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.
3856454The State and Revolution — Chapter 3: The Experience of the Paris Commune of 1871—Marx's AnalysisAnonymousVladimir Ilyich Lenin CHAPTER III.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PARIS COMMUNE OF1871—MARX'S ANALYSIS 1. In What Lay the Heroism of the Communists?
It is known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers, proving to them that an attempt to overthrow the Government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March, 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the rising had become an accomplished fact, Marx welcomed the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries. Marx did not fall back upon an attitude of pedantic condemnation of an "untimely" movement; unlike the all-too-famous Russian renegade from Marxism, Plekhanoff, who, in November, 1905, wrote to encourage the workers' and peasants' struggle, but, after December, 1905, took up the liberal cry of "You should not have resorted to arms." Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards—"storming Heaven," as he said. In the mass revolutionary movement, although it did not attain its objective, he saw a historic experiment of gigantic importance, a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, a practical step more important than hundreds of programs and discussions. To analyze this experiment, to draw from its lessons in tactics, to re-examine his theory in the new light it afforded—such was the problem as it presented itself to Marx. The only "correction" which Marx thought it necessary to make in the Communist Manifesto was made by him on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Communards.
The last preface to a new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24, 1872. In this preface the authors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, say that the program of the Communist Manifesto is now "in places out of date." "Especially," they continue, "did the Commune demonstrate that the 'working class cannot simply seize the available ready machinery of the State, and set it going for its own ends.'" The words within the second inverted commas of this passage are borrowed by its authors from Marx's book on The Civil War in France. One fundamental and principal lesson of the Paris Commune, therefore, was considered by Marx and Engels to be of such enormous importance that they introduced it as a vital correction into the Communist Manifesto. It is most characteristic that it is precisely this correction which has been distorted by the Opportunists, and its meaning probably is not clear to nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine hundredths, of the readers of the Communist Manifesto. We shall deal with it more fully further on, in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. It will be sufficient here to remark that the current, vulgar interpretation of the famous formula of Marx here adduced consists in that Marx it is said, is here emphasizing the idea of gradual development in contradiction to a sudden seizure of power, and so on.
As a matter of fact, exactly the reverse is the case. What Marx says is that the working class must break up, shatter the "available ready machinery of the State," and not confine itself merely to taking possession of it. On April 12, 1871—that is, just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann: "If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will see that I declare the next attempt of the French Revolution to be not merely to hand over, from one set of hands to another, the bureaucratic and military machine—as has occurred hitherto—but to shatter it (Marx's italics—the original zerbrechen); and it is this that is the preliminary condition of any real people's revolution on the Continent. It is exactly this that constitutes the attempt of our heroic Parisian comrades." (Neue Zeit, xxi., 1901–2, p. 709.) In these words, "to shatter the bureaucratic and military machinery of the State" is to be found, tersely expressed, the principal teaching of Marxism on the problems concerning the State facing the proletariat in a revolution. And it is just this teaching which has not only been forgotten, but has also been completely distorted by the prevailing Kautskian "interpretation" of Marxism! As for Marx's reference to the Eighteenth Brumaire we have quoted the corresponding passage in full above.
It is interesting particularly to note two points in the passage quoted. First he confines his conclusions to the Continent. This was natural in 1871, when England was still the pattern of a purely capitalist country, without a military machine, and, in large measure, without a bureaucracy. Hence Marx excluded England, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, could be imagined, and was then possible without the preliminary condition of the destruction "of the available machinery of the State." To-day, in 1917, in the epoch of the first great Imperialist war, this distinction of Marx's becomes unreal, and England and America, the greatest and last representatives of Anglo-Saxon "liberty" in the sense of the absence of militarism and bureaucracy, have to-day completely rolled down into the dirty, bloody morass of military-bureaucratic institutions common to all Europe, subordinating all else to themselves, crushing all else under themselves. To-day, both in England and in America, the "preliminary condition of any real people's revolution" is the break-up, the shattering of the "available ready machinery of the State" (perfected in those countries between 1914 and 1917, according to the "European" general Imperialist standard).
Secondly, this extremely pregnant remark of Marx is worth particular attention in that it states that the destruction of the military and bureaucratic machinery of the State is "the preliminary condition of any real people's revolution." This idea of a "people's" revolution seems strange on Marx's lips. And the Russian Plekhanovists and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who wish to be considered Marxists, might possibly consider such an expression a slip of the tongue, They have reduced Marxism to such a state of meagre "liberal" distortion that nothing exists for them beyond the distinction between capitalist and proletarian revolutions; and even that distinction becomes for them a lifeless doctrine.
If we take examples from the revolutions of the 20th century, we shall, of course, have to recognize both the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions to be middle-class. Neither, however, is a "people's" revolution, inasmuch as the mass of the people, the enormous majority, does not make its appearance actively, independently, with its own economic and political demands, in either the one or the other. On the other hand, the Russian middle-class revolution of 1905–7, although it presented no such "brilliant" successes as at times fell to the lot of the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, was undoubtedly a real "people's" revolution, since the masses of the people, the majority, the lowest social "depths" crushed down by oppression and exploitation, rose up independently, impressed on the entire course of the revolution the stamp of their demands, their attempts to build up a new order on their own lines in place of the old shattered order.
On the continent of Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not in a single country constitute the majority of the people. A "people's" revolution, actually sweeping the majority into its current, could be such only if embracing both the proletariat and the peasantry. Both classes are united by the circumstance that the "military and bureaucratic machinery of the State" oppresses, crushes, exploits them. To shatter this machinery, to break it up—this is the true interest of the "people," of its majority—the workers, and most of the peasants—this is the "preliminary condition" of a union of the poorest peasantry with the proletarians: while, without such a union, democracy is unstable and Socialist reconstruction is impossible. Towards such a union, as is well known, the Paris Commune was making its way; though it did not reach its goal, by reason of a number of circumstances, internal and external.
Consequently, when speaking of "a real people's revolution," Marx did not in the least forget the peculiar characteristics of the lower middle classes (he spoke of them much and often), and was very carefully taking into account the actual relationship of classes inmost of the continental European States in 1871. From another standpoint, also, he laid it down that the "shattering" of the machinery of the State is demanded by the interests both of the workers and of the peasants, unites them, places before them a common task of destroying the "parasite" and replacing it by something new. But by what exactly?
2. What Is to Replace the Machinery of the State?
In 1847, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx was, as yet, only able to answer this question entirely in an abstract manner, stating the problem rather than its solution. To replace this machinery by "the proletariat organized as the ruling class," "by the conquest of Democracy"—such was the answer of the Communist Manifesto. Refusing to plunge into Utopia, Marx waited for the experience of a mass movement to produce the answer to the problem as to the exact forms which this organization of the proletariat as the dominant class will assume, and exactly in what manner this organization will embody the most complete, most consistent "conquest of Democracy." Marx subjected the experiment of the Commune, although it was so meagre, to a most minute analysis in his Civil War in France. Let us bring before the reader the most important passages of this work.
In the 19th century took place the development of the "centralized State power, originating from the Middle Ages, with its ubiquitous organs: a standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy and judges." With the development of class antagonism between capital and labor, "the State assumed more and more the character of a public organization for the oppression of labor, that is, of a machine for class domination. After every revolution marking a certain advance in the class struggle, the purely oppressive character of the power of the State became more and more apparent." The State, after the revolution of 1848–49, becomes "the national weapon of capital in its war against labor." The Second Empire consolidates this. "The Commune was the direct antithesis of the Empire. It was a definite form … of a Republic which was to abolish not only the monarchical form of class rule, but also class rule itself." What was this "definite" form of the proletarian Socialist Republic? What was the State it was beginning to create? "The first decree of the Commune was the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the nation in arms." This demand now figures in the program of every party calling itself Socialist. But the value of these programs is best shown by the behaviour of our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who refused to put their theories into practice even after the Revolution of March 12, 1917!
"The Council of the Commune consisted of municipal representatives elected by universal suffrage in the various districts of Paris. They were responsible and could be recalled at any time. The majority were, naturally, working men or acknowledged representatives of the working class." " … The police, until then merely an instrument of the Government, was immediately stripped of all its political functions, and turned into the responsible and at any time replaceable organ of the Commune …" " … The same was applied to the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Council of the Commune down to the humblest worker, everybody in the public service was paid at the same rates as ordinary workingmen. All privileges and representation allowances attached to the high offices of the State disappeared along with the offices themselves. … Having got rid of the standing army and police, the material weapons of the old Government, the Commune turned its attention, without delay, to breaking the weapons of spiritual oppression, the power of the priests. … The judicial functionaries lost their sham independence. … In the future, they were to be elected openly and be responsible and revocable."
And so the Commune would seem to have replaced the broken machinery of the State "only" by a fuller democracy: the aboltion of the standing army and the transformation of all officials into elective and revocable agents of the State. But, as a matter of fact this "only" represents a gigantic replacement of one type of institutions by others of a fundamentally different order. Here we see precisely a case of the "transformation of quantity into quality." Democracy, carried out with the fullest imaginable completeness and consistency, is transformed from capitalist democracy into proletarian democracy; from the State (that is, a special force for the suppression of a particular class) to something which is no longer really a form of the State.
It is still necessary to suppress the capitalist class and crush its resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. But the organ of suppression is now the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom and wage-labor. And, once the majority of the nation itself suppresses its oppressors, a special force for suppression is no longer necessary. In this sense the State begins to disappear. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officials and chiefs of a standing army), the majority can itself directly fulfill all these functions; and the more the discharge of the functions of the State devolves upon the masses of the people, the less need is there for the existence of the State itself.
In this connection the special measures adopted by the Commune and emphasized by Marx, are particularly noteworthy: the abolition of all representative allowances, and of all special salaries in the case of officials; and the lowering of the payment of all servants of the State to the level of the workmen's wages, Here is shown, more clearly than anywhere else, the break—from a bourgeois democracy to a proletarian democracy; from the democracy of the oppressors to the democracy of the oppressed; from the domination of a "special force" for the suppression of a given class to the suppression of the oppressors by the whole force of the majority of the nation—the proletariat and the peasants. And it is precisely on this most obvious point, perhaps the most important so far as the problem of the State is concerned, that the teachings of Marx have been forgotten. It is entirely neglected in all the innumerable popular commentaries. It is not "proper" to speak about it, as if it were a piece of old-fashioned "naivete"; just as the Christians, having attained the position of a State religion "forget" the "naivete" of primitive Christianity, with its revolutionary democratic spirit.
The lowering of the pay of the highest State officials seems simply a naive, primitive demand of democracy. One of the "founders" of the newest Opportunism, the former Social-Democrat, E. Bernstein, has more than once exercised his talents in the repetition of the vulgar capitalist jeers at "primitive" Democracy. Like all Opportunists, like the present followers of Kautsky, he quite failed to understand that, first of all, the transition from Capitalism to Socialism is impossible without a "return," in a measure, to “primitive” Democracy. How can we otherwise pass on to the discharge of all the functions of Government by the majority of the population? And, secondly, he forgot that "primitive Democracy" on the basis of Capitalism and Capitalist culture is not the same primitive Democracy as in pre-historic or pre-capitalist times. Capitalist culture has created industry on a large scale in the shape of factories, railways, postal system, telephones, and so forth; and on this basis the great majority of functions of "the old State" have become enormously simplified and reduced, in practice, to very simple operations such as registration, filing and checking. Hence they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for the usual "workingman's wage." This circumstance ought, and will, strip them of all their former glamour as "Governmental" and, therefore, privileged service.
The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and the approximation of their salaries to the "ordinary pay of the workers"—these are simple and "self-evident" democratic measures, which harmonize completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as a bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism. These measures refer to the State, that is, to the purely political reconstruction of Society; but, of course, they only acquire their full meaning and importance when accompanied by the "expropriation of the expropriators," or at least by the preliminary steps towards it, that is, by the passage from capitalist private ownership of the means of production to social ownership. "The Commune [wrote Marx] realized that ideal of all bourgeois revolutions, cheap Government, by eliminating the two largest items of expenditure—the army and the bureaucracy."
From the peasantry, as from other sections of the lower middle class, only an insignificant minority "rise to the top," and "enter society," make a career in a bourgeois sense, that is, become transformed either into propertied members of the upper middle class, or into secure and privileged officials. The great majority of peasants in all capitalist countries where the peasant class does exist (and the majority of capitalist countries are of this kind), are oppressed by the Government and long for its overthrow, in the hope of a "cheap" Government. This hope can only be realized by the proletariat; and by the fact of realizing it, the proletariat makes a step forward at the same time towards the Socialist reconstruction of the State.
3. The Destruction of Parliamentarism.
"The Commune [wrote Marx] was to have been not a parliamentary but a working corporation, legislative and executive at one and the same time. Instead of deciding, once in three years, which member of the ruling class was to 'represent' and repress the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, organized in communes, as a means of securing the necessary workers, controllers, clerks and so forth for its business in the same way as individual suffrage serves any individual employer in his." This remarkable criticism of parliamentarism in 1871 is also one of those of Marx's dicta which have been conveniently "forgotten"—thanks to the prevalence of Socialist chauvinism and Opportunism. Ministers and professional politicians, "practical" Socialists and traitors of the proletariat of to-day have left all criticism of parliamentarism to the Anarchists, and, on this wonderfully intelligent ground, denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as "Anarchism." It is indeed not surprising that the proletariat of the most "advanced" parliamentary countries, being disgusted with such "Socialists" as Messrs. Scheidemann, David, Legien, Sembat, Renaudel, Henderson, Vandervelde, Stauning, Branting, Bissolati & Co., have been giving their sympathies more and more to Anarcho-Syndicalism, in spite of the fact that it is but the twin brother of Opportunism.
But to Marx revolutionary dialectics was never the empty fashionable phrase, the toy rattle, which Plekhanoff, Kautsky, and the others have made of it. Marx knew how to castigate Anarchism pitilessly for its inability to make use at least of the "sty" of capitalist parliamentarism when the situation is not revolutionary, but at the same time, he knew how to subject parliamentarism to a really revolutionary proletarian criticism. To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and oppress the people through parliament—this is the real essence of middle class parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary and constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic Republics. But if, in connection with the question of the State, parliamentarism is to be regarded as one of its institutions, what, from the point of view of those tasks which the proletariat has to face in this field, is to be the way out of parliamentarism? How can we do without it? Again and again we must repeat: The teaching of Marx, based on the study of the Commune, has been so completely forgotten that any criticism of parliamentarism other than Anarchist or reactionary is quite unintelligible to the "Social-Democrats" (read—traitors to Socialism) of to-day.
The way out of parliamentarism is to be found, of course, not in the abolition of the representative institutions and the elective principle, but in the conversion of the representative institutions from mere "talking shops" into working bodies: "The Commune was to have been not a parliamentary institution, but a working corporation, legislative and executive at one and the same time."
"Not parliamentary, but a working" institution—this is directly aimed, as it were, at present-day parliamentarians and at the parliamentary Social-Democratic "lap-dogs." Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to England, Norway and so forth; the actual work of the State is done behind the scenes and is carried out by the departments, the chancellories and the staffs. Parliament itself is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the "common people." This is so true that even in the Russian Republic, in our middle-class democratic Republic, parliamentarism has already revealed its real purpose, though a real parliament has not yet come into existence. Such heroes of putrid philistinism as the Skobeleffs and the Tseretellis, Tchernoffs and Avksentieffs, have managed to pollute even the Soviets, after the model of the most despicable middle-class parliamentarism, by turning them into hollow talking shops. In the Soviets the Right Honorable "Socialist" ministers are fooling the confiding peasants with phrases and resolutions. In the Government itself a sort of incessant quadrille is going on in order that, on the one hand, as many Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks as possible may get at the "pie," that is, the "cushy" jobs, and, on the other hand, that the attention of the people may be occupied. All the while the real "State" business is being done in the chancellories and the departments.
Dielo Naroda, the organ of the ruling party, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, recently admitted, in an editorial article, with the incomparable candor of people of "good society" in which "all" are engaged in political prostitution, that even in those ministerial departments which belong to the "Socialists" (pray, excuse the term) the whole official apparatus remains essentially the same as of old, working as before, and obstructiong every revolutionary initiative without let or hindrance. And indeed, even if we did not have this admission, would not the actual history of the participation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the Government prove this? It is only characteristic that, while in ministerial company with the Cadets, Messrs. Tchernoff, Roussanoff, Zenzinoff, and a herd of the Dielo Naroda staff have so completely lost all shame that they unblushingly proclaim as if it were a mere bagatelle, that. in "their" ministries everything remains as of old. Revolutionary and democratic phrases to gull the Simple Simons; bureaucracy and red tape in the Government departments for the "benefit" of the capitalists—here you have the essence of the present "honorable" coalition.