The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 20
The Nature of the Proletarian Transition State
In view of the history of the world during the last few years, it is of special importance to make some analysis of the most natural form of this sort of transition state of the proletariat, basing ourselves, of course, as we do throughout, on the Materialist Conception of History. Because the present State is based on territory and the election to the State organs are territorial, it does not, of course, follow that the transition State set up by the dictatorship of the proletariat need necessarily also be based on the present or similar electoral division. On the contrary, since it will be a workers' Republic, the most natural unit is the factory and workshop, or other place of work or union of similar workers—whether these be State, literary or skilled or unskilled manual workers. But this will exclude all the non-workers who can live on the wealth they have saved from the hands of the revolution, or who can live on the proceeds of illegitimate secret trade and so forth! Naturally! In a real workers' Republic there is, and should be, no room for parasitic elements. Marx and Engels, and the whole of history, have taught us that there are no such things as abstract moral truths or ethical rules that hold for all times. What might seem to be a universal rule of conduct or absolute truth in reality receives a particular interpretation in different ages even though we may use the almost identical words, but if there is a maxim, the justice of which would appeal in the abstract to all, in the concrete to the working class, certainly it is that "he who will not work (when able to do so by brain or hand) neither shall he eat." In any case, this is a maxim which is bound to, and rightly will, receive its full due and application in a Communist society, and the first stage in the establishment of the co-operative commonwealth is therefore to make work of all able-bodied and able-brained adults the test of citizenship. Territory, possessions were the characteristic tests of citizenship of the feudal and capitalist eras. It was, therefore, no wanton denial of rights or hatred towards an enemy, but sure instinct of the needs of the new society which caused our Russian comrades, and the Paris Commune (to a more limited extent, because of the different conditions) before it, to scrap the whole of the old State machinery, with its own peculiar methods and forms of elections and modes of work and introduce in its place institutions really representative of the workers as distinct from bourgeois or parasitic interests, namely, the Soviets or Councils of Workers, which, in their essence, cannot be other than democratic, in which every citizen of the workers' Republic has equal opportunity and equal right to exercise all his duties and privileges of citizenship. There is yet another reason why the Soviet or Workers' Councils system is the one most peculiarly adapted to the workers' Republic in its transition state towards complete Communism. Particular circumstances induce in all of us corresponding modes of thought and feelings. Thus the manufacturer or trader for instance, has a dual personality. As a manufacturer, it is his interest and his aim to get as high a price as possible for his wares, but as a consumer he quite as naturally grumbles at high prices, at the high cost of living.
So, too, the shopkeeper, as such, will be interested in the improvement of his district, roads, means of communication and so forth for it improves his business, but as a ratepayer he constantly grumbles at the increase in rates.
So the worker, when he votes as a resident of a district, will vote largely as a citizen of the bourgeois democracy to which he has been accustomed all his life. The social standing, wealth, charitable propensities and so forth of the particular candidate has considerable effect upon him. But when he votes in his union or workshop, he votes surrounded by the actual daily facts of his existence. He will then be less prone to be influenced by outside factors. When confronted by national and international questions he will view them in the first instance from the point of view of his life as a worker, and will thus reflect more truly the interests of himself and his fellow workers.
This is another reason why it is so important to be clear from the first on this point. Why in any proletarian revolution the first step must be as Marx and Engels have said repeatedly, to break up, to scrap the bourgeois State machinery—the degree of force used to do this will depend not on the desire of the revolutionary working class, but simply and solely on the degree of resistance of the governing classes—and to set up in its place a purely proletarian transition State.
As to the future, we may say what Engels said regarding the sex relations of the future men and women—when a race of men and women have grown up to whom the idea of parasitic, exploiting elements in society is absolutely foreign. Men and women who will regard the performance of some useful work for the good of society as a first duty and who will look upon the enjoyment of all the best that life can offer, of all the joys of nature,science and art as the inalienable right of every human being, such men and women will know how to order their lives in accordance with their principles—we, however, are only concerned with the building up of the first stage of Communism upon the ruins of the Capitalist State and from the materials now at our hand.