The State and Revolution (n. d.)/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE EXPERIENCE OF 1848–51
1. The Eve of Revolution.
The first production of a mature Marxism—The Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto—date from the very eve of the Revolution of 1848. As a result of this fact, we find in them, side by side with the statement of the general principles of Marxism, a reflection, to’a certain degree, of the concrete revolutionary situation at that time. Consequently, it will possibly be more to the point to examine what the authors of these works wrote about the State immediately before they drew conclusions from the experience of the years 1848–51.
"The working class," wrote Marx, in The Poverty of Philosophy, "will in the course of its development, replace the old bourgeois society by a society which will exclude classes and their antagonisms; there will no longer be a political authority in the proper sense of the word, since political authority is the official expression of the antagonism of classes within the bourgeois society." (German edition, 1885, p. 182.)
It is instructive to compare, side by side with this general statement of the idea of the disappearance of the State with the disappearance of classes, the statement contained in the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels a few months later—to be precise, in November, 1847:
"Tracing the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we followed up the more or less hidden civil war within an existing society to the point at which it is transformed into open revolution, and the proletariat establishes its rule by means of violent overthrow of the capitalist class. … We have already seen that the first step in the Workers' Revolution is the transformation (literally "the promotion") of the proletariat into the ruling class, the conquest of democracy. … The proletariat will use its political supremacy in order gradually to wrest the whole of capital from the capitalist class, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the State, that is, of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase as quickly as possible the total of productive forces." (Seventh German edition, 1906, pp. 31–37.)
Here we have a formulation of one of the most remarkable and most important ideas of Marxism on the subject of the State—namely, the idea of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" (as Marx and Engels began to write after the Paris Commune); and also a definition of the State, in the highest degree interesting, but vevertheless also belonging to the category of forgotten thoughts of Marxism: "The State, that us, the proletariat organized as the ruling class."
This definition of the State, so far from having ever been explained in the current propagandist and agitation literature of the official Social-Democratic parties, has been deliberately forgotten, as it is quite irreconcilable with Reformism, strikes straight at the heart of the common Opportunist and middle-class illusions about the "peaceful development of democracy."
"The proletariat needs the State," is a phrase repeated by all the Opportunists, Social-chauvinists and Kautskians, who assure us that this is what Marx taught. They "forget," however, to add that, in the first place, the proletariat, according to Marx, needs only a withering away State—a State that is so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately and cannot but wither away; and, secondly, the workers "need" a State, "that is, the proletariat organized as the ruling class."
The State is a particular form of organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the purpose of holding down some class. What is the class that the proletariat must hold down? It can only be, naturally, the exploiting class, i. e., the bourgeoisie. The toilers need the State only to overcome the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can guide this suppression and bring it to fulfillment—the proletariat, the only class revolutionary to the finish, the only class which can unite all the toilers and exploited in the struggle against the capitalist class for its complete displacement from power.
The exploiting classes need political supremacy in order to maintain exploitation, i. e., in the selfish interests of the tiny minority, and against the vast majority of the community. The exploited classes need political supremacy in order completely to abolish all exploitation, i. e., in the interests of the enormous majority of the people, and against the tiny minority constituted by the slave owners of modern times—the landlords and capitalists. The lower middle-class Democrats, the sham Socialists who have substituted for the class war dreams of harmony between classes, have imagined even the transition to Socialism, in a dream, as it were—that is, not in the form of the overthrow of the supremacy of the exploiting class, but as a peaceful submission of the minority to the fully enlightened majority. This lower middle-class Utopia, indissolubly connected with the vision of a State above classes, in practice led to the betrayal of the interests of the toiling class; as was shown, for example, in the Revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and in the "Socialist" participation in bourgeois ministries in England, France, Italy and other coutries at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.
Marx fought all his life against this lower middle-class Socialism—now reborn in Russia in the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary parties. He carried his analysis of the class war logically right up to the doctrine on political power and the State.
The overthrow of capitalist supremacy can be accomplished only by the proletariat as the particular class which is being prepared fer this work and is provided both with the opportunity and the power to perform it, by the economic conditions of its existence. While the capitalist class breaks up and dissolves the peasantry and all the lower middle classes, it welds together, unites and organizes the town proletariat. Only the proletariat—on account of its economic role in production on a large scale—is capable of leading all the toiling and exploited masses, who are exploited, oppressed, crushed by the capitalist often more, not less, than the town proletariat, but who are incapable of carrying on the struggle for freedom unaided.
The doctrine of the class-war, as applied by Marx to the question of the State and of the Socialist revolution, leads inevitably to the recognition of the political supremacy of the proletariat, to its dictatorship, i. e., authority shared with none else and relying directly upon the armed force of the masses. The overthrow of the capitalist class is feasible only by the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, able to crush the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and to organize, for the new settlement of economic order, all the toiling and exploited masses.
The proletariat needs the State, the centralized organization of force and violence, both for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population—the peasantry, the lower middle-class, the semi-proletariat—in the work of economic Socialist reconstruction.
By educating a workers' party, Marxism educates also the advance-guard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and of leading the whole community to Socialism; fit to direct and organize the new order, to be the teacher, guide, leader of all the toiling and exploited in the task of building up their common life without the capitalist and against the capitalists. As against this, the Opportunism predominant at present breeds in the labor movement a class of representatives of the better-paid workers, who lose touch with the rank and file, "get on" fairly well under capitalism, and sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, i. e., renounce the role of the revolutionary leaders of the people against the capitalist class.
"The State, i.e, the proletariat organized as the ruling class"—this theory of Marx's is indissolubly connected with all his teachings concerning the revolutionary part to be played in History by the proletariat. The fulfillment of this part requires the proletarian dictatorship, the political supremacy of the proletariat.
But, if the proletariat needs the State, as a particular form of organization of force against the capitalist class, the question almost spontaneously forces itself upon us: Is it thinkable that such an organization can he created without a preliminary breaking up and destruction of the machinery of government created for its own use by the capitalist class? The Communist Manifesto leads us straight to this conclusion, and it is of this conclusion that Marx wrote when he summed up the practical results of the revolutionary experience gained between 1848 and 1851.
2. The Results of Revolution.
On this question of the State with which we are concerned, Marx summarizes his conclusions from the revolutions of the years 1848–1851 in the following way (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte):
"Nevertheless, the Revolution is thorough. It is still passing through its purgatory. It is doing its work systematically. By December 2, 1851 (the day of Louis Bonaparte's coup d'etat) it had fulfilled half its program; now it is fulfilling the other half. First, it perfected its parliamentary power, in order to be able to overthrow it. Now, when this has been accomplished, it is drawing the executive power through the perfecting process; it reduces that power to its simplest terms; isolates it, sets it up against itself as its sole reproach—all in order to concentrate against it all the forces of destruction. (The italics are ours.)
“And when the revolution has completed this second part of its preliminary work, Europe will rise to exclaim in triumph, 'Well grubbed, old mole!' … This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its multi-form and artificial machinery of government, with its army of half a million officials, side by side with a military force of another half million, this frightful parasitic organism covering as with a net the whole body of the French society and blocking up all its pores, had arisen in the period of absolute monarchy, at the time of the fall of Feudalism: a fall which this organism had helped to hasten."
The first French Revolution developed centralization, "but at the same time increased the scope, the attributes, the number of servants of the central Government. Napoleon completed this government machinery."
The Legitimist and the July monarchies "contributed nothing but a greater division of labor." … "Finally, the Parliamentary Republic found itself compelled, in its struggle against the Revolution, along with its repressive measures, to increase the resources and the centralization of the State. Every Revolution brought this machine to greater perfection instead of breaking it up. (The italics are ours.) The political parties, which alternately struggled for supremacy, looked upon the capture of this gigantic governmental structure as the principal spoils of victory." (Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1907 German edition, pp. 98–99.)
In this remarkable passage Marxism makes a great step forward in comparison with the position of the Communist Manifesto. There the question of the State is still extremely abstract; most general ideas and expressions are employed. Here the question becomes concrete, and the conclusions are most precise, definite, practical; all former revolutions helped to perfect the machinery of Government, whereas now we must shatter it, break it to pieces.
This conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the State, yet it is exactly this fundamental point which has been not merely completely "forgotten" by the dominant official Social-Democratic parties, but absolutely distorted (as we shall see later) by the foremost theoretician of the Second International, Karl Kautsky.
In the Communist Manifesto are set out the general lessons of History, which force us to see in the State the organ of class domination, and bring us to the necessary conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the capitalist class without, as a preliminary step, winning political power, without obtaining political supremacy, without transforming the State into the "proletariat organized as the ruling class"; and that this proletarian State must begin to wither away immediately after its victory, because in a community without class antagonisms, the State is unnecessary and impossible. At this stage the problem is not yet considered as to what form, from the point of view of historical development, this replacement of the capitalist State by the proletarian State is to assume.
It is precisely this problem that is stated and solved by Marx in 1852. True to his philosophy of dialectical materialism, Marx takes as his basis the experience of the great revolutionary years 1848–51. Here, as everywhere, his teaching is the summing-up of practical experience, illuminated by a profound philosophical world-conception and a great knowledge of History.
The problem of the State is put concretely: How, in actual fact, did the capitalist State arise, that is, the governmental machinery necessary for capitalist sumpremacy? What have been its changes, what has been its evolution in the course of the bourgeois revolutions, and in the face of spontaneous risings of the oppressed classes? What are the problems confronting the proletariat in respect to this government machine?
The centralized power of the State, peculiar to capitalist Society, grew up in the period of the fall of Feudalism. Two institutions are especially characteristic of this machine: the bureaucracy and the standing army. More than once, in the works of Marx and Engels, we find mention of the thousand threads which connect these institutions with the capitalist class; and the experience of every worker illustrates this connection with extraordinary clearness and impressiveness, The working class learns to recognize this connection by its own bitter experience; that is why it so easily acquires, so firmly absorbs the idea of its inevitability—an idea which the lower middle-class democrats either ignorantly and superficially deny, or, still more superficially admit "in theory," forgetting to draw the corresponding practical conclusions.
The bureaucracy and the standing army constitute a "parasite" on the body of capitalist Society—a parasite born of the internal struggles which tear that Society asunder, but essentially a parasite, "blocking up" the pores of existence. The Kautskian Opportunism which prevails at present amongst the official Social-Democratic parties considers this view of the State as a parasitic organism as the peculiar and exclusive property of Anarchism. Naturally, this distortion of Marxism is extremely useful to those philistines who have brought Socialism to the unheard-of disgrace of trying to justify and gloss over an Imperalist war on the pretext of "defense of the fatherland"; but none the less it is an absolute distortion:
The development, perfection, strengthening of the bureaucratic and military apparatus has been going on during all those bourgeois revolutions of which Europe has seen so many since the decay of Feudalism.
In particular, the lower middle classes are attracted to the side of the capitalists and to their allegiance, largely by means of this very apparatus, which provides the upper sections of the peasantry, artisans and tradesmen with a number of comparalively comfortable, quiet and respectable posts, and thereby raises their holders above the general mass. Consider what happened in Russia during the six months following February 27 (March 12), 1917. The Government posts, which hitherto had been given by preference to members of the Black Hundred, now became the booty of Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nobody really thought of any serious reforms. They were to be put off "till. the Constituent Assembly," which, in its turn, was gradually put off until the end of the war! But there was no delay, no waiting for a Constituent Assembly in the matter of dividing the spoils, of capturing snug places like Ministries, Under-Secretaryship, Governor-Generalships, ete., etc.! The game of permutations and combinations that went on in connection with the composition of the Provisional Government was, in reality, merely the expression of this division and re-division of the spoils, as it was going on high and low, up and down the country, in all departments of the central and local government. The concrete, practical result of the six months between February 27 (March 12), and August 27 (September 9), 1917, is beyond all dispute; reforms shelved, distribution of the official places accomplished, and "mistakes" in the distribution corrected by a few re-shufflings. But the longer the process of re-shuffling the posts goes on among the various capitalist and middle-class parties (among the Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviks, if we take the case of Russia), the more clearly the oppressed classes, with the proletariat at their head, begin to realize the irreconcilable opposition of their interests to the whole of capitalist society. Hence arises the need of the bourgeois parties, even of the most democratic and "revolutionary democratic" sections, to intensify their repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the machinery of repression, that is, the power of the State. Such a course of events compels the Revolution "to concentrate all the forces of destruction" against the State, and to regard the problem as one not of perfecting the machinery of the State, but of breaking up and annihilating it.
It was not logical theorizing, but the practical course of events, the living experience of the years 1848–51, that produced such a statement of the problem. We can see to what extent Marx held strictly to the solid ground of historical experience from the fact that, in 1852, he did not as yet deal concretely with the question of what was to replace this state machinery that had to be destroyed. Experience had not as yet yielded concrete data sufficient for the solution of such a problem: History placed it on the order of the day later on, in 1871. In 1852 it could only be laid down, with the accuracy that comes with scientific historical observation, that the proletarian revolution had arrived at the stage when it must consider the problem of "concentrating all the forces of destruction" against the State, of "breaking up" the Governmental machine.
Here the question may arise: Is it correct to generalize the experience, observation and conclusions of Marx, and to apply them to a wider scene of action than that of France during three years (1848–51)? In the discussion of this point, let us recall, first of all, a remark of Engels, and then proceed to examine our facts:
"France," wrote Engels in his introduction to the Third Edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire, "France is a country in which the historical struggle of classes, more than in any other, was carried each time to a decisive conclusion. In France were hammered into most definite shapes those changing political forms within which that class struggle went on, and through which its results found expression. The centre of Feudalism, during the Middle Ages; the model country, with the most centralized monarchy, based on rigid ranks and orders after the Renaissance, France shattered Feudalism during the Great Revolution, and founded the undiluted supremacy of the middle class with such classical clearness as was to be found in no other European country. And the struggle of the revolting proletariat against the capitalist tyranny is in its turn taking here an acute form which is unknown elsewhere." *Edition 1907, p. 4.)
The last sentence is out of date, inasmuch as there has been a lull in the revolutionary struggle of the French proletariat since 1871; though, long as this lull may be, it in no way excludes the possibility that in the oncoming proletarian revolution France may once more reveal herself as the traditional home of the class-war to a finish.
Let us, however, cast a general glance over the history of the more advanced nations during the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. We shall see that the same process has been going on more slowly, in more varied forms, on a much wider field. On the other hand, there has been a development of "parliamentary government" not only in the Republican countries (France, America, Switzerland), but also in the monarchies (England, Germany to a certain extent, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, etc.). On the other hand, there has been the struggle for power of the various middle and lower middle-class parties distributing and re-distributing the "plunder" of official appointments, the foundations of capitalist society remaining all the while unchanged. Finally, there has been the perfecting and strengthening of the "executive" and of its bureaucratic and military apparatus.
There can be no doubt that these are the general features of the latest stage in the evolution of all capitalist States generally. In the three years, 1848–51, France displayed in a swift, sharp, concentrated form all those processes of development which are inherent in the whole capitalist world.
Imperialism in particular, the era of financial capital, the era of gigantic capitalistic monopolies, the era of the transformation of simple trust-capitalism into State trust-capitalism, shows an unprecedented strengthening of the "State machine" and an unheard-of development of its bureaucratic and military apparatus, side by side with the increase of oppression of the proletariat, alike in monarchical and the freest Republican countries.
World-history is undoubtedly leading up at the present, moment, on an incomparably larger scale than in 1852, to the "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution for the purpose of "breaking up" the machinery of the State.
As to what the proletariat will put in its place, instructive data on the subject were given us by the Paris Commune.