AND THE

CLASS STRUGGLE
Throughout history, human societies have established moral codes to live by, which have also provided a
powerful ideological force for the maintenance of the existing order. Today, the hypocrisy of the capitalist moral
order is being increasingly exposed and challenged by the masses. In this article, Hélène Bissonnette explains
how morality develops, its hypocritical nature under class society, and the crisis of bourgeois morality today.

“F
rankly, these parasites Unfortunately for our moralising Things are changing. The reality of life
simply had it coming.” leaders, the working class is not as easily under capitalism is changing. Conscious-
These words were fooled as they might think. ness is changing. And with that, morality
written by Luigi Man- At one time, the murder of a CEO might is changing too.
gione, the alleged kill- have attracted popular sympathy for the
er of the CEO of the insurance compa- victim. But today, a striking level of sym- What is morality?
ny UnitedHealthcare. In response, the pathy has been expressed for the alleged Morality can be defined as the set of rules
American political establishment issued murderer. A poll taken in December 2024 or precepts of human action, and of social
the best joke of 2024: “violence can never found that 41 percent of Americans aged life. At school and in church we are taught
be used to address political differences”.1 18 to 29 consider this murder “acceptable”.2 that morality is timeless and absolute, i.e.
In the hypocritical, Orwellian lan- Rather than questioning the morali- the same for every individual, in all plac-
guage of the great and powerful, this ty of murdering someone in cold blood, es, and at all times.
means we must understand that the the real question many workers asked The Marxist understanding of morali-
wars waged by American imperialism in was whether it is morally acceptable to ty, however, rejects this abstract approach.
every corner of the planet are not politi- make millions of dollars from the deaths Rather, it sees morality as something con-
cal violence. And neither is the genocide of thousands of people whose insurance crete, at root a material question, which is
in Gaza, which is fully supported by the claims had been rejected? The answer was dictated by the evolution of human socie-
American government. a resounding: ‘No!’ ties throughout history.

Return to contents 31
 Our ideas about the world are not stat- Having a large number of dependent Therefore, to the ancient Hebrews or
ic, but undergo a constant process of de- children was known to reduce the produc- Greeks, someone who had many slaves
velopment. Morality likewise changes, tivity of mobile hunter-gatherer societies, was far from being a criminal or even an
evolves, as our conditions and social rela- whilst increasing the number of mouths exploiter. He (and it was usually a he) was
tions change. to feed. In certain conditions this could perceived as a prominent member of so-
All over the world today, the killing of pose an existential risk to the communi- ciety, who had been blessed with a large
babies is a shocking and morally repug- ty as a whole. The practice of infanticide household thanks to his courage, acumen,
nant crime. But there is considerable ev- thus reflected the harshness of life at a or the favour of the gods.
idence that infanticide was an acceptable time when the level of development of the It is only after slavery became redun-
practice in many hunter-gatherer socie- productive forces was extremely low. dant, and indeed an obstacle to further
ties around the world. Likewise, owning The rise and fall of slavery also reflect- economic development, that masses of
slaves was once considered morally ac- ed changes in the economic foundation people began to object to slavery in gen-
ceptable and even respectable; today it is of society. Most slaves were either cap- eral. It is no coincidence that abolitionism
forbidden in most countries, although it tured in war or were destitute individu- became a mass movement at the same
still exists in various forms. als, no longer able to support themselves. time that the working class, that is free
These are not simply differences of While falling into slavery was considered wage labourers, was growing rapidly due
opinion between different cultures, which a serious misfortune, it was nonetheless to the industrial revolution. This illus-
just so happened to decide randomly they preferable to the only other alternative in trates what Trotsky explained: “morality
wanted to live a certain way. These vastly most cases, which was death. At the same is the product of social development”.3
different moral outlooks reflect changes time, slavery played an essential role in
in the development of society and above the production of a large surplus, upon Ruling ideas
all in the development of humanity’s pro- which the achievements of a number of One of the most common moral rules,
ductive forces. ancient civilisations were based. which seems timeless and inherently
right to many, is that one should not steal.
In the Bible, this is presented as having
literally come down from Heaven, from
an eternal authority above society, in the
Ten Commandments.
But this rule is also a product of social
development. For most of human exist-
ence, there was no private property and
inequality, without which the very con-
cept of ‘theft’ becomes meaningless.
It was the development of agricul-
ture, dating from roughly 12,000 years
ago, and the growing ability to produce a
surplus, that provided the material basis
for the emergence of inequality, private
property and, eventually, the division of
society into antagonistic classes.
The new social relations resting on the
exploitation of the majority, naturally
found their reflection in a new morality
of the privileged class, which also mo-
nopolised the ideological institutions of
the time, such as writing, organised reli-
gion, etc. When the armed bodies of the
state came into being, they were at once
the protectors of the property of the rich
and the guardians of public order and
morals. This has continued to this day.
Class society itself constantly gives
rise to ‘immoral’ behaviour, such as theft,
and at the same time the need to explic-
itly prohibit it. The prohibition, howev-
er, can never actually abolish immoral
behaviour, because it is a product of ob-
jective contradictions, such as inequality.
Thousands of years of the teaching of this
commandment have not stopped count-
less acts of theft.
In The German Ideology, Marx and En-
gels explained:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas”.4
The ruling class could not maintain its
power over the vast majority if it only had
naked force to rely upon. It needs other

32 Return to contents
means, which are principally ideological, A Capital Execution, Place de la Révolution (c. 1793), Pierre-Antoine Demachy
and of which morality forms a key com- Opposite: The Simoniac Pope (c. 1827), William Blake, depicting Pope
ponent. Morality therefore functions as a Nicholas III in Hell from Inferno 19 of Dante’s Divine Comedy
tool in the hands of the ruling class.
raises the question, why is it accepted system, and the transition to a new
Moral decay by the masses at all? If it were simply social system. With the loss of func-
For as long as society has been split into a question of propaganda or force, it is tion of the old ruling class, the moral
exploiting and exploited classes, moral- unlikely that a moral system could take codes pertaining to its rule also break
ity has gone hand in hand with hypocri- hold within the hearts and minds of down. And similarly in a period of
sy. Official morality always purports to the oppressed for centuries. Again, this transition, the new morality based on
establish rules of conduct for all of soci- question relates to social development new relations of production also takes
ety, on everyone’s behalf. But in reality it and to the class struggle. time to emerge.”5
justifies and maintains the existing social When a ruling class is moving society The period of the decline and collapse of
relations, and condemns behaviour that forward, when its social order is stable Roman slavery is full of examples of mor-
undermines them. and developing the productive forces, al disintegration, particularly amongst
Fundamentally, the morality of the its rule ‘makes sense’ to all classes, even the ruling class. Under emperors like
ruling class plays an important part in the oppressed. Likewise, its moral order Commodus and Caracalla, assassina-
the social order, by attempting to unite makes sense, and is seen as a necessary tions, mass murder, and all manner of
the antagonistic classes. It maintains the guard against the collapse of all morality depravity became a common part of pub-
illusion that social harmony can be main- and the descent into bestial appetites. lic life. It was in this context that millions
tained with abstract, universal principles Hence the feudal morality of the of people in the Roman Empire, seeking a
of life. But this is completely false. The Catholic Church was accepted as right by new set of values, turned to Christianity
morality of the exploiters thus serves to everyone, albeit in different ways by dif- by the end of the third century.
blur and mask the class struggle, in the ferent classes. When breaches of that mo- Despite its origins as an obscure Jew-
service of the ruling class. rality by the ruling class were discovered, ish sect in a far-off corner of the empire,
Thus, when the feudal aristocracy was they were put down as individual crimes. Christianity spread rapidly amongst Ro-
the ruling class of society, honour and Dante’s Hell is full of kings and popes who man gentiles (non-Jews). In part, this was
loyalty were important, supposedly ‘uni- transgressed medieval Christian morali- because of the fiery rhetoric to be found
versal’ values, propagated to maintain a ty; his Heaven is full of individuals, both in the gospels against the hypocrisy and
hierarchical and stable feudal system. In- noble and common, who were thought to immorality of the elite, such as:
stead of ‘all men are born equal’, the rul- have epitomised it. In short, hypocrisy “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
ers demanded that everyone knew their was seen as an error to be cleansed from hypocrites! For you are like white-
place in the rigid social hierarchy, which the moral order, not an intrinsic feature washed tombs, which outwardly ap-
was supposedly ordained by none other of that order. pear beautiful, but within are full of
than God himself. However, when the mode of produc- dead people’s bones and all unclean-
Further, the ruling class never re- tion at the base of society has outlived its ness.” (Matthew 23:27)
ally respects its own moral code, and usefulness, and the social system based Likewise, the period of the Renaissance
will abandon it without fail if its vi- on this mode of production enters into a in Europe, during the fifteenth and six-
tal interests are threatened. The same period of historic crisis, the ruling class teenth centuries, was one in which the
Catholic Church that preached humble is no longer able to maintain its rule in old feudal order was irretrievably bro-
submission and gentleness to the ma- the same way. Its social order no longer ken, the rule of the aristocracy produced
jority would think nothing of ordering makes so much sense, and neither does its nothing but crisis, and all of its moral
the massacre of entire towns if they suc- moral order. Ted Grant explains: institutions were widely seen as corrupt.
cumbed to ‘heresy’. “Amorality is not something new in The intensity of the struggle between the
But if the morality of the ruling class history. It takes shape usually in a pe- classes, and between the contenders for
has always been hypocritical, then this riod of breakdown of the old social power amongst the new bourgeoisie, was

Return to contents 33
reflected in the morality (or amorality) of This reflected more closely the outlook of completely free to sell their labour power
the time. As Trotsky noted: the rising class: the bourgeoisie. to whoever is prepared to pay. These new
“Corruption was the keynote in Ital- The bourgeois may have been con- social relations inevitably found their re-
ian politics. The art of governing was scious that they were acting in their eco- flections in a new, bourgeois, morality.
practised in cliques and consisted in nomic interests when they fought the It was within this context that various
the gentle arts of lying, betrayal and Church, and likewise the peasants when bourgeois thinkers attempted to rational-
crime.”6 they fought to free themselves from op- ise morality, by stripping it of its religious
Trotsky points out that Machiavelli, who pression. But the masses were also moti- guise. Of these thinkers, Immanuel Kant
lived during this period of transition, saw vated by a moral revulsion at the entire (1724-1804) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-
the struggle for political power as a “chess rotten order, a revulsion which would 1832) are arguably the most widely known
theorem”, in which questions of morality play an important role in a series of dra- and referenced today.
did not exist. Machiavelli is often char- matic revolutions, such as the German According to Kant’s ‘categorical imper-
acterised as an amoral intriguer himself. Peasants’ War (1524-26), the Dutch Rev- ative’, for an action to be morally good, we
In fact, he was basing his theory on the olution (1568-1648), and the English Civil must “act only according to that maxim
actions of the ruling class of the time, War (1642-1651). whereby you can at the same time will
including the papacy. By exposing them This moral revulsion is itself a symp- that it should become a universal law”.8 In
so openly to the public, it is no surprise tom of a revolutionary ferment in socie- other words, before doing something, one
that his most famous work, The Prince, was ty, and is also accompanied by a healthy should ask oneself what would happen if
banned by the Vatican. moral intransigence. This was particular- everyone did the same thing. Would it be
In the same period in which Machi- ly clear when the French Revolution of good or bad?
avelli penned The Prince, Martin Luther 1789-93 unleashed its revolutionary ter- For example, Kant tells us that a world
nailed his ‘Ninety-five theses’ to the door ror against the Monarchy and the Church, where everyone lies would be bad, so
of All-Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. Lu- leading Robespierre to state: no individual should ever lie under any
ther accused the pope and Church of cor- “Terror is only justice prompt, severe circumstances: the ends never justify
ruption and hypocrisy with the sale of and inflexible; it is then an emanation the means if the means are immoral in
‘indulgences’ (forgiveness for sins, which of virtue.”7 themselves.
would help the buyer get into heaven), On the other hand, Bentham’s ‘utili-
and the accumulation of obscene wealth, Bourgeois morality tarian’ theory of morality was concerned
accrued from squeezing the masses. When the bourgeoisie supplanted the ar- with the consequences of an action: the
What Luther put forward was not the istocracy and became the ruling class, the end justifies the means. In this way it is
restoration of the old medieval order, old, discredited feudal values were sup- more flexible than Kant’s categorical im-
which was impossible, but essentially a planted by the supposedly universal reign perative.
new form of Christianity: Protestantism. of liberty and equality before the law. According to Bentham, utilitarian mo-
This led to a different moral outlook from But abstract and universal ‘freedom’ rality was based on the principle of seek-
that of the high clergy, implying a more concealed the very concrete interests of ing the greatest happiness for the greatest
direct and individual relationship to God’s the bourgeoisie, which needs freedom of number.
words, without redundant intermediaries. trade, free markets and workers who are Take for example the famous trolley
dilemma. You are driving a tram which
Al-Saftawi street, northern Gaza, January 2025 (Imago / Alamy)

34 Return to contents
is headed for the track on which there used to address political differences”. That explain the various and contradictory
are five people tied, and it will surely their ‘absolute’ principles are constantly forms of morality that have arisen and
kill them. You can actively intervene and flouted in every country, above all by the fallen with different modes of production
switch the tram to a different track, on state, is of little consequence to the rul- throughout history. Instead, as Marx not-
which only one person is tied. ing class and its paid lackeys in the uni- ed about Bentham:
Should you do nothing, on the grounds versities. What matters is that it can hold “With the driest naivety he takes the
that you are not responsible for the deaths up these so-called principles whenever it modern shopkeeper, especially the
of five people as it was not you that tied wants to demonstrate the moral superior- English shopkeeper, as the normal
them to the tracks? Or should you ac- ity of its rule. man. Whatever is useful to this queer
tively intervene and save them, but in the The utilitarian argument that such an normal man, and to his world, is abso-
process be directly responsible for killing action or policy is ‘for the greater good’ is lutely useful. This yard-measure, then,
someone who would otherwise live? equally common, if not more so, in pol- he applies to past, present, and future.”10
According to utilitarianism, it is sim- itics today. But the problem with this is This ‘theory’ is very useful for the ruling
ple. You save the five people, because it that it is devoid of any content, thus hard- class, as it offers enormous flexibility,
is the greatest happiness for the greatest ly a theory at all. It ends precisely where which they use to justify imperialist wars
number. it should begin: what really is the greatest or massive austerity: yes, there will be
However, both utilitarianism and happiness for the greatest number, and suffering, yes, moral rules will be broken,
Kant’s categorical imperative suffered how do we actually bring it about? As but ultimately, it is for the greater good.
from the same abstract approach to the Trotsky argues: Democracy and prosperity will reign once
question of morality. Both simply ration- “A means can be justified only by its this war or austerity programme has been
alised the emerging morality of the bour- end. But the end in its turn needs to be allowed to run its course, we are told.
geoisie into a code, universally applicable justified.”9 In practice, the ruling class regularly
to all human beings. And hence, both pro- One person can justify revolutionary vi- uses arguments from both of these seem-
duce the same hypocrisy that comes with olence in a civil war on the grounds that ingly opposing theories at the same time.
all bourgeois morality. it secures the revolution, which ultimate- For instance, US imperialism enshrines
As it turned out, the positive moral ly leads to more happiness. Another can the ‘absolute’ right not to be tortured in
principles that Kant supposedly deduced justify counter-revolutionary violence on law and then maintains torture camps
from his categorical imperative were not the grounds that securing private proper- like Guantanamo Bay, claiming this ‘helps
fundamentally any different from the lib- ty ultimately leads to more happiness. to fight terrorism’, thus saving lives.
eral bourgeois morality that was taking Both are equally utilitarian arguments,
shape in Europe during his time: respect and in both cases, the utilitarian ‘theory’ Hypocrisy
for individual freedom; equality before does nothing to resolve which of the two Bourgeois morality has therefore always
the law; rational and moral development is right. contained hypocrisy at its core. But there
for all through education. In fact, with utilitarianism, you can are periods when the depth of the crisis,
Kant’s name may not often crop up justify just about anything. This morality and the intensity of the class struggle,
in the news, but it is this logic that poli- is still completely divorced from materi- cause the ruling class to openly jettison
ticians are relying on when they make al reality and the class struggle. As with much of its own moral norms. Trotsky
statements like “violence can never be Kant’s categorical imperative, it fails to observed in 1940:

Return to contents 35
Police in Italy hit with red paint by protesters demonstrating against the unpopularity in recent months, particu-
genocide in Palestine, rearmament and NATO, May 2025 (Photo Agency Srl / Alamy) larly among the youth. More and more
Opposite: Polish anti-Bolshevik propaganda poster, produced in 1920 people are becoming angry, disgusted by
a system in which the ruling elite not only
“No epoch of the past was so cruel, so and starvation of hundreds of thou- sows violence and hatred, but above all
ruthless, so cynical as our epoch. Polit- sands of Palestinians. slanders and condemns the people who
ically, morality has not improved at all The German ruling class imprisons ac- oppose it.
by comparison with the standards of tivists for shouting slogans in support of As Abraham Lincoln once said: “you
the Renaissance and with other even Palestine, claiming that its Nazi past gives can fool some of the people all the time,
more distant epochs.”11 it a kind of moral authority on the ques- and all of the people some of the time. But
The same could be said of the period tion of antisemitism. And at the same you cannot fool all of the people all of the
opening up before us. Capitalism is in a time as it congratulates itself on ‘learning time.”12 Morality, a weapon of the ruling
deep, historic crisis, incapable of moving the lessons of the past’, it is waging a fu- class, is becoming a threat to its master.
society forward; the old political, diplo- rious rearmament campaign, forcing aus- As the case of Luigi Mangione has
matic and moral order has been severely terity on the masses in order to strength- revealed, there is already a rejection,
undermined; the class struggle is begin- en its imperialist domination of Europe. to some extent, of the official morality,
ning to intensify; and at the same time In a cynical attempt to cover their amongst a sizable layer of the masses. The
the ruthlessness, cynicism and hypocrisy criminal austerity policies, bourgeois pol- incredible Black Lives Matter movement
of the ruling class is on full display. The iticians claim to stand up for native-born in 2020 was also an indication of this. Al-
crisis of the capitalist system is also ex- workers against immigrants, women most as revealing as the attitude of mil-
pressed as a moral crisis. against trans people, and any other scape- lions towards Luigi Mangione was the fact
When Trump says “I want Green- goat they can find. that 54 per cent of Americans thought
land”, he is expressing the real outlook But what is particularly significant is that the burning down of the Minneap-
of US imperialism, only without the so- that the stinking hypocrisy of the ruling olis police precinct was justified after the
phisticated language of diplomacy. But class is being recognised on a mass scale murder of George Floyd.
we need to be clear: he is no more ruth- all over the world. There is a widespread and growing
less or cynical than the rest of the ruling A clear example of this is the ferocious sense that the system is unjust, and that
class today. attacks by the imperialist establishment we are governed by a self-serving and
Liberal governments around the on the pro-Palestine movement. Despite hypocritical elite. It is a sign that the
world have claimed to be the greatest vociferous depictions of its so-called an- masses increasingly cannot tolerate the
defenders of peace, whilst arming and tisemitism and violence, the Palestine rule of the bourgeoisie, which as a class
backing the genocidal Israeli regime. solidarity movement has grown massive- has outlived its historical function.
And while they regularly condemn the ly since 7 October 2023. The same mood can be perceived in the
bombing of Ukrainian cities by Russia, Millions of people around the world phenomenon of Trumpism. For years the
even accusing Putin of ‘genocide’, they have seen the truth beyond this smear ‘respectable’ media, politicians, business
not only condone but actively assist Ne- campaign. In fact, governments’ support leaders, celebrities, etc. have condemned
tanyahu in the bombardment, torture for Israel has been a major source of their Trump, not simply on political grounds,

36 Return to contents
but above all on moral grounds. He has
been described as a liar, a cheat, a philan-
derer, a misogynist, a rapist, a racist, a
traitor to the nation, a dictator and a fas-
cist, no less! In short: Satan with a comb-
over. Political analysis has been replaced
by demonology. They even tried to send
him to jail, and gasped with dismay at the
idea that a ‘convicted felon’ could become
president of the United States.
None of these moral attacks succeed-
ed in significantly harming Trump’s
level of support. In fact, many of them
actually helped him! The reason for
this is not that 77.3 million Americans
enthusiastically support all of Trump’s
actions. Millions of people, and a signif-
icant layer of the working class, turned
to Trump because they believed that
the people pursuing him were guilty of
everything they were accusing him of,
and that they were cynically trying to
use these moral attacks to defend their
power and privileges. And they had
good reason to believe that.

Class struggle
It is important here not to see these devel-
opments as a sign of moral apathy or im-
morality on the part of the working class.
Rather, they are the product of a deep
moral revulsion directed at the old order.
As we have already seen in the history of
the class struggle, this has revolutionary
implications.
As the class struggle intensifies, the
moral outlook of the working class in-
creasingly clashes with the official mo-
rality of the ruling class. This can be seen
when workers go on strike, during which
the great abstract principles of ‘human’
solidarity are completely swept away and
replaced by concrete worker solidarity,
and hatred of the bosses. There is a mo- Violence historical questions are ultimately de-
rality of the picket line, which is much One question that is often asked in this cided by naked force.
stronger and more deeply felt than any regard is: do Marxists advocate violence? Hence all the money invested in the
abstract morality, because it has a clear The question of violence is often posed police and the military. In the state, the
class content. as an abstract theoretical question. Paci- ruling class arrogates to itself a monop-
Communists base themselves on the fists, for example, oppose violence in gen- oly of violence, which it morally sanc-
highest and clearest form of this prole- eral, regardless of the context. They con- tifies through the church, media and
tarian class consciousness. As Trotsky sider non-violence to be a moral standard, school system.
explained, for a communist, that which is obligatory for all and for all time. And the As long as the capitalist system exists,
good is that which serves to: reformist leaders of the working class will violence will be a fact of life. We fight
“... unite the revolutionary proletari- often echo pacifist arguments, claiming against that specific violence. The only
at, fill their hearts with irreconcilable that revolutionaries are just as bad as the conclusion that can be drawn is that to
hostility to oppression, teach them rulers they wish to overthrow, if they ever put an end to violence and war, we must
contempt for official morality and its resort to violence to achieve their ends. overthrow capitalism. And in this revolu-
democratic echoers, imbue them with Marxists, however, consider the world tionary struggle, the question of violence
consciousness of their own historic as it is, and not as we would like it to be. becomes concrete.
mission, raise their courage and spirit And the reality is that violence and war For example, in Sudan in 2019, a huge
of self-sacrifice in the struggle”.13 are part of the foundations of capitalism. and powerful revolutionary movement
This is what leads Trotsky to say: The capitalist class has many weap- overthrew the authoritarian regime of
“Problems of revolutionary morality ons at its disposal to fight both the cap- Omar Al-Bashir. The military junta that
are fused with the problems of revolu- italists of rival nations and the workers came to rule in its place could only main-
tionary strategy and tactics. The living of all nations, such as propaganda, di- tain itself through brutal violence.
experience of the movement under the plomacy and deception. But in the end, In this context, for the objectives of
clarification of theory provides the when the struggle between nations and the revolution to be achieved, it would
correct answer to these problems.”14 classes reaches its highest pitch, great have been necessary to arm the working

Return to contents 37
 After the sensation caused by the as-
sassination, US capitalism, of course,
remains intact. CEOs, politicians and in-
dividuals can be replaced. And once they
are replaced, the criminal healthcare sys-
tem will continue to condemn thousands
to bankruptcy and premature death.
Of course, we have enormous sympa-
thy for those who regard Luigi Mangione
as a hero, and condemn the hypocritical
‘justice’ system, which defends the mur-
der of thousands by the ruling class. But
while we do not raise abstract moral ob-
jections to the alleged actions of Man-
gione and others like him, we do question
their effectiveness.
What history has shown us is that in-
dividual terrorism and guerrilla methods,
alone and divorced from the class strug-
gle, tend to have the opposite effect to that
which is intended. They substitute the
actions of a minority, or even just of an
individual, for the collective action of the
working class. They do not strengthen its
unity or level of organisation. Nor do they
strengthen workers’ belief in their ability
to overthrow the system.
This kind of tactic sends the message to
workers that they should rely on commit-
ted individuals to fight in their place. It is
precisely the opposite message that must
Luigi Mangione, December 2024 (AP / Alamy) be conveyed.
Opposite: The Beast (Capitalism) (1907), Gabriele Galantara In addition to this, these methods tend
to reinforce the repressive apparatus of
class and the poor so that they could have situation before us. For us, the violence the state, which adopts harsher methods
fought and defeated the attacks of the used by the oppressor to keep his slave in to deal with so-called ‘terrorists’. These
counter-revolutionary ‘Rapid Support chains is not the same as the violence used methods therefore ultimately serve to
Forces’. In concrete terms, it was a matter by the slave to break those chains. The strengthen the forces of bourgeois vio-
of life or death for the revolution. state of Israel’s violence is not the same as lence without at the same time creating
But the petty-bourgeois leaders of that of the Palestinians. powerful organisations of the working
the revolution, who took ‘non-violence’ Pacifists, however, end up putting the class to resist their attacks.
as their guiding moral principle, did not violence of the oppressed and the oppres- Under certain conditions, Marxists
want to do that. This left the workers sors on an equal footing. To the extent could support individual acts of violence
without any defence, to be beaten, raped that this is ever taken seriously, the impe- or sabotage, linked to the revolutionary
and killed by the regime. These leaders ul- rialists can only rejoice. struggle of the working class. For exam-
timately sacrificed the revolution on the ple, in the context of revolution and civil
altar of pacifism. And the consequences Terrorism war, the assassination of the leader of a
were extremely brutal. If we have no abstract opposition to vi- fascist gang or a reactionary army would
Sudan remains caught up in a bloody olence, does that mean that we advocate be completely expedient. But to do so in
civil war. This is what pacifism brought the use of violence in all forms, so long as the absence of any revolutionary move-
to the Sudanese working class: it has led it is generally directed at the overthrow ment could have the opposite effect.
to far greater violence than the ‘violence’ of capitalism? This is why Marxists cannot simply
that the masses would have had to apply No. If the emancipation of humanity state in advance and in the abstract,
to smash the old regime and disarm the can only be achieved through a socialist what tactics are or are not permissible
counter-revolutionary gangs. Indeed, it is revolution, in which the working class at any given moment. Only the living
a general historical law that the violence takes power and runs society itself, then experience of the labour movement in
of counter-revolution, which is directed only those tactics are effective that help struggle, with the help of theory, can
at the majority of revolutionary workers make the working class aware of its role answer this question.
and peasants, is always far more brutal in changing society.
and widespread than the ‘violence’ of rev- The recent case of Luigi Mangione Revolutionary principles
olution, which has the task of disarming has aroused enormous sympathy among Every revolutionary movement in history
an exploiting minority. many young people who regard him as a has been attacked as a bloodthirsty, im-
What this shows us is that pacifism is hero, bringing to the surface enormous moral danger to society, whether it was
not only useless, but extremely danger- class anger that exists in the United States. the early Christians in the Roman Em-
ous for a revolutionary movement. Marx- It has raised an important question: are pire, the working-class Chartists, or in-
ism has absolutely nothing to do with it. assassinations and individual acts of ter- deed communists for more than a century.
We are not for or against violence in rorism effective means for overthrowing In 1917, the Russian masses took pow-
general. Our policy is based on the concrete the system? er under the leadership of Lenin and

38 Return to contents
Trotsky’s Bolshevik Party. The Bolshe-
viks were demonised. The ruling class
launched a campaign of lies and slan-
der to morally condemn them. Commu-
nists have been hunted down all over
the world, and often massacred for the
preservation of ‘order’, ‘civilisation’ and,
of course, ‘morality’. Subsequently, the
horrors of Stalinism provided a golden
opportunity for the capitalists to attack
the entire edifice of communism, and
throw even more mud.
In 1938, Trotsky wrote Their Morals
and Ours, in the context of the last Mos-
cow trials. Thousands of old Bolsheviks
and others were the subject of false ac-
cusations by the Stalinist regime. Many
were sentenced to death because they
were accused of being ‘Trotskyists’ and
‘fascist agents’.
Why did Trotsky write about morality
at that time?
Because cowardly petty-bourgeois in-
tellectuals, from reformists to anarchists,
suddenly invoked great abstract princi-
ples of morality to condemn communism
en bloc, which they discovered had be-
come ‘immoral’.
The petty bourgeoisie, caught between
the two great antagonistic classes, is not
capable of moral and political independ-
ence. Hence it often ends up acting as a
transmission belt for the dominant ide-
ology of the capitalists, into the labour
movement.
We only need to look at how many
prominent ‘lefts’, recoiling in fright at
the prospect of being called ‘antisemit-
ic’ by the establishment for opposing Is-
rael, have not only abandoned the Pal-
estinian people, but have joined in the
witch hunt against manufactured ‘Left ‘extreme’; we should not try to recruit opinion of the ruling class and the pet-
antisemitism’. people to the revolutionary party; we ty-bourgeois ‘Left’.
In recent years, the ruling class has should not ask for money to fund the It is very difficult to resist these pres-
benefited from the adoption of a men- movement. In short, we should not dare sures alone. Our strength comes from our
tality of moral purity by much of the to organise professionally to overthrow organisation, from the collective struggle
Left. There has been an obsession with the system. and experience of thousands of Marxists
crafting ‘safe spaces’ and the notion After all, we supposedly live in a ‘civ- around the world. And there has never
that any organisation of the Left that ilised’ society, in which there are stand- been a greater need for such an organisa-
can be shown to have witnessed immor- ards of good behaviour. The reformists tion.
al behaviour is worthy only of cancella- have completely surrendered to this mor- Amidst all the horror and lies produced
tion and liquidation. More time is often al fantasy, in which they believe more by capitalism in decline, there is a grow-
spent policing morality than fighting than the bourgeois themselves! ing movement for a new form of society,
for a new social order. The Left must re- Thanks to their opportunism, they one free from exploitation, inequality,
ject this moralistic dead-end on pain of respect the rules of the capitalist sys- and the hypocrisy that comes with these.
extinction! tem and accept not only the bourgeois In the powerful words of Trotsky:
It is absolutely crucial, therefore, that state, but also bourgeois morality. And by “... to participate in this movement with
communists remain steadfast in the face shamefully binding the workers’ move- open eyes and with an intense will –
of alien-class ideas. As Trotsky observed: ment to these hypocritical standards, only this can give the highest moral
“A revolutionary Marxist cannot be- they have disarmed it and led it to defeat satisfaction to a thinking being!”16
gin to approach his historical mission on countless occasions. It is to this movement that the commu-
without having broken morally from It is natural that the reformists would nists pledge their lives. ■
bourgeois public opinion and its agen- want to silence anyone who refuses to
cies in the proletariat.”15 abide by their rules. This will always be
Everywhere around us, there is constant the case. But we have a duty to uphold References online at
pressure to submit to the dominant mo- our revolutionary principles. We have a marxist.com/
rality and ‘public opinion’. Everywhere, duty to defend the interests of the work- idom-50-references
we are told that we should not be so ing class, and to completely ignore the or scan the QR code

Return to contents 39
 The Second World War marked
a fundamental turning point in
history. Its impacts were felt at
all levels of society, including
art. In this article, Daniel Morley
looks at how the war led to the
development of Italian neorealist
cinema, and the influence this
had on other films of the period.

FIGARO AND THE FRENCH REV

Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro caused a storm when it was first performed in 1786. In this
article, Alan Woods explains the subversive nature of the opera, and how it revolutionised the art form.
Importantly, he shows how it gave expression to the growing ferment in society, which culminated in the

W
French Revolution only a few years later.

olfgang Amadeus Mo- that three people were trampled to death. the child of his times, a product of the
zart is considered by This little incident is a clear indication Enlightenment who was able to reflect
many as the greatest of the ferment that was building up in perfectly in his art the general climate of
musician of all time. French society at the time. the age in which he lived. He was caught
He was revolutionary Just five years later, the Bastille was up with the spirit of rebelliousness which
in more senses than one. One of his main stormed. Many of those wealthy patrons was perfectly adapted to his own temper-
achievements was in the field of opera. of the arts who were present at the first ament. This in turn was no accident. It
Before Mozart, opera was seen as public performance of Beaumarchais’ flowed from his personal experience of
an art form exclusively for the upper play in 1784, and who laughed or booed life, which left him with a profound ha-
classes. This was true not only of those according to their artistic or political tred of injustice and a sympathy for the
who went to see it, but also of its dram- preferences, ended up on the guillotine. underdog, fighting for his rights, free-
atis personae – the characters who were Such was the historical destiny of a play dom, or simple human dignity.
shown on the stage, and especially the which Napoleon later described as “the Living in Vienna at the end of the eight-
protagonists. With The Marriage of Figaro Revolution in action”.1 eenth century, Mozart was well aware of
(Le Nozze di Figaro in its original Italian ti- the nature of feudalism and the character
tle) in 1786, all this changed. This is the A child of his times of the ruling aristocracy. He could scarce-
story of a servant who stands up to his Of course, there is always the danger of ly be unaware of the revolutionary mes-
boss and outwits his master. reading too much into works written in sage of Beaumarchais’ play, which had
The very starting-point of this op- the years leading up to the French Rev- been banned by Joseph II, the brother of
era was subversive. Beaumarchais’ play, olution, or any similar event. But the Marie Antoinette.
which Mozart based his opera on, depicted implications are surely too clear to be Joseph was considered a relatively pro-
the aristocracy as degenerate, lustful and the product of mere accident. A great gressive monarch for the times (in the
depraved types. It was considered dan- artist, even when he or she has little un- style of Frederick the Great of Prussia and
gerously revolutionary at the time. In one derstanding of politics, is sometimes Catherine the Great of Russia). He abol-
speech his central character, the servant capable of sensing a certain mood that ished serfdom in his lands, introduced the
Figaro, dares to state that he is as good as is developing in society. They are able right to (relatively) free speech, and even
his master. In the years before the French to give it a most profound and truthful attempted to abolish the privileges of the
Revolution, this was subversive stuff! expression, even before it is consciously nobility. It was not unusual to see aristo-
Louis XVI considered it so dangerous that expressed by the protagonists of the his- crats sweeping the streets of Vienna as a
he tried at first to have the play banned. torical process. punishment for some minor transgres-
Eventually it was put on stage, and its For his part, Mozart was no revolu- sion. He also interfered in even the most
first performance in Paris was so packed tionary in the political sense. But he was trivial aspects of life, as when he passed a

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 From a performance of Le nozze di graphically the relation between the art-
Figaro in Stockholm, 1904 ist and the rich people who bought their
services, just as one might purchase an
ushered into the presence, not of gods or expensive hunting dog. After all, even
goddesses, or classical heroes, nymphs an expensive dog must be given a kick if
and shepherds, but of ordinary men and it does not do as the owner wishes. Thus,
women: domestic servants. We enter their the idea of the servant Figaro getting the
quarters and see how they live, how they upper hand over his master must have
think and feel. It was the first time that greatly appealed to Mozart.
such things were shown on stage.
In this first scene, Figaro is measur- Subversive
ing for a bed. This already introduces In Vienna, Mozart gained fame and pop-
the central theme, since the bed under ularity. At the high point of his career he
consideration is Figaro’s marriage bed. attained a certain degree of comfort and
The theme is sex. The significance is that prestige. But the threat of poverty and
the local Count intends to exercise the debt was never far away.
feudal droit de seigneur: the right of the Mozart needed Figaro to be a success,
first night – the right of a lord to have sex and was lucky that Joseph agreed to allow
with a woman under his dominion on it. Mozart and Da Ponte were both out-
her wedding night. And Figaro is deter- siders to the court opera clique, so admi-
mined to stop him. rably portrayed in Peter Schaffer’s 1979
Here the right of the master clashes play Amadeus. The petty bureaucrats and
directly with the right of the servant. It court mediocrities did their best to sabo-
is a conflict of wills in which the servant tage the opera, but it eventually reached
eventually wins. What is being challenged the stage in May 1786.
here is the arbitrary power of the feudal There was probably an element of po-

VOLUTION
aristocracy. Figaro challenges the Count litical calculation in Joseph’s actions in
in the famous aria “Se vuol ballare, signor permitting Mozart’s opera to be staged.
contino”, in the first act, which can be At the time he was in conflict with the
translated roughly: nobility over the payment of taxes and
“If you want to dance, my dear little other matters, and it suited his purpos-
law forbidding women to wear corsets on Count, es to show the aristocracy in a bad light.
public occasions. It is I who will call the tune, In the end, it was so well received by the
Mozart had attempted to democratise If you’ll come to my school, Viennese public that by the third perfor-
opera by writing not in Italian but in the I’ll teach you how to caper!” mance the emperor had to order a limit
German language, for instance with his The aria is apparently cast in the form of on the number of encores. However, only
Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction an eighteenth-century courtly dance – nine performances were staged. Clearly,
from the Seraglio). But the influence of Ital- the minuet. But the essence of the music the powers-that-be realised the subver-
ian proved to be so great (Italian comic is very different from the usual minuet. It sive inner meaning of the work.
opera was then much in vogue) that he de- is an aggressive statement, full of menace Figaro is a comedy, but with a serious
cided to write his new opera in Italian (the and defiance. It is a declaration of war of message. Here is high comedy and low
language of the original was, of course, the servant against his master. farce, but also moments of great beauty
French). Beaumarchais’ other master- In this contest, there can be no doubt and pathos, as in the countess’ aria at the
piece, The Barber of Seville, had already where Mozart’s own sympathies lay. This start of Act Two, “Porgi amor…” where she
been turned into an (Italian) opera, and was a feudal society, dominated by rank laments the loss of her husband’s love.
was all the rage. Mozart decided to follow upon rank of nobles, ranging from the The Count himself is portrayed as a ty-
suit, with a play which might have been great lords of the land to the petty local rant, although on this occasion he is not
called ‘Figaro Strikes Back’. landowner. All of them exercised their able to exercise his tyranny. This is both a
Mozart’s choice of librettist was an un- tyranny over the mass of the people, not social and a personal tyranny, expressed
usual one: Lorenzo Da Ponte was from a just the peasants who tilled their lands. by the tyranny of the Count over women.
Jewish background, a freethinker and a These nobles behaved like a race apart. The reason why the Count’s tyranny
libertine, a friend of Casanova. He was not Mozart himself came from the re- fails him, the opera implies, is because it
an experienced librettist, yet he finished a spectable middle class. Yet he was also just is seen to be so arbitrary: it is not founded
remarkable libretto in just six weeks. Da another underling to his aristocratic pay- upon Reason, and therefore has no rea-
Ponte not only succeeded in retaining the masters: a superior kind of servant, but son to exist, as Hegel would have said. But
full political force of the original, but ar- a servant nonetheless. When he served the same argument could be used against
guably made the characters even richer. the Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart the Ancien Régime in its entirety. A social
was expected to eat below stairs with the regime that has outlived itself, is in con-
Defiance servants. His place was clearly specified – flict with itself, has no reason to exist and
The spirit of the work is conveyed from above the cooks but below the Archbish- must be brought down. That was the argu-
the first bars of the overture – a work bub- op’s valets. ment of philosophers like Hegel, and the
bling over with life and energy. The mer- When Mozart decided to move to Vi- underlying logic and justification of the
curial changes in the thoughts and feel- enna and leave the Archbishop’s service, French Revolution. It is also ever-present
ings of the characters are conveyed with Count Arco, one of the Archbishop’s in the pages of The Marriage of Figaro.
great accuracy by the music. hangers-on and supposedly a friend of As we know, there are several ways of
In a novel device, we are plunged Mozart, demonstrated his loyalty to his fighting against tyrants. One way – as
straight into the action in the open- chief by giving the composer a kick in shown in 1789-93 – was to cut off their
ing scene. Here for the first time we are the buttocks. This incident shows very heads. But, where such drastic remedies

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Dancing Scene With Palace Interior (c. 1735), Johann Georg Platzer
Opposite: The Storming of the Bastille (1789), Jean-Pierre Houël “Night and day I slave
For one who does not appreciate it.
are not available, it is possible to use the Don Giovanni I put up with wind and rain,
weapon of ridicule, which is what Beau- Mozart’s other operatic masterpiece Don Eat badly, never sleep,
marchais and Mozart did to great effect. Giovanni, the librettist of which was also I want to be a gentleman
At the end, the servants are allowed Da Ponte, is based on the Spanish theme And give up my servitude.
into the drawing-room and dance at Fi- of Don Juan, which, in various forms, had Oh what a fine gentleman!
garo’s wedding. Here the mood changes. appeared in literature many times since You stay inside with your lady
The masses appear as triumphant pro- it first appeared as El Burlador de Sevilla by And I play the sentinel!”
tagonists – not grey figures lurking in the Tirso de Molina, in 1630. Here the same sub- Leporello, the archetypal comic servant,
background, but real live individuals with ject matter that we found in Figaro is dealt is thus given a serious theme. His criti-
minds and characters and feelings and as- with in far more sombre colours, and in cism of the dissolute lifestyle of his mas-
pirations of their own. The sight of these greater depth and complexity. ter (and, by implication, of the aristocra-
men and women dancing in triumph in The dark colours of this work are cy in general) is continued in the famous
the aristocrat’s drawing room is pregnant evident from the first portentous and ‘catalogue aria’ where he ironically lists
with historical significance. It is both an threatening bars of the overture. Don Don Giovanni’s amorous conquests.
allegory and an anticipation in music of Giovanni, like the Count, is a rake, but he The role of Leporello, the voice of the
events that became reality only three is much more than this: he is also a rebel common people, has been likened to
years later. who rejects all social and moral norms. Shakespeare’s combination of low-life
The Marriage of Figaro, with its catchy There is an element of anarchy running comedy and aristocratic high drama, as
tunes, good humour and controversial through this opera, an intuition of the in, for example, Henry IV, Part One. This
subject matter was a great success. Nowa- crumbling of the existing social and role is not at all secondary but pivotal to
days, when it is customary to regard opera moral order. the opera. In the end, Leporello outlives
as art for the elite, it is difficult to realise Significantly the very first aria of his master, who is finally conveyed to the
just how popular these works were. They Act One is sung by Leporello, Don Gio- flames of hell with the aid of a mysterious
were the pop music of the day. Those who vanni’s manservant, who curses his Stone Guest.
could not afford to go to the opera could lot while waiting in the cold while his Having brought Don Giovanni to ulti-
have access to them through arrange- master chases after a lady indoors. The mate justice and consigned him to eternal
ments for wind bands. message of Leporello’s aria is politically damnation, Mozart and Da Ponte clear
Six months after its first performance subversive – a call for the social order to away the sulphur fumes with a brisk and
in Vienna, in December 1786, it was per- be inverted: jocular sextet. Here the survivors point
formed in Prague, where it was an even “Notte e giorno faticar, out the moral and ponder their own fu-
greater success. Mozart was urged to come Per chi nulla sa gradir, tures, when the irrepressible Leporello
and see for himself how this music was all Piove e vento sopportar, concludes: “Ed io vado all’osteria a trovar pa-
the rage – not just in the opera house but Mangiar male e mai dormir, dron miglior”. (“And I’ll go to the tavern to
as dance music in the ballrooms. He wrote Voglio far il gentiluomo find a better master.”)
delightedly to a friend: “Here they talk of E non voglio più servir. In the nineteenth century, with its Vic-
nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played, sung Oh che caro galantuomo! torian hypocritical prudery, the cheerful
or whistled but Figaro. No opera is drawing Voi star dentro colla bella, optimism of this final sextet was consid-
like Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro.”2 Ed io far la sentinella!” ered in bad taste, and often omitted. But

42 Return to contents
an irrepressible spirit of cheerfulness were not a few individuals among the But like all dreams, it was dissolved
always characterises the outlook of the aristocracy of this type. Some of them – in the cold light of day. The French Rev-
masses, even in the most serious strug- reactionary adventurers – fought for the olution began where Figaro left off, but it
gles, and Mozart showed an unerring Old Regime and went cheerfully to the did not halt there. The further unfolding
sense of human nature when he finished guillotine. Others, less numerous and of the dramatic events of 1798-93 left all
on this note. more thoughtful, broke with their class illusions behind, as the old world came
and went over to the side of the Revolu- tumbling down, and the accumulated
Complex character tion, where they fought and died equally rubbish of centuries was swept into the
Act One opens with Leporello, the serv- bravely. Don Giovanni, had he lived to dustbin of history.
ant, proposing, in effect, that the world experience the French Revolution, would The road to revolution was prepared
be placed upside down. At the end of have ended up as one of these two types. by attempts at reform. This phenom-
the same act, Don Giovanni himself enon is frequently repeated in the his-
proposes an elaborate toast to freedom, The road to revolution tory of revolutions and has been well
which accurately conveys the spirit of In one respect The Marriage of Figaro takes documented by Alexis de Toqueville in
the times. leave of both history and real life – but his famous work The Ancien Régime and
The character of Don Giovanni him- only relatively so. In the finale in Act the French Revolution. Joseph II, Mo-
self is complex and contradictory. He Four, the Count and Countess are recon- zart’s patron, attempted such a reform
is a far more interesting figure than the ciled, as the Count repents his sins. Then from the top to prevent revolution from
Count in Figaro. An adventurer, a disso- all are reconciled and sing in harmony, below. Like all such attempts, it was
lute rake, an aristocrat, accustomed to and so the work ends happily. But it is the doomed to failure.
manipulate people according to his own essence of comedy to end happily, or else On Joseph’s tomb there is a pathet-
whims, he is at the same time personally it would not be comedy. And everyone ic inscription composed by the emper-
courageous. At the end of Act One, when knows that such endings have little to do or himself: “Here lies the prince whose
all the world rises up against him, he re- with real life. We know that the tempo- intentions were good, but who had the
plies defiantly: rary reconciliation between antagonistic misfortune to see all his plans collapse.”
“E’ un orribile tempesta classes cannot last, just as we know that Mozart died in 1791, apparently as the
Minacciando, o Dio, mi va. the Count will continue to chase after result of an epidemic, and was buried,
Ma non manca in me coraggio, servant girls at the earliest opportunity. according to one of Joseph’s numerous
Non mi perdo o mi confondo. Every struggle has its moments of petty edicts, outside the city walls in an
Se cadesse ancora il mondo, temporary respite, just as every war is unmarked grave, which nobody has been
Nulla mai temer mi fa.” interrupted by temporary ceasefires. At able to identify. But the name of Mozart
the start of the French Revolution – as at is remembered and revered by millions,
“A dreadful storm, oh Lord, the start of every revolution – there was while those of his aristocratic overlords
Is thundering above me. a general feeling of euphoria, a fraterni- are long forgotten. ■
But I do not lack courage. sation of all classes in which the king and
I am not lost or worried. queen wore the tricolour cockade of rev- 1 Quoted in E Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile,
and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. 3,
If the world itself should end, olution. The illusion of universal broth-
Redfield, 1855, pg 55
Nothing could make me afraid.” erhood, transcending all class differences 2 E Anderson (ed.), ‘Mozart to Baron Gottfried
At the end, he is prepared to fight against for a brief moment possessed the minds von Jacquin, Vienna’, The Letters of Mozart and
his destiny and against death itself. There of the whole of society. his Family, W W Norton, 1989, pg 544

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