The State and Revolution (n. d.)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATION OF THE WITHERING
AWAY OF THE STATE
A most detailed elucidation of this question is given by Marx in his Criticism of the Gotha Program (letter to Bracke, May 15, 1875, printed as late as 1891 in the Neue Zeit, ix, 1). The polemical part of this remarkable work, consisting of a criticism of Lassalleanism has, so to speak, overshadowed its positive part, namely, the analysis of the connection between the development of Communism and the withering away of the State.
1. The Formulation of the Question by Marx.
From a superficial comparison of the letter of Marx to Bracke (May 15, 1875), with Engels' letter to Bebel (March 28, 1875), discussed above, it might appear that Marx was much more of an upholder of the State than Engels, and that the difference of opinion between them on the question of the State is very considerable.
Engels suggests to Bebel that all the chatter about the State should be thrown overboard; that the word "State" should be eliminated from the program and replaced by “"Commonwealth"; Engels even declares that the Commune was really no longer a State in the proper sense of the word. Whereas Marx even speaks of the "future State in Communist Society," that is, apparently recognizing the necessity of a State even under Communism.
But such a view would be fundamentally, incorrect; and a closer examination shows that Marx's and Engels' views on the State and its decay were completely identical, and that Marx's expression quoted above refers merely to the decaying State.
It is clear that there can be no question of defining the exact moment of the future "withering away"—the more so as it must obviously be a prolonged process. The apparent difference between Marx and Engels is due to the different subjects they dealt with, the different aims they were pursuing. Engels set forth the problem in a plain, bold and large outline, in order to show Bebel all the absurdity of the current superstitions concerning the State, shared to no small degree by Lassalle himself. Marx only touches upon this question in passing, being interested mainly in another subject—the evolution of Communist Society. The whole theory of Marx is an application of the theory of evolution—in its most consistent, complete, well-thought-out and fruitful form—to modern Capitalism. Naturally, for Marx there arose the question of the application of this theory both to the coming crash of Capitalism and to the future development of future Communism.
On what foundation of facts can the future development of future Communism be based? It can be based on the fact that it has its origin in Capitalism, that it develops historically from Capitalism, that it is the result of the action of social forces to which Capitalism has given birth. There is no shadow of an attempt on Marx's part to fabricate a Utopia, idly to guess that which cannot be known. Marx treats the question of Communism in the same way as a naturalist would treat the question of the development of, say, a new biological variety, if he knew that such and such was its origin, and such and such is the direction in which it changes its form.
Marx, first of all, brushes aside the confusion which is introduced by the Gotha program into the question of the mutual relations of State and of Society.
"Contemporary Society [he writes] is capitalist Society, which exists in all civilized countries freed, to a greater or lesser extent, from admixture of mediaevalism, more or less varying in type according to peculiar historical conditions of development of each country, more or less fully developed. The 'contemporary State,' on the contrary, varies with every State boundary. In the Prusso-German Empire it is quite a different thing from that in Switzerland; in England quite different from that in the United States. The 'contemporary State' is therefore a fiction.
"However, in spite of the motley variety of their forms, the different forms of the State in the different civilized countries have this in common—they are all based on contemporary bourgeois Society, more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, certain fundamental traits in common. In this sense one can speak of the 'contemporary State' in contradiction to that future time when its present root, namely, capitalist society, will have perished.
"The question is then put thus: To what transformation will the forms of government be subjected in Communist society? In other words, what social functions will there remain, then, analogous to the present functions of the State? This question can only be answered with the help of this scientific method; and however many thousands of times the word 'people' is combined with the word 'State,' this will not bring us one iota nearer its solution. …"
Having thus ridiculed all the talk of a "People's State," Marx formulates the question and warns us, as it were, that for a scientific answer to it one can only rely on firmly established scientific facts.
This first fact that has been established with complete exactness by the whole theory of evolution, indeed, by the whole of science—a fact which the Utopians forgot, however, and which is now forgotten by the present Opportunists, afraid of the Socialist revolution—is that, historically, there must undoubtedly be a special stage or epoch of transition from Capitalism to Communism.
2. The Transition from Capitalism to Communism.
"Between capitalist and Communist Society [Marx continues], there lies a period of revolutionary transformation from the former to the latter. A stage of political transition corresponds to this period, and the State during this period can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
This conclusion Marx bases on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on the facts of the development of this society, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletarian and capitalist classes.
Earlier the question was put thus: To attain its emancipation the proletariat must overthrow the capitalist class, conquer political power and establish its own revolutionary dictatorship. Now the question is put somewhat differently: The transition from capitalist society developing towards Communism, to a Communist Society, is impossible without a period of "political transition” and the State in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
What, then, is the relation of the dictatorship to democracy?
We saw that the Communist Manifesto simply places side by side the two ideas: the "conversion of the proletariat into the ruling class," and the "conquest of Democracy." On the basis of all that has been said above, one can define more exactly how Democracy changes in the transition of Capitalism to Communism.
In capitalist Society, under the conditions most favorable to its development, we have more or less complete democracy in the form of a democratic republic. But this democracy is always bound by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation, and, consequently, always remains, in reality, a democracy only for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains more or less the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics, that is, freedom for the slave-owners. The modern wage-slaves, in virtue of the condition of capitalist exploitation, remain to such an extent crushed by want and poverty that they "cannot be bothered with democracy," have "no time for politics"; that, in the ordinary peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participating in public political life.
The accuracy of this statement is perhaps most clearly proved by Germany, just because in this State constitutional legality has fasted and remained stable for a remarkably long time—for nearly half a century (1871–1914); and the Social-Democracy during this time has been able, far better than has been the case in other countries, to make use of "legality" in order to organize into a political party a larger proportion of the working class than has occurred anywhere else in the world.
What, then, is this highest proportion of politically conscious and active wage-slaves that has so far been observed in capitalist society? One million members of the Social-Democratic Party out of fifteen millions of wage-workers! Three millions industrially organized out of fifteen millions!
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is, the democracy of capitalist Society. If we look more closely into the mechanism of capitalist democracy, everywhere—in the so-called "petty" details of the suffrage (the residential qualification, the exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of meeting (public buildings are not for the "poor"), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.—on all sides we shall see restrictions upon restrictions of Democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor, seem slight—especially in the eyes of one who has never lived in close contact with the oppressed classes in their herd life, and nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine hundredths, of the bourgeois publicists and politicians are of this class. But in their sum these restrictions exclude and thrust out the poor from polities and from an active share in democracy. Marx splendidly grasped the essence of capitalist democracy, when, in his analysis of the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in Parliament!
But from this capitalist democracy—inevitably narrow, stealthily thrusting aside the poor, and, therefore, to its core, hypocritical and treacherous—progress does not march along a simple, smooth and direct path to "greater and greater democracy," as the Liberal professors: and the lower middle-class Opportunists would have us believe. No, progressive development—that is, towards Communism—marches through the dictatorship of the proletariat; and cannot do otherwise, for there is no one else who can break the resistance of the exploiting capitalists, and no other way of doing it.
And the dictatorship of the proletariat—that is, the organization of the advance-guard of the oppressed as the ruling class, for the purpose of crushing the oppressors—cannot produce merely an expansion of democracy. Together with an immense expansion of democracy—for the first time becoming democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich folk—the dictatorship of the proletariat will produce a series of restrictions of liberty in the case of the oppressors, exploiters and capitalists. We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage-slavery; their resistance must be broken by force. It is clear that where there is suppression there must also be violence, and there cannot be liberty or democracy.
Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel, when he said, as the reader will remember, that "the proletariat needs the State, not in the interests of liberty, but for the purpose of crushing its opponents; and when one will be able to speak of freedom, the State will have ceased to exist."
Democracy for the vast majority of the nation, and the. suppression by force—that is, the exclusion from democracy—of the exploiters and oppressors of the nation: this is the modification of democracy which we shall see during the transition from Capitalism to Communism.
Only in Communist Society, when the resistance of the capitalists has finally been broken, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no longer any classes (that is, when there is no difference between the members of society in respect of their social means of production), only then "does the State disappear and one can speak of Freedom." Only then will be possible and will be realized a really full democracy, a democracy without any exceptions. And only then will democracy itself begin to wither away in virtue of the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the innumerable horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to the observation of the elementary rules of social life, known for centuries, repeated for thousands of years in all sermons. They will become accustomed to their observance without force, without constraint, without subjection, without the special apparatus for compulsion which is called the State.
The expression "the State withers away" is very well chosen, for it indicates the gradual and elemental nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect; for we see around us millions of times how readily people get accustomed to observe the necessary rules of life in common, if there is no exploitation, if there is nothing that causes indignation, that calls forth protest and revolt and has to be suppressed.
Thus, in capitalist society, we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false; a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to Communism will, for the first time, produce a democracy for the people, for the majority, side by side with the necessary suppression of the minority constituted by the exploiters. Communism alone is capable of giving a really complete democracy, and the fuller it is the more quickly will it become unnecessary and wither away of itself. In other words, under Capitalism we have a State in the proper sense of the word: that is, a special instrument for the suppression of one class by another, and of the majority by the minority at that. Naturally, for the successful discharge of such a task, the systematic suppression by the minority of exploiters of the majority of exploited, the greatest ferocity and savagery of suppression is required; and seas of blood are needed, through which humanity has to direct its path, in a condition of slavery, serfdom and wage labor.
Again, during the transition from Capitalism to Communism, suppression is still necessary; but in this case it is suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of exploited. A special instrument, a special machine for suppression—that is the "State"—is necessary, but this is now a transitional State, no longer a State in the ordinary sense of the term. For the suppression of the minority of exploiters, by the majority of those who were but yesterday wage-slaves, is a matter comparatively so easy, simple and natural that it will cost far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of the slaves, serfs and wage laborers, and will cost the human race far less. And it is compatible with the diffusion of democracy over such an overwhelming majority of the nation that the need for any special machinery for suppression will gradually cease to exist. The exploiters are unable, of course, to suppress the people without a most complex machine for performing this duty; but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple "machine"—almost without any "machine" at all, without any special apparatus—by the simple organization of the armed masses (such as the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, we may remark, anticipating a little).
Finally, only under Communism will the State become quite unnecessary, for there will be no one to suppress—"no one" in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section of the population. We are not Utopians, and we do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses by individual persons, and equally the need to suppress such excesses. But, in the first place, for this no special machine, no special instrument of repression is needed. This will be done by the armed nation itself, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern Society, parts a pair of combatants or does not allow a woman to be outraged. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses which violate the rules of social life, is the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away." We do not know how quickly and in what stages, but we know that they will be withering away. With their withering away the State will also wither away. Marx, without plunging into Utopia, defined more fully what can now be defined regarding this future epoch: namely, the difference between the higher and lower phases (degrees, stages) of Communist Society.
3. The First Phase of Communist Society.
In the Criticism of the Gotha Program Marx disproves in detail the Lassallean idea of the receipt by the workers under Socialism of the "undiminished" or "full product of their labor." Marx shows that out of the whole of the social labor of Society, it will be necessary to deduct a reserve fund, a fund for the expansion of industry, the replacement of "worn-out" machinery, and so on; then, also out of the collective product a fund for the expenses of management, for schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, and so forth.
Instead of the hazy, obscure, general phrase of Lassalle—"the full product of his labor for the worker"—Marx gives a sober estimate as to how exactly a Socialist society will have to manage its affairs. Marx takes up a concrete analysis of the conditions of life of a society in which there will be no capitalism, and says: "We have to deal here" (analyzing the program of the Party), "not with a Communist society which has developed on its own foundations, but with one which has just issued actually from capitalist society, and which, in consequence, in all respects—economic, moral and intellectual—still bears the stamp of the old society, from the womb of which it came." And it is this communist society—a society which has just come into the world out of the womb of Capitalism, and which, in all respects, bears the stamp of the old society—that Marx terms the first, or lower, phase of communist society.
The means of production are now no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of socially necessary labor, receives a certificate from society that he has done such and such a quantity of work. According to this certificate, he receives from the public stores of articles of consumption, a corresponding quantity of products. After the deduction of that proportion of labor which goes into the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given it.
"Equality" seems to reign supreme. But when Lassalle, having in view such a social order (generally called "Socialism," but termed by Marx the first phase of Communism), speaks of this as "just distribution" and says that this is "the equal right of each to an equal share of the products of labor," Lassalle is mistaken, and Marx explains his error.
"Equal right [says Marx] we indeed have here: but it is still 'bourgeois right' which, like every right, presupposes inequality. Every 'right' is an application of the same measure to different people who, as a matter of fact, are not similar and are not equal to one another; and, therefore, 'equal right' is really a violation of equality, and an injustice. In effect, every man having done as much social labor as every other receives an equal share of the social products (with the above-mentioned deductions). Notwithstanding this, different people are not equal to one another. One is strong, another is weak; one is married, the other is not. One has more children, another has less, and so on.
"With equal labor [Marx concludes] and, therefore, with an equal share in the public stock of articles of consumption, one will, in reality, receive more than another, will find himself richer and so on. To avoid all this, 'rights,' instead of being equal, should be unequal."
The first phase of Communism, therefore, still cannot produce justice and equality; differences and unjust differences in wealth will still exist, but the exploitation of one by many, will become impossible, because it will be impossible to seize as private property the means of production, the factories, machines, land, and so on. While tearing to tatters Lassalle's small-bourgeois, confused phrase about "equality" and "justice" in general, Marx at the same time shows the line of development of communist society, which is forced at first to destroy only the "injustice" that the means of production are in the hands of private individuals. It is not capable of destroying at once the further injustice which is constituted by the distribution of the articles of consumption according to "work performed" (and not according to need).
The vulgar economists, including the bourgeois professors (such as "our" Tugan-Baranowsky), constantly reproach the Socialists with forgetting the inequality of mankind and with "dreaming" of destroying this inequality. Such a reproach, as we see, only proves the extreme ignorance of the bourgeois ideologists.
Marx not only, with the greatest care, takes into account the inevitable inequalities of men; he also takes cognizance of the fact that the mere conversion of the means of production into the common property of the whole of society—"Socialism" in the generally accepted sense of the word—does not remove the shortcomings of the distribution and the inequality of "bourgeois justice," which continue to exist as long as the products are divided according to the quantity of "work performed."
"But these defects [Marx continues] are unavoidable in the first phase of communist society, in the form in which it comes forth, after the prolonged travail of birth, from capitalist society. Justice can never be in advance of its stage of economic development and of the cultural development of society conditioned by the latter."
And so, in the first phase of communist society (generally called Socialsm) "bourgeois justice" is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic transformation so far attained, that is, only in respect of the means of production. "Bourgeois law" recognizes them as the private property of separate individuals. Socialism converts them into common property, and to that extent, and only to that extent does "bourgeois law" die out. But it continues to live as far as its other part is concerned, in the capacity of regulator or adjuster, dividing labor and allotting the products amongst the members of society.
"He who does not work neither shall he eat"—this Socialist principle is already realized. "For an equal quantity of labor an equal quantity of products"—this Socialist principle is also already realized. Nevertheless, this is not yet Communism, and this does not abolish "bourgeois law" which gives to unequal individuals, in return for an unequal (in reality) amount of work, an equal quantity of products.
This is a "defect," says Marx, but it is unavoidable during the first phase of Communism; for, if we are not to land in Utopia, we cannot imagine that, having overthrown Capitalism, people will at once learn to work for society without any regulations by law; indeed, the abolition of Capitalism does not immediately lay the economic foundations for such a change.
And there is no other standard yet than that of "bourgeois law." To this extent, therefore, a form of State is still necessary, which, whilst maintaining the public ownership of the means of production, preserves the equality of labor, and equality in the distribution of the products. The State is withering away in so far as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and consequently, any class whatever to suppress. But the State is not yet dead altogether, since there still remains the protection of "bourgeois law," which sanctifies actual inequality. For the complete extinction of the State complete communism is necessary.
4. The Highest Phase of Communist Society.
Marx continues:
"In the highest phase of Communist society, after the disappearance of the enslavement of man caused by his subjection to the principle of the division of labor; when, together with this, the opposition between brains and manual labor will have disappeared; when labor will have ceased to be a mere means of supporting life, and itself will have become one of the greatest necessities of life; when, with all-round development of the individual, the productive forces, too, will have grown to maturity, and all the forces of social wealth will be pouring an uninterrupied torrent—only then will it be possible wholly to pass beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois law, and only then will society be able to inscribe on its banner: 'From each according to his ability; and to each according to his needs.'"
Only now can we appreciate the full justice of Engels' observations when he mercilessly ridiculed all the absurdity of combining the words "freedom" and "state." While the State exists there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
The economic basis for the complete withering away of the State is that high stage of development of Communism when the distinction between brain and manual work disappears; consequently, one of the principal sources of modern social inequalities will have vanished—a source, moreover, which it is impossible to remove immediately, by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.
This expropriation will make it possible gigantically to develop the forces of production. And seeing how incredibly, even now, capitalism retards this development, how much progress could be made even on the basis of modern technique at the level it has reached, we have a right to say, with the fullest confidence, that the expropriation of the capitalists will result inevitably in a gigantic development of the productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this development will go forward, how soon it will reach the point of breaking away from the division of labor, of the destruction of the antagonism between brain and manual work, of the transformation of work into a "first necessity of life"—this we do not and cannot know.
Consequently, we are right in speaking solely of the inevitable withering away of the State, emphasizing the protracted nature of this process, and its dependence upon the rapidity of the development of the higher phase of communism; leaving quite open the question of lengths of time, or the concrete forms of this withering away, since material for the solution of such questions is not available.
The State will be able to wither away completely when society has realized the formula: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"; that is, when people have accustomed themselves to observe the fundamental principles of social life, and when their labor is so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their abilities. "The narrow horizon of bourgeois law" which compels one to calculate, with the pitilessness of a Shylock whether one has not worked half an hour more than another, whether one is not getting less paid than another, this narrow horizon will then be left behind. There will then be no means for any exact calculation by society of the quantity of product to be distributed to each of its members; each will take freely "according to his needs."
From the capitalist point of view it is easy to declare such a social order a "pure Utopia" and to sneer at the Socialists for promising each the right to receive from society, without any control of the labor of the individual citizen, any quantity of truffles, automobiles, pianos, etc. Even now, most bourgeois "savants" deliver themselves of such sneers that thereby they only display at once their ignorance and their material interests in defending capitalism. Ignorance—for it has never entered the head of any Socialist "to promise" that the highest phase of Communism will actually arrive, while the anticipation of the great Socialists that it will arrive, assumes neither the present productive powers of labor, nor the present unthinking "man in the street," capable of spoiling, without reflection, the stores of social wealth and of demanding the impossible. As long as the "highest" phase of Communism has not arrived, the Socialists demand the strictest control, by Society and by the State, of the quantity of labor and the quantity of consumption; only this control must start with the expropriation of the capitalists, with the control of the workers over capitalists, and must be carried out, not by a government of bureaucrats, but by a government of the armed workers.
The interested defense of capitalism by the capitalist ideologists (and their hangers-on like Tseretelli, Tchernoff and company), consists just in that they substitute their disputes and discussions about the far future for the essential, imperative questions of the day; the expropriation of the capitalists, the conversion of all citizens into workers and employees of one huge "syndicate"—the whole State—and the complete subordination of the whole of the work of this syndicate to a really democratic State—to the State consisting of the Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. In reality, when a learned professor, and in his train, some philistine, and in his wake, Messrs. Tseretelli and Tchernoff talk of unreasonable Utopia, of the demagogic promises of the Bolsheviks, of the impossibility of "bringing in" Socialism, it is the highest stage or phase of Communism which they have in mind, and which no one has not only not promised, but also never even thought of trying to "bring in," because, in any event, it is altogether impossible to "bring it in."
And here we come to that question of the scientific difference between Socialism and Communism upon which Engels touched in his discussion cited above on the incorrectness of the name "Social-Democrat." The political difference between the first, or lower, and the higher phase of communism, will in time, no doubt, be tremendous; but it would be ridiculous to emphasize it now, under capitalism, and only, perhaps, some isolated Anarchist could invest it with primary importance, that is, if there are still people amongst the Anarchists who have learned nothing from the "Plekhanoff-like" conversion of the Kropotkins, the Graves, the Cornelisens, and other "leading lights" of Anarchism to Social Chauvinism or Anarcho-Jusquauboutism as one of the few Anarchists still preserving their honor (Gay) has expressed it.
For the scientific difference between Socialism and Communism is clear. That which is generally called Socialism is termed by Marx the first or lower phase of Communist society. In so far as the means of production become public property, the word "Communism" is also applicable here, providing that we do not forget that it is not full Communism. The great importance of Marx's explanation is this: that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics to the theory of evolution looking upon Communism as something which evolves out of capitalism.
Instead of artificially elaborate and scholastic definitions and profitless disquisitions on the meanings of words ("What Socialism Is," "What Communism Is"), Marx gives us an analysis of what may be called stages in the economic growth of Communism.
In its first phase or first stage communism cannot as yet be economically mature and quite free of all tradition and of all taint of capitalism. Hence we see the interesting phenomena of the first phase of communism retaining "the narrow horizon of bourgeois law." Bourgeois law, in respect of the distribution of articles of consumption presupposes inevitably the capitalist State, for law is nothing without the organization for forcing people to obey it. Consequently, for a certain time, not only bourgeois law, but even the capitalist State may remain under Communism without the capitalist class.
This may appear to some a paradox, a piece of intellectual subtlety of which Marxism is often accused by people who would not put themselves out to study its extraordinarily profound teachings. But, as a matter of fact, the Old, surviving in the New, confronts us in life in every step in Nature as well as in Society. It is not Marx's own sweet will which smuggled a scrap of bourgeois law into communism; he simply indicated what is economically and politically inevitable in a society issuing from the womb of capitalism.
Democracy is of great importance in the working-class struggle for freedom against the capitalists. But democracy is not a limit one may not overstep; it is merely one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, from capitalism to communism.
Democracy implies equality. The immense significance of the struggle of the proletariat for equality, and the power of attraction of such a battle-cry are obvious, if we but rightly interpret it as meaning the annihilation of classes. But the equality of democracy is formal equality—no more; and immediately after the attainment of the equality of all members of society in respect of the ownership of the means of production, that is, of equality of labor and equality of wages, there will inevitably arise before humanity the question of going further from equality which is formal to equality which is real, and of realizing in life the formula "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." By what stages, by means of what practical measures humanity will proceed to this higher aim,—this we do not and cannot know. But it is important that one should realize how infinitely mendacious is the usual capitalist representation of Socialism as something lifeless, petrified, fixed once for all. In reality, it is only with Socialism that there will commence a rapid, genuine, real mass advance, in which first the majority and then the whole of the population will take part—an advance in all domains of social and individual life.
Democracy is a form of the State—one of the varieties of the State; and, consequently, like every State, it stands as an organized, systematic application of force against mankind. That is its one aspect. But, on the other hand, it is the formal recognition of the equality of all citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure and administration of the State. Out of this forma] recognition there arises, in its turn, the stage in the development of democracy when it first rallies the proletariat as a revolutionary class against capitalism, and gives it an opportunity to crush, to break to atoms, to wipe off the face of the earth the capitalist government machine—even the republican variety; the standing army, police and bureaucracy. Second, it enables it to substitute for all this a more democratic, but still a State machinery, in the shape of armed masses of the working-class, which then becomes transformed into a universal participation of the people in a militia.
Here, "quantity passes into quality." Such a degree of democracy carries with it the abandonment of the framework of capitalist society, and the beginning of its Socialist reconstruction. If everyone really takes part in the administration of the State, capitalism cannot retain its hold. As a matter of fact, capitalism, as it develops, itself prepares the ground for everyone to be able really to take part in the administration of the State.
We may class as part of this preparation of the ground the universal literacy of the population, already realized in most of the more progressive countries, then the education and discipline inculcated upon millions of workers by the huge, complex, and socialized apparatus of the postal system, railways, big factories, large-scale commerce, banking, and so on and so forth.
With such an economic groundwork, it is quite possible, immediately, within twenty-four hours, to pass to the overthrow of the capitalists and bureaucrats, and to replace them, in the control of production and distribution, or in the business of apportioning labor and products, by the armed workers, or the people in arms. The question of control and bookkeeping must not be confused with the question of the scientifically educated staff of engineers, agriculturists, and so on. These gentlemen work to-day owing allegiance to the capitalists; they will work even better to-morrow owing it to the armed workers. Bookkeeping and control—these are the chief things necessary for the smooth and correct functioning of the first phase of communist society. All the citizens are here transformed into the hired employees of the State, which then is the armed workers. All the citizens become the employees and workers of one national State "syndicate." It simply resolves itself into a question of all working to an equal extent, of all carrying out regularly the measure of work apportioned to them, and of all receiving equal pay.
The bookkeeping and control necessary for this have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost, till they have become the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four arithmetical rules. When the majority of the citizens themselves begin everywhere to keep such accounts and maintain such control over the capitalists, now converted into employees, and over the intellectual gentry, who still retain capitalist habits this control will, indeed, become universal, pervading, rational: it will be ubiquitious, and there will be no way of escaping it.
The whole of society will have become one office and one factory with equal work and equal pay but this "factory" discipline, which the proletariat will extend to the whole society on the defeat of capitalism and the overthrow of the exploiters, is by no means our ideal and is far from our final end. It is but a foothold as we press on to the radical cleansing of society from all the brutality and foulness of capitalist exploitation: we leave it behind as we move on.
When all, or be it even the greater part of society, have learned how to govern the State, have taken this business into their own hands, have established a control over the insignificant minority of the capitalists, over the gentry with capitalist leanings, and over the workers thoroughly demoralized by capitalism—from this moment the need for any government begins to vanish. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment that it ceases to be necessary. The more democratic the "State" consisting of armed workers, which is "no longer really a State in the ordinary sense of the term," the more rapidly does every form of the State begin to decay. For when all have learned to manage and really do manage socialized production, when all really do keep account and control the idlers, gentlefolk, and such like "guardians of capitalist traditions," the escape from such general registration and control will inevitably become so increasingly difficult, so much the exception, and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are very practical people, not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that very soon the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of any kind of social life will become a habit. The door will then be wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its second higher phase and along with it to the complete withering away of the State.