Μόνο όταν αυτός ο διαχωρισμός [της οικονομικής και πολιτικής σφαίρας] καταργηθεί μέσω της αυτοοργάνωσης της κοινωνίας θα εξαφανιστεί η πολιτική αποξένωση και το κράτος ως όργανο κυριαρχίας αρχίζει να εξαφανίζεται. Ο Μαρξ ήταν ασαφής πώς θα συμβεί αυτό μέχρι το 1871, έτος της Παρισινής Κομμούνας, που τον ώθησε να δήλωσει ότι αυτή ήταν «η πολιτική μορφή που επιτέλους ανακαλύφθηκε κάτω από την οποία μπορεί να επιτευχθεί η οικονομική χειραφέτηση της εργασίας» (1989c: 334). Ο Μαρξ είχε καταλάβει ότι δεν μπορούσε κανείς να χρησιμοποιήσει υπάρχουσες μορφές κράτους (ειδικά ένα τόσο συγκεντρωμένο, συγκεντρωτικό και αυταρχικό όπως ο Βοναπαρτιστικό κράτος), που ήταν όργανα κυριαρχίας, για να επιτύχουμε τη χειραφέτηση. Εν ολίγοις, «η εργατική τάξη δεν μπορεί απλώς να κρατήσει στα χέρια της τον έτοιμο κρατικό μηχανισμό και να τον χρησιμοποιήσει για τους δικούς της σκοπούς» (1989c: 328). Πιο συγκεκριμένα, «Το πολιτικό όργανο της υποδούλωσής τους δεν μπορεί να χρησιμεύσει ως το πολιτικό όργανο της χειραφέτησής τους» (1989b: 533). Χρειαζόταν μια εντελώς νέα μορφή κράτους: μια κοινωνική δημοκρατία. Το αν η Κομμούνα θα παρείχε πραγματικά αυτή τη μορφή δεν θα μπορούσε να κριθεί, όμως, γιατί οι αρχές την κατέστειλαν με τον πιο βάναυσο τρόπο πριν αυτό το ζωντανό πείραμα προχωρήσει. Εκεί που αυτό περιγράφεται ως «δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου», όρος που ο Μαρξ χρησιμοποίησε σπάνια, ήταν με τη συμβατική νομική έννοια ενός «εξαιρετικού» πολιτικού καθεστώτος που έχει δημιουργηθεί για να αντιμετωπίζει καταστάσεις έκτακτης ανάγκης, όχι ένα διαρκές είδος κράτους. Το καθήκον της ήταν να καθοδηγήσει τη μετάβαση προς μια αταξική κοινωνία και ένα κράτος νυχτοφύλακας που θα υπερασπιζόταν τα συμφέροντα του συνόλου της κοινότητας. Όταν αυτό καθιερωνόταν, οι κατασταλτικές του πτυχές θα μαράζωναν.
Only when this separation [of the economic and political spheres] is abolished through the self- organization of society will political alienation disappear and the state as an organ of domination begin to disappear. Marx was unclear how this would occur until 1871, the year of the Paris Commune, which prompted him to declared that this was “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour” (1989c: 334). Marx had grasped that one could not use existing forms of state (especially one as concentrated, centralized, and authoritarian as the Bonapartist state), which were organs of domination, to achieve emancipation. In short, “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready- made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes” (1989c: 328). More explicitly, “The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation” (1989b: 533). An entirely new form of state was needed: a social republic. Whether the Commune would really have provided this form could not be judged, however, because the authorities repressed it in the most brutal fashion before this living experiment had run its course. Where this is described as the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a term that Marx rarely used, it was in the conventional legal sense of an “exceptional” political regime established to deal with emergencies, not an enduring type of state. Its task was to guide the transition towards a classless society and nightwatchman state that defended the interests of the whole community. When this was established, its repressive aspects would wither.
[Jessop 2019, Bob Jessop - The Capitalist State and State Power: 305]
Η αντίληψη του Μαρξ για τις φάσεις του σοσιαλισμού δεν πρέπει να συγχέεται με την «δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου», την οποία ορίζει ως /πολιτικό/ μεταβατικό στάδιο /μεταξύ /καπιταλισμού και σοσιαλισμού/Κομμουνισμού. Η /Κριτική /δηλώνει ξεκάθαρα: «Ανάμεσα στην καπιταλιστική και την κομμουνιστική κοινωνία βρίσκεται η περίοδος . . . όπου το κράτος δεν μπορεί να είναι παρά /η επαναστατική δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου/» (Marx [1875] 1989b:95). Αυτός είναι ο δημοκρατικός έλεγχος της κοινωνίας από την «τεράστια πλειοψηφία», τους παραγωγούς, που χρησιμοποιούν την πολιτική εξουσία ως μοχλό για την εξάλειψη της ταξικής κυριαρχίας φέρνοντας επανάσταση στις κοινωνικές σχέσεις παραγωγής. Μόλις ολοκληρωθεί αυτή η διαδικασία, η δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου γίνεται περιττή, αφού με το τέλος της ταξικής κοινωνίας το προλεταριάτο καταργείτε παράλληλα με όλες τις άλλες τάξεις. /Το κράτος ως τέτοιο φτάνει στο τέλος του/.
Πολλοί μεταμαρξιστές μαρξιστές, συμπεριλαμβανομένου του Λένιν, θόλωσαν τα νερά υποστηρίζοντας ότι «στην πρώτη φάση της κομμουνιστικής κοινωνίας όλοι οι πολίτες μετατρέπονται σε μισθωτούς του κράτους» (Λένιν [1917] 1972:92). Αλλά ο Μαρξ δεν αναφέρει πουθενά το κράτος συζητώντας την κατώτερη φάση του Κομμουνισμού. /Ούτε θα μπορούσε, αφού το κράτος βασίζεται στην ύπαρξη των τάξεων — που δεν υπάρχουν πλέον στον σοσιαλισμό ή στον κομμουνισμό/. Ο Μαρξ ρωτάει στην /Κριτική/, «Τότε τίθεται το ερώτημα: σε τι μεταμόρφωση υφίσταται το κράτος στην κομμουνιστική κοινωνία; Με άλλα λόγια, ποιες κοινωνικές λειτουργίες θα εξακολουθήσουν να υπάρχουν που είναι ανάλογες με τις λειτουργίες της παρούσας κατάστασης;» (Marx [1875] 1989b:95). Αυτό δείχνει τη θεμελιώδη διαφορά μεταξύ ενός /κράτους /και των /λειτουργιών/ που τώρα εκτελούνται από αυτό (αντιπροσωπευτικά όργανα, συντονιστικά όργανα μεταξύ συνεταιρισμών κ.λπ.), που στο μέλλον μπορεί να αντιμετωπιστεί χωρίς κράτος.
Παρά τις πολλές συνεισφορές του, η άποψη του Λένιν είχε ατυχείς συνέπειες, αφού συνεχίζει να τοποθετεί παρωπίδες στην άκριβη απόδοση του κειμένου του Μαρξ. Ο Michael Lebowitz, για παράδειγμα, έχει υποστηρίξει: «Οικοδομούμε την κομμουνιστική κοινωνία /στα δικά της θεμέλια / [771] αναπτύσσοντας νέες κοινοτικές σχέσεις παραγωγής που υποτάσσουν την ιδιωτική ιδιοκτησία της εργατικής δύναμης με τη δημιουργία ενός νέου κράτους» (Lebowitz 2015:71). Εδώ όχι μόνο εισάγεται το κράτος στην κατώτερη φάση του κομμουνισμού — υπάρχει και σε ανώτερη φάση. Το κράτος είναι τώρα φετιχοποιημένο σε σημείο να το κάνει αιώνιο γεγονός της ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης.
Συγχέοντας τη «δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου» με την αρχική φάση της νέας κοινωνίας, οι μετα-μαρξιστές μαρξιστές έχουν υποθέσει ότι το κράτος — που με κάποια μορφή επικρατεί στην πολιτική μεταβατική περίοδο— συνεχίζει επίσης στον σοσιαλισμό/κομμουνισμό. Ότι αυτό δεν ήταν ποτέ η θέση του Μαρξ, ωστόσο, είναι ξεκάθαρo από τα πραγματικά γραπτά του, που πουθενά δεν εξισώνουν τον σοσιαλισμό ή τον κομμουνισμό με την κρατική κυριαρχία. Για τον Μαρξ, το κράτος είναι ένα «απόβλητο» της ταξικής κοινωνίας που εκτοπίζεται στον σοσιαλισμό (Μαρξ 1972:329). [Hudis 2019, Marx’s Concept of Socialism: 770-71]
Marx’s conception of the phases of socialism should not be confused with “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” which he defines as a /political / transitional stage /between /capitalism and socialism/ Communism. The / Critique /clearly states: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period in . . . which the state can be nothing but /the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat/” (Marx [1875] 1989b:95). This is democratic control of society by the “immense majority,” the producers, who use political power as a lever to eliminate class domination by revolutionizing the social relations of production. Once this process is completed, the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes superfluous, since with the end of class society the proletariat is abolished alongside all other classes. /The state as such comes to an end/.
Many post- Marx Marxists, including Lenin, muddied the waters by claiming that in “the first phase of communist society, all citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state” (Lenin [1917] 1972:92). But Marx nowhere mentions the state in discussing the lower phase of Communism. /Nor could he, since the state is based upon the existence of classes— which no longer exists in socialism or Communism/. Marx asks in the /Critique/, “The question then arises: what transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence that are analogous to present state functions?” (Marx [1875] 1989b:95). This points to the fundamental difference between a /state /and the /functions /now performed by one (representative bodies, coordinating bodies between cooperatives, etc.), which in the future can be handled without a state.
Despite his many contributions, Lenin’s view has had unfortunate consequences, since it continues to place blinders upon accurately rendering Marx’s text. Michael Lebowitz, for example, has argued: “We build communist society /upon its own foundations /by [771] developing new communal relations of production that subordinate the private ownership of labor- power by creating a new state” (Lebowitz 2015:71). Here not only is the state imported into the lower phase of Communism— it exists in a higher phase as well. The state is now fetishized to the point of making it an eternal fact of human existence.
By confusing the “dictatorship of the proletariat” with the initial phase of the new society, post- Marx Marxists have assumed that the state— which in some form prevails in the political transition period— also continues in socialism/ Communism. That this was never Marx’s position, however, is clear from his actual writings, which nowhere equate socialism or Communism with state domination. For Marx, the state is an “excrescence” of class society that is superseded in socialism (Marx 1972:329). [Hudis 2019: 770-71]
Ο Άντλερ δεν αποδέχεται αυτόν τον «νόμο της ολιγαρχίας». Υπό την πολιτική δημοκρατία, συμφωνεί, είναι αναπόφευκτο αυτόνομοι «μηχανισμοί» να δημιουργηθούν, τόσο στα πολιτικά κόμματα όσο και στο κράτος: κανένα κόμμα, ούτε καν το εργατικό, εξαιρείται από αυτόν τον κίνδυνο. Αλλά κάτω από τη σοσιαλδημοκρατία μπορεί να αποφευχθεί με την εκπαίδευση και την αποκέντρωση του κράτους. Ως εκ τούτου, ο Adler εκτιμά ιδιαίτερα τα εργατικά συμβούλια ως θεσμούς άμεσου ελέγχου από τους παραγωγούς επί των οικονομικών διαδικασιών, και για τον ίδιο λόγο ασκεί δριμεία κριτική στον Λένιν και στο σοβιετικό κράτος. Οι Μπολσεβίκοι, λέει, δεν έχουν εγκαθιδρύσει μια δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου, αλλά μια κομματική δικτατορία πάνω στο προλεταριάτο και στο σύνολο της κοινωνίας—η τρομοκρατική κυριαρχία μιας μειονότητας, πολύ μακριά από τις προβλέψεις του Μαρξ, για τον οποίο η δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου σήμαινε την κυριαρχία ολόκληρης της εργατικής τάξης σε συνθήκες [282] πολιτικής δημοκρατίας. Ο Άντλερ επιτίθεται έτσι στους Μπολσεβίκους από θέση παρόμοια με αυτό της Ρόζας Λούξεμπουργκ, και ταυτόχρονα ασκεί κριτική στον Κάουτσκι για κακή αντιπαράθεση της δημοκρατίας προς την δικτατορία.
Adler does not accept this 'law of oligarchy'. Under political democracy, he agrees, it is inevitable that autonomized 'apparatuses' will come into being, both in political parties and in the state: no party, not even the workers', is exempt from this danger. But under social democracy it can be averted, by education and by decentralizing the state. Hence Adler especially values workers' councils as institutions of direct control by producers over economic processes, and for the same reason he sharply criticizes Lenin and the Soviet state. The Bolsheviks, he says, have not established a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a party dictatorship over the proletariat and the whole of society—the terrorist rule of a minority, and a far cry from the predictions of Marx, to whom the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the rule of the entire working class in conditions of [282] political democracy. Adler thus attacks the Bolsheviks from a position similar to that of Rosa Luxemburg, and at the same time criticizes Kautsky for wrongly opposing democracy to dictatorship. [Kolakowski 1978b, MAIN CURRENTS OF MARXISM vol. 2: 281-82]
Όπως οι περισσότεροι από τους σοσιαλιστές κριτικούς του Λένιν, ο Κάουτσκι υποστήριξε ότι ο Λένιν έκανε λάθος διεκδικώντας την υποστήριξη του Μαρξ στην ιδέα της δικτατορίας του προλεταριάτου ως μια ιδιαίτερη μορφή διακυβέρνησης, αντίθετη στις δημοκρατικές μορφές: για τον Μαρξ και τον Ένγκελς, υποστήριξε, δεν σήμαινε τη μορφή της κυβέρνησης αλλά το κοινωνικό της περιεχόμενο. Αυτό φάνηκε από το γεγονός ότι ο Μαρξ και ο Ένγκελς χρησιμοποίησε τον όρο «δικτατορία του προλεταριάτου» για να περιγράψει την Παρισινή Κομμούνα, που βασιζόταν σε δημοκρατικές αρχές, ένα πολυκομματικό σύστημα, ελεύθερες εκλογές και ελεύθερη έκφραση γνώμης.
Like most of Lenin's socialist critics Kautsky held that Lenin was wrong in claiming Marx's support for the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a particular form of government, opposed to democratic forms: to Marx and Engels, he maintained, it signified not the form of government but its social content. This was shown by the fact that Marx and Engels used the term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to describe the Paris Commune, which was based on democratic principles, a multiparty system, free elections, and the free expression of opinion. [Kolakowski 1978b, MAIN CURRENTS OF MARXISM vol. 2: 50]
The lower phase of communism is also the point by which the state has
withered away, and classes no longer exist.34 It therefore cannot be reached
[xxix]
overnight. The stage preceding it is Marx and Engels’ much maligned (and
much misunderstood) ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. For Marx and
Engels, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ simply means the
proletariat holding governmental power through its representatives and
carrying out measures in the interests of the proletariat, i.e.
socialist measures. As Hal Draper argues convincingly at length,
dictatorship did not have the meaning for Marx and Engels that it has
now.35 Marx and Engels did not allow for any method of implementing
socialist measures other than democratically: given the emancipation of
the working class must be its own act, and working people make up the
immense majority of society, anything else is a contradiction in terms.
They never abandon their orientation in the Manifesto that the path to
socialism involves ‘winning the struggle for democracy’, and in numerous
places they argue that universal suffrage must be fought for and
retained.36 They favour
a more strongly democratic state than exists currently, incorporating
the
34 Lenin argues the state does not wither away until the higher phase of communism is [xxix] reached (‘the state has not yet completely withered away, since there still remains the safeguarding of “bourgeois law”, which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state to wither away completely, complete communism [by which Lenin clearly means the higher phase] is necessary’, Lenin 1964, p. 472). But in the /Critique of the Gotha Programme /Marx argues: ‘/[b]etween /capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but /the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat/’, and this is in a piece that clearly states that communism as such begins with the lower phase of communism (Marx 1989a, p. 95, emphasis altered). For Marx, the lower phase of communism therefore constitutes the point at which classes no longer exist; and of course Marx and Engels’s theory of the state emphasises that the state only exists under class society. Engels states explicitly:
As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection … a state is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production (Engels 1989, p. 321). Nowhere does either Marx or Engels refer to the need for a state as such (i.e. a repressive apparatus) to enforce rules regarding distribution right up until the higher phase: this is Lenin’s own conception. Prior to abundance the potential for theft obviously remains, but Marx and Engels’s prediction is effectively that a repressive apparatus will no longer be necessary to enforce laws such as this once classes no longer exist. Laws were enforced by pre-class societies prior to the emergence of a state, so there is a strong basis for predicting this can be done under communism prior to reaching abundance.
35 Draper 2011, pp. 77–93.
36 An entire book could probably be written on Marx and Engels’s attitude to universal suf- frage, but it is clear enough that they support it strongly and see it as very powerful, potentially in contradiction with capitalist relations of production.
Engels’s writings on the subject are unambiguous, and not only after Marx’s death. In material that functions as a draft programme for the Communist League and as a draft of the Manifesto (‘Principles of Communism’, 1847), he argues:
In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established, the communists must make the common cause with the party which will turn this constitution against the bourgeoisie and use it in the interests of the proletariat – that is, with the agrarian National Reformers (Engels 1976, p. 356). The Manifesto itself (written in 1848) is less specific, but as part of its focus on winning the struggle for democracy states that the Communists ‘labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries’ (Marx and Engels 1976b, p. 519). Also in 1848, Marx and Engels issue a leaflet (‘Demands of the Communist Party in Germany’) that includes the demand for universal suffrage (Marx and Engels 1977, p. 3).
In /The Class Struggles in France /(1850), Marx appears to adopt a more ambivalent attitude towards universal suffrage. Here, he is positive:
The classes whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate – proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie – it puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage. And from the class whose old social power it sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdraws the political guarantees of this power. It forces the political rule of the bourgeoisie into democratic conditions, which at every moment help the hostile classes to victory and jeopardize the very foundations of bourgeois society (Marx 1978a, p. 79). But here he argues:
Universal suffrage had fulfilled its mission. The majority of the people had passed through the school of development, which is all that universal suffrage can serve for in a revolutionary period. It had to be set aside by a revolution or by the reaction (Marx 1978a, p. 137). An article he writes in response to the rise of the Chartists (1855) helps to clarify his position:
two-thirds of the population of France are peasants and over one-third townspeople, whereas in England more than two-thirds live in towns and less than one-third in the countryside. Hence the results of universal suffrage in England must likewise be in inverse proportion to the results in France, just as town and country are in the two states. This explains the diametrically opposite character which the demand for universal suffrage has assumed in France and England. In France the political ideologists put forward this demand, which every ‘educated’ person could support to a greater or lesser extent, depending on his convictions. In England it is a distinguishing feature roughly separating the aristocracy and bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the people, on the other. There it is regarded as a political question and here, as a social one. In England agitation for universal suffrage had gone through a period of historical development before it became the slogan of the masses. In France, it was first introduced and then started on its historical path. In France it was the practice of universal suffrage that failed, whereas in England it was its ideology … [Universal suffrage in England] is the Charter of the people and implies the assumption of political power as a means of satisfying their social needs. Universal suffrage, which was regarded as the motto of universal brotherhood in the France of 1848, has become a battle cry in England. There universal suffrage was the direct content of the revolution; here, revolution is the direct content of universal suffrage (Marx 1980, p. 242).
The most plausible interpretation is that Marx’s ‘objection’ to universal suffrage in France was only that it was too weak as a demand: he did not /oppose /it, but he thought that it was at once too utopian (it could not last in a genuine way in the conjuncture at the time) and not ‘utopian’ enough (it did not demand socialism). The context is important here: in France, the parliament elected by universal suffrage had rendered itself ineffectual and set above itself a president elected by universal suffrage (Louis Napoleon) who went on to seize power in a dictatorship (in our sense of the term) sanctified by universal suffrage plebiscites of very questionable legitimacy. Hence, the practice of universal suffrage in France failed (essentially because the proletarian forces were not able to win over the peasantry, and a divided bourgeoisie settled for the rule of a strong man). If Marx ever /did / mean his statement that universal suffrage needed ‘to be set aside’ to apply generally, it is clearly a view he revises based on the experience of the Chartists.
In 1871, Marx praises the Paris Commune for introducing universal suffrage against a dictatorship (in our sense) in wartime (Marx 1986, p. 331). He never advocates giving extra weight to the votes of ‘real proletarians’, or refusing to hold elections on the grounds that the proletariat must rule as a dictatorship, or anything of that sort. If Marx had thought an insurrection against a government elected by universal suffrage was a good idea, then surely in his strongest polemic against state fetishism, the /Critique of the Gotha Programme /(1875), he would have argued this. But what he actually does is continue to advocate for a ‘democratic republic’ as the form /in /which the class struggle has to be fought out (not something to be overthrown), in the context of a critique of petty-bourgeois democrats who wish merely to establish democracy without also campaigning for socialism: ‘vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium in the democratic republic and has no suspicion that it is precisely in this last state form of bourgeois society that the class struggle has to be definitively fought out’ (Marx 1989a, p. 96). For Marx and Engels insurrection was permissible to / establish /democracy against absolutist rule; they never advocate it to overthrow a democratically elected government (including a constitutional monarchy).
Note that Marx and Engels were writing at a time when the power imbalance between the military and ordinary people was very different to today. The modern state has access to weapons with a devastating destructive power that can be wielded by a small core of loyal troops, including remotely. The Arab Spring has demonstrated the disastrous consequences of allowing a struggle to become militarised, even in relatively weak states, since more powerful states are likely to become involved. On the other hand, the Arab Spring has also shown that peaceful strikes and protests can bring down dictatorships in the right circumstances, as they did in Egypt, and with more lasting success in Tunisia.
Nor is Marx and Engels’ emphasis on democracy the basis for a ‘stages’ theory. Even in relatively backward Germany in 1850, they want the Communists to struggle for socialist measures to be implemented from the outset, through democratic organs once they exist (Marx and Engels 1978, p. 287). This is what they mean by making the revolution permanent: not /stopping /the push for socialist reforms once having achieved a democratic state. Similarly, in 1882 they argue for making communal forms of ownership in Russia the direct starting point for socialism along with a democratic socialist revolution in the West, not pausing for a period of capitalist development before taking socialist measures (Marx and Engels 1989, p. 426).
During and after the 1850s, Engels understandably makes the most frequent references to the importance of universal suffrage, since he was tasked with writing the more political material while Marx was working on /Capital/. I find it inconceivable that there could have been a substantial difference between Marx and Engels on this question without it being referenced in their correspondence; clearly, in the following examples, Engels speaks for both he and Marx:
[1850] The working classes will have learned by experience that no lasting benefit whatever can be obtained for them by others, but that they must obtain it themselves by conquering, first of all, political power. They must see now that under no circumstances have they any guarantee for bettering their social position unless by Universal Suffrage, which would enable them to seat a Majority of Working Men in the House of Commons (Engels 1978a, p. 275).
[1850] [U]niversal franchise in an England two-thirds of whose inhabitants are industrial proletarians means the exclusive political rule of the working class with all the revolutionary changes in social conditions which are inseparable from it (Engels 1978b, p. 298).
[1870] In England, the bourgeoisie could get its real representative, Bright, into the government only by an extension of the franchise, whose consequences are bound to put an end to all bourgeois rule (Engels 1985,
Marx’s death, here in his critique of the SPD’s 1891 ‘Erfurt Programme’:
If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown (Engels 1990a, p. 227). The phrase ‘democratic republic’ here clearly refers to all forms of democratic election of the state, and not only to a workers’ state (though it refers to that too). At the end of the nineteenth century the phrase ‘democratic republic’ meant roughly what it means now. A democratic republic would become ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ simply if the proletariat exercised power within it: e.g. if a proletarian party was elected to government and carried out socialist measures. A democratically elected government under a constitutional monarchy would also qualify: Engels puts the UK in the same category as France and the US (Engels 1990a, p. 226).
Engels reiterates his and Marx’s view on the democratic republic in an article the Italian press 1892:
All of governmental, aristocratic and bourgeois Germany reproaches our friends in the Reichstag for being republicans and revolutionaries. Marx and I, for forty years, repeated ad nauseam that for us the democratic republic is the only political form in which the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class can first be universalised and then culminate in the decisive victory of the proletariat.
The honourable Mr. Bovio is surely not so naive as to believe that an emperor of Germany would draw his ministers from the socialist party and that, if he so desired, he would accept the conditions–implying abdication–without which those ministers could not count on the support of their party? (Engels 1990b, p. 271). Hence even Draper gives the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ a stronger meaning than at least Engels intended (and probably Marx too). He interprets the phrase to mean only a workers’ state (i.e. the state after having been smashed), counterposing this to ‘ordinary’ parliamentary democracy, when Engels above is allowing for a workers’ government under a parliamentary democracy also to be an example (Draper 2011, pp. 115–16). The workers’ government would surely need to be carrying out socialist measures to qualify.
In the same article Engels also clarifies his attitude towards violence under the regime of the Kaiser:
For a start, I have never said the socialist party will become the majority and then proceed to take power. On the contrary, I have expressly said that the odds are ten to one that our rulers, well before that point arrives, will use violence against us, and this would shift us from the terrain of majority to the terrain of revolution (Engels 1990b, p. 271). Clearly Engels expected the German absolute monarchy to use violence against the socialist party rather than let it reform away absolutist rule through a majority in the Reichstag (a prediction that proved correct). But note that even here, where there was no real democratic rule, Engels’ conception is that the parliamentary road to socialism would only be abandoned in response to violence from the other side. It surely follows that Engels not only thinks the peaceful path to socialism was /open /in countries with a democratic constitution, /but that it should be followed/, provided the other side does not use violence to prevent a socialist government coming to power in violation of the constitution. Even here, under the current balance of forces between ordinary people and the military, challenging an illegitimate government with violence is unforgivably irresponsible and dangerous.
The Paris Commune succeeded, at one stroke, in establishing a democratic republic, in constituting the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in smashing the state (by making its representatives recallable, etc.). But if the same uprising had occurred against a democratically elected government (under a constitutional monarchy or otherwise), its character would have been very different. Nowhere do Marx or Engels license an insurrection to establish democracy against democracy, on the (fallacious) grounds that only in this way can the state be smashed (or, indeed, on any grounds). This kind of insurrection cannot solve the problem of establishing its own legitimacy. Prior to seizing power, support for the transfer of power to whatever new organs of democracy are proposed has always been and will almost certainly always be limited to a minority, since the rest of the population will ask why those who are seeking power do not demand (or even wait for) a new election and run in it. Moreover, without winning an election before taking power, there is no way for a majority to participate in and sanction the overthrow of the government that won the current legitimate election. At this fundamental level such an act is inconsistent with Marx and Engels’ project of workers’ self- emancipation. The practical consequences are also likely to be unforgivably disastrous.
37 In the critique of the ‘Erfurt Programme’ Engels argues:
One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the
new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate
all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of
the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in
democratic republics such as France and the USA, in monarchies such as
Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for
financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this
dynasty is powerless against the people. But in Germany where the
government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other
representative bodies have no real power, to advocate such a thing in
Germany, when, moreover, there is no need to do so, means removing the
fig-leaf from absolutism and becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness
(Engels 1990a, p. 226). Lenin fails to understand the significance of
this passage, downplaying it by emphasising the word ‘conceive’ and
claiming Engels only intends it to apply to states that are ‘very
free’ (Lenin 1964,p.449). This ignores the fact the Engels explicitly
cites the examples of the US, France and the UK as places where a
peaceful path is open, and that he explicitly cites the absolutist
monarchy in Germany as the reason the parliamentary road to socialism
should not be advanced as a principle under those conditions. He surely
only says no more than that a peaceful revolution can be /conceived /
because he is not confident that, even in a state where there are full
democratic rights, non-socialists will continue to respect these rights
if a socialist government is elected.
Marx and Engels also do not rule out that a workers’ government may need to use a state’s repressive functions against those who forcefully oppose the legitimacy of a democratically elected government and the measures it takes; something all states have the legal power to do currently. They argue these positions against anarchists who think the state can be dispensed with immediately, against /putschists /pursuing conspiracies, and against opportunists who refuse to even imply the need to end absolutist rule; but never against people committed to respecting the legitimacy of what we now consider to be ‘ordinary’ democratic elections.
Perhaps /State and Revolution /could be forgiven for overemphasis if Lenin’s argument were directed only against the opportunist position held by the SPD at the time (which faced an absolutist monarchy and had even supported WWI); but in fact it becomes a justification for the/ Comintern /refusing to stick to the path of contesting democratic elections for the purposes of winning power, regardless of their legitimacy (instead mainly contesting them for propaganda purposes), and, crucially, ignoring this path in Germany after the fall of the Kaiser.
[xxxv] For Marx, the lower phase of communism marks the /completion /of the socialist revolution. This is the point at which there is no longer a capitalist class who may resist democratic rule, and indeed no class divisions at all, hence the point at which the repressive functions of the state are no longer needed and wither away. So whereas communist or socialist measures are part of ‘the real movement which abolishes the present state of things’,38 the lower /phase /of communism is the first destination. If it is to lead to the lower phase of communism, a democratic government and a democratised state must make conscious efforts to get there. That means progressively bringing value production under planned, democratic control, for the purposes of meeting need. Hence, value production will recede under a workers’ state and be insignificant or non-existent at the point of reaching the lower phase of communism. [Jones 2021: xxviii-xxxv]
[Peter Hudis, Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, Historical Materialism #36] →
204 • Chapter Four
‘Socialism’, for Marx, was never meant to serve as a transitional stage to some distant ‘communist’ formation. He is not pushing off the realm of freedom to some far horizon. /The realm of freedom emerges simultaneously with the elimination of capitalism. /Marx is realistic enough to understand, however, that a free society itself undergoes self-development. There would be no necessity for it to undergo further self-development if it did not contain some kind of internal defect that impels the forward movement.^61
This is not to suggest that Marx did not conceive of a possible transitional stage /between /capitalism and the initial phase of socialism. He addresses this in the /Critique of the Gotha Programme /thusly: ‘Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but /the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat/.’^62
Based on the above discussion of the impact of the Paris Commune, it appears that Marx conceived of this transitional period along the lines of the non-statist and /freely-associated /form of self-governance that emerged in the Commune. Marx saw in the Commune an exemplar of the political form best-suited for exiting capitalism. It is a mediatory or transitional /political /stage in which capitalist social relations have not yet been fully overcome but which are in the process of being broken down.
For this reason, it is important to note that in the /Critique /Marx does not speak of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ but of the ‘/revolutionary /dictatorship of the proletariat’.^63 He may have done so in order to distinguish his position from that of Lassalle, whom he attacked as ‘a future workingmen’s dictator’.^64 Marx does not advocate a ‘revolutionary dictatorship’ that rules /over /the proletariat through a political party; instead, he advocates /the rule of/
higher phase in which the totality of human sensuousness is allowed its full and free manifestation. Since intellectual and ‘spiritual’ growth is potentially infinite, there can be no ‘end’ to a society that allows for a ‘totality of manifestations of life’. Perhaps this is why Marx held that ‘communism as such is not the goal of human development’ and why in the /Grundrisse /he speaks of an ‘absolute movement of becoming’. Marx never explicitly addresses this issue in terms of a higher phase outlined in the /Critique of the Gotha Programme/.
/Critique of the Gotha Programme/, Campbell 1996, p. 207 refers to ‘Marx’s reference to socialism as the period of the dictatorship of the working class’. However, Marx does not refer the dictatorship of the proletariat as socialism. He clearly refers to it as lying ‘/between /capitalist and communist [or socialist] society’. This failure to distinguish the /political /form of transition /between /capitalism and socialism from socialism itself is extremely widespread in the secondary literature of Marx, but it has no basis in Marx’s actual writings.
to my attention, in private correspondence.
Marx’s Late Writings on Postcapitalist Society • 205
/the proletariat itself /as it works to progressively eliminate capital’s all-consuming social dominance through democratic forms of deliberation and participation. Important though this stage is, however, it is not equivalent to the lower phase of socialism or communism. For, with Marx’s lower phase, a decisive and qualitative break is made with capitalism.
Marx makes this explicit in his ‘Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anarchy’, written around the same time as the /Critique of the Gotha Programme. /It further reveals how Marx understood ‘revolutionary dictatorship’ – and how different his understanding of it was from most ‘Marxists’ who followed him. In response to Bakunin’s question as to whether a working-class ‘dictatorship’ would consist, in the case of Germany, of all of the workers of the country, Marx replies, ‘Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the communities’.^65 Marx identifies proletarian rule not with a party speaking in its name, but rather with its own ‘communities’ of association. He acknowledges that this can be termed ‘a workers’ state, if he wants to call it that’.^66 But what Marx means by this is that ‘The class rule of the workers over the strata of the old world who are struggling against them can only last as long as the economic basis of class society has not yet been destroyed’.^67 This is not rule /for /the masses but /by /them. The masses make use of a tool or instrument of the old society, governmental power, insofar as the social transformations that can lead to the abolition of the state itself are not yet fully achieved; and yet this government-form, /unlike in capitalism/, is thoroughly /democratic /and /inclusive/. As the self-determining and participatory communities manage to abolish indirectly social labour and alienated human relationships, this governmental form would be superseded. As he puts it, ‘This just means that when class rule has disappeared there will be no state in the present political sense’.^68 Moreover, when the workers’ ‘victory is complete, its rule too is therefore at an end, since its class character will have disappeared’.^69
The notion that the lower phase of socialism or communism represents a ‘proletarian dictatorship’ in which value-production still prevails, which largely defined the discourse of established ‘Marxist’ thought in the twentieth century, is alien to Marx’s thought. Such misreadings of his work had already begun to emerge in his own lifetime, and he lived long enough to directly
Marx 1989e, p. 519.
Marx 1989e, p. 520. Marx’s use of this phrase
calls into question Cyril Smith’s claim that Marx never used the term ‘workers’ state’. See Smith 2005, pp. 143–56.
Marx 1989e, p. 521.
Marx 1989e, p. 519.
Ibid. Marx’s comments of 1875 on the
‘self-abolition’ of proletarian rule is completely consistent with his earlier comments in /The Holy Family /and /The German Ideology/. See Chapter One, above.
206 • Chapter Four
answer them. One of his most poignant critiques is found in his ‘Notes on Wagner’s /Lehrbuch des politischen Ökonomie/’, which was one of the first works by an academic economist to directly engage Marx’s theoretical contribution:
/Value/. According to Mr. Wagner, Marx’s theory of value is the ‘/cornerstone of his socialist system/’. As I have never established a ‘socialist system’, this is a fantasy of Wagner, Schäffe /e tutti quanti/. . . . [I]n my /investigation /of value I have dealt with bourgeois relations, not with the application of this theory of /value /to a ‘social state’ not even constructed by me but by Mr. Schäffe for me.^70
Marx’s entire body of work shows that a new society is conditional upon a radical transformation of labour and social relations. The measure of whether such a transformation is adequate to the concept of a new society is the abolition of the law of value and value-production by freely-associated individuals.
This goal is not achieved, however, merely by some act of revolutionary will. It is achieved by discerning and building upon the elements of the new society that are concealed in the shell of the old one. This includes elucidating the forces of liberation that arise against capitalist alienation – which includes not only workers but all those suffering the ills of capitalist society, be they national minorities, women, or youth – which Marx referred to as the ‘new forces and passions’ for the ‘reconstruction of society’.^71 It is the development of capitalism ‘as such’ and the myriad forms of resistance that arise against it – none of which can be anticipated in advance – that create the possibility for a new society. It is on these grounds that Marx argues, ‘The capitalist mode of production is in fact a transitional form which by its own organism must lead to a higher, to a cooperative mode of production, to socialism’.^72
Marx 1989h, pp. 533, 537.
Marx 1976e, p. 928.
See Marx 1989f, pp. 783–4: ‘Daß die
kapitalistische Producktionsweise eigentlich nur eine Übergangsform ist, die durch ihren eigenen Organismus zu einer höheren, zur /genossenschaftlichen /Productionsweise, zum Sozialismus führen /muß/’. I am indebted to Chattopadhyay 2010 for bringing this passage to my attention.
[...]
The tragedy of ‘Marxism’ is that a philosophy that originated (at least in Marx’s hands) with the aim of abolishing any social powers that operate behind the backs of the producers ended up creating dictatorial régimes that imposed their will on individuals without even a minimal degree of democratic control or public accountability. Nor was this only a political problem: the economic plans of the state-controlled economies operated no less outside the control of the producers, who were reduced to wage-slavery (where they were not subjected to forced labour of a more nefarious kind).^12 The notion that a ‘new’ society can be imposed behind the backs of the populace and irrespective of specific social conditions faced by that society has done enormous damage – not least in leading large numbers of people around the world to question whether a viable alternative to capitalism is even possible. Indeed, it can be argued that the greatest barrier in the way of a revolutionary challenge to capitalism today is not the /material /or /ideological /power of capital but rather the memory of the innumerable flawed and failed efforts to overcome it in the not-so-distant past. The past does hang like a dead weight upon the living – especially when alternative visions of a postcapitalist society that can animate the imagination of humanity are hard to come by.
of the Soviet Union laboured in the forced labour-camps at any given time during and after the forced-industrialisation campaign under Stalin. This is not to count the millions of others, especially Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Crimean Tartars and others, who perished at his hands.
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