For the mercenary and corrupt parliamentarism of capitalist Society the Commune substitutes institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion does not become a mere delusion, for the representatives must themselves work, must themselves execute their own laws, must themselves verify their results in actual practice, must themselves be directly responsible to their electorate. Representative institutions remain, but parliamentarism as a special system, as a division of labor between the legislative and the executive functions, as creating a privileged position for its deputies, no longer exists. Without representative institutions we cannot imagine a Democracy, even a proletarian Democracy; but we can and must think of Democracy without parliamentarism, if our criticism of capitalist society is not mere words, if to overthrow the supremacy of the capitalists is for us a serious and sincere aim, and not a mere "election cry" for catching workingmen's votes—as it is with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Scheidemanns, the Legiens, the Sembats and the Vanderveldes.
It is most instructive to notice that, in speaking of the functions of what officials are still necessary both in the Commune and in the proletarian Democracy, Marx compares them with the workers of "any other employer," with the usual capitalist concern and its workers, foremen and clerks. There is no trace of Utopian thinking in Marx, in the sense of inventing or imagining a "new" society. No, he studies, as a scientific historical process, the birth of the new society from the old, and forms of transition from the latter to the former. He takes the actual experience of a mass proletarian movement and tries to draw from it practical lessons. He "learns" from the Commune, as all great revolutionary thinkers have not been afraid to learn from the experience of great movements of the oppressed classes; never preaching them pedantic "sermons" (such as Plekhanoff's "They Should Not Have Resorted to Arms," or Tseretelli's "A Class Must Know Where to Limit Itself").
To destroy officialism immediately, everywhere, completely—of this there can: be no question. That is a Utopia. But to break up at once the old bureaucratic machine and to start immediately the construction of a new one, enabling us gradually to abolish bureaucracy—this is not a Utopia, it is the experience of the Commune, it is the direct and necessary task of the revolutionary proletariat. Capitalism simplifies the functions of "the Government." It makes it possible to throw off autocratic methods and to bring it all down to a matter of the organization of the proletariat (as the ruling class) hiring "workers and clerks" in the name of the whole Society. We are not Utopians, we do not indulge in "dreams" of how best to do away immediately with all management, with all subordination; these are Anarchist dreams based upon a want of understanding of the tasks of a proletarian dictatorship. They are foreign in their essence to Marxism and, as a matter of fact, they serve but to put off the Socialist Revolution "until human nature is different." No, we want the Socialist Revolution with human nature as it is now; human nature itself cannot do without subordination, without control, without managers and clerks.
But there must be submission to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and laboring classes—to the proletariat. The specific "bossing" methods of the State officials can and must begin to be replaced—immediately within twenty-four hours—by the simple functions of managers and clerks, functions which are now already quite within the capacity of the average townsman and can well be performed for a workingman's wage. We must organize production on a large scale, starting from what has already been done by Capitalism. By ourselves, we workers relying on our own experience as workers, must create an unshakable and iron discipline supported by the power of the armed workers; we must reduce the role of the State officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions; they must be responsible, revocable, moderately paid "managers and clerks" (of course, with technical knowledge of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian task. With this we can and must begin when we have accomplished the proletarian Revolution. Such a beginning, on the basis of large scale industry, will of itself lead to the gradual decay of all bureaucracy, to the gradual creation of a new order, an order bearing no similarity with wage slavery, an order in which the constant simplification of the functions of inspection and registration will admit of their being performed by each in turn, will then become a habit, and will finally die out as special functions of a special class.
A witty German Social-Democrat of the 'seventies of last century called the post office an example of the Socialist system. This is very true. At present the postoffice is a business organized on the lines of a State capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type. Above the "common" workers, who are overloaded with work and yet starve, there stands the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. We have but to overthrow the capitalists, to crush with the iron hand of the armed workers the resistance of these exploiters, to break the bureaucratic machine of the modern State—and we have before us a highly technically-fashioned machine freed of its parasites, which can quite well be set going by the united workers themselves, hiring their own technical advisers, their own inspectors, their own clerks, and paying them all, as, indeed every "State" official, with the usual worker's wage. Here is a concrete task immediately practicable and realizable as regards all trusts, which would rid the workers of exploitation and which would make practical use of the experience (especially in the task of reconstruction of the State), which the Commune has given us. To organize our whole national economy like the postal system, but in such a way that the technical experts, inspectors, clerks, and indeed, all persons employed, should receive no higher wage than the workingman, and the whole under the management of the armed proletariat—this is our immediate aim. This is the kind of State and economic basis we need. This is what will produce the destruction of Parliamentarism while retaining representative institutions. This is what will free the laboring classes from the prostitution of these institutions by the capitalist class.
4. The Organization of the Unity of the Nation.
"In the short sketch of national organization which the Commune had had no time to develop, it was stated quite clearly that the Commune was to become … the political form of even the smallest village. … From these Communes would be elected the 'National' Delegation at Paris. … "The few but very important functions which would still remain for a Central Government, were not to be abolished—such a statement was a deliberate falsehood—but were to be discharged by Communal, that is, strictly responsible agents. …" "The problem consisted in this: Whilst amputating the purely repressive organs of the old Government power, to wrest its legitimate functions from an authority which claims to be above Society, and to hand them over to the responsible servants of Society."
To what extent the Opportunists of contemporary Social-Democracy have failed to understand—or perhaps it would be more true to say, did not want to understand—these words of Marx, is best shown by the book, as famous or infamous as the work of Herostratus, of the renegade Bernstein—The Fundamentals of Socialism and the Problems of Social Democracy. It is just in connection with the above passage from Marx that Bernstein wrote saying that this program "in its political content displays, in all its essential features, the greatest similarity to the Federalism of Proudhon. … In spite of all the other points of difference between Marx and the 'petty shopkeeper' Proudhon (Bernstein places the words "petty shopkeeper" in inverted commas in order to make them sound ironical), on these points their currents of thought resemble one another as closely as could be." Of course, Bernstein continues, the importance of the municipalities is growing, but "it seems to me doubtful whether the first task of the democracy would be such a dissolution (Auflösung) of modern forms of the State, and such a complete transformation (Umwandlung) of their organization as is imagined by Marx and Proudhon, that is, the formation of a "national assembly from delegates of the provincial or district assemblies, which, in their turn, would consist of delegates from the Communes. So that the whole previous mode of national representation would vanish completely." (Bernstein, Fundamentals, pp. 184–136, German edition, 1899.)
It is really monstrous thus to confuse Marx's views on the "destruction of the State as parasite" with the federalism of Proudhon. But this is no accident, for it never occurs to the Opportunist that Marx is not speaking here at all of Federalism as opposed to Centralism, but of destruction of the old capitalist machinery of government which exists in all bourgeois countries. The Opportunist cannot see further than the "municipalities" which he finds around him in a society of middle-class philistinism and "reformist" stagnation. As for a proletarian revolution, the Opportunist has forgotten even how to imagine it. It is amusing. But it is remarkable that this point of Bernstein's has not been disputed. Bernstein has been refuted often enough especially by Plekhanoff in Russian literature and by Kautsky in European, but neither made any remark upon this perversion of Marx by Bernstein. The Opportunist has forgotten to such an extent how to think in a revolutionary way and how to reflect on revolution, that he attributes "Federalism" to Marx, mixing him up with the founder of Anarchism, Proudhon; and, although they are anxious to be orthodox Marxists and to defend the teaching of revolutionary Marxism, Kautsky and Plekhanoff are nevertheless silent on this point. Herein lies one of the roots of those banalities and platitudes about the difference between Marxism and Anarchism which are common to both Kautskians and Opportunists. These we shall discuss later.
There is no trace of Federalism in Marx's discussion of the experience of the Commune, quoted above. Marx agrees with Proudhon precisely on that point which has quite escaped the Opportunist Bernstein; while he differs from Proudhon just on the point where Bernstein sees their agreement. Marx concurs with Proudhon in that they both stand for the "demolition" of the contemporary machinery of government. This common ground of Marxism with Anarchism (both with Proudhon and with Bakunin), neither the Opportunists nor the Kautskians wish to see, for on this point they have themselves diverged from Marxism. Marx does differ both from Proudhon and Bakunin on the point of Federalism (not to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat). Federalism is a direct fundamental outcome of the Anarchist petty middle-class ideas. Marx is a centralist; and in the above cited quotation of his speculations there is no withdrawal from the central position. Only people full of middle-class "supersitious faith" in the State can mistake the destruction of the bourgeois State for the destruction of centralism.
But will it not be centralism if the proletariat and the poorest peasantry take the power of the State into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely into communes, and co-ordinate the action of all the communes for the purpose of striking at Capital, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the capitalists, in order to accomplish the transference of private property in railways, factories, land and so forth, to the nation, to the whole of Society? Will that not be the most consistent democratic centralism? And proletarian centralism at that? Bernstein simply cannot conceive the possibility of voluntary centralism, of a voluntary union of the communes into a nation, a voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes in the business of destroying capitalist supremacy and the capitalist machinery of government. Like all philistines, Bernstein can imagine centralism only as something from above, to be imposed and maintained solely by means of bureaucracy and militarism. Marx, as though he foresaw the possibility of the distortion of his ideas, purposely emphasizes that the accusation against the Commune that it desired to destroy the unity of the nation to do away with a central authority, was a deliberate falsehood. He purposely uses the phrase "to organize the unity of the nation" so as to oppose the conscious, democratic, proletarian centralism to the capitalist, military official centralism.
But none so deaf as those who will not hear. And the Opportunists of the modern Social-Democracy do not, on any account, want to hear of the destruction of the State, of the removal of the parasite.
5. The Destruction of the Parasite—the State.
We have already quoted the words of Marx on this subject, and must now supplement them.
"It is generally the fate of new creations of History [wrote Marx] to be mistaken for any old and even defunct forms of social life to which the new institutions may bear a sort of likeness. Thus, this new Commune, which is breaking up (bricht) the modern State, was regarded as the resurrection of the mediaeval communes … as a federation of small States (Montesquieu, The Girondins) as an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization … The Communal constitution would have restored to the social body all those forces hitherto devoured by the parasitic excrescence called 'the State,' feeding upon Society and hindering it from moving forward freely. By this one act the regeneration of France would have been advanced. … "The Communal constitution would have brought the rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the chief towns of each district, and would have secured for them there, in the persons of the town workers, the natural representatives of their interests. The very existence of the Commune would have involved, as a matter of course, local self-government, but no longer as a balance to the power of the State, which now becomes superfluous. … " "The annihilation of the power of the State," which was a "parasitic excrescence," its "amputation," its "destruction"; "the power of the State now becomes superfluous"—these are the expressions used by Marx regarding the State when appraising and analyzing the experience of the Commune.
All this was written a little less than half a century ago; and now one has to excavate, as it were, in order to bring uncorrupted Marxism to the knowledge of the masses. The conclusions drawn from the observation of the last great revolution, through which Marx lived, have been forgotten just at the moment when the time has arrived for the next great proletarian revolutions. "The variety of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which found their expression in it, proves that it was a thoroughly flexible political form, whereas all previous forms of Government have been, in their essence, repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially the government of the working class, the result of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class; it was the political form, at last discovered, under which labor could work out its economic emancipation … "Without this last condition the Communal constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion." The Utopians had busied themselves with the "discovery" of the political forms under which the Socialist reconstruction of Society could take place. The Anarchists turned away from the question of political forms of any kind. The Opportunists of modern Social-Democracy have accepted the capitalist political forms of a parliamentary democratic State as the limit which cannot be overstepped; they have broken their foreheads praying before this idol, and they have denounced as Anarchism every attempt to destroy these forms. Marx deduced from the whole history of Socialism and of political struggle that the State was bound to disappear, and that the transitional form of its disappearance (the transition from the political State to the non-State) would be the "proletariat organized as the ruling class." But Marx did not undertake the task of "discovering" the political "forms" of this future stage. He limited himself to an exact observation of French history, its analysis and the conclusion to which the year 1851 had led, viz., that matters were moving towards the destruction of the capitalist machinery of the State. And when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat burst forth, Marx, in spite of the failure of that movement, in spite of its short life and its patent weakness, began to study what political forms it had disclosed.
The Commune was the form "discovered at last" by the proletarian revolution, under which the economic liberation of labor can proceed. The Commune was the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to break up the bourgeois State, and constitutes the political form, "discovered at last" which can and must take the place of the broken machine. We shall see below that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in different surroundings and under different circumstances, have been continuing the work of the Commune, and have been confirming Marx's brilliant analysis of History.
3856456The State and Revolution — Chapter 4: Continuation. Supplementary Explanation by EngelsAnonymousVladimir Ilyich Lenin CHAPTER IV.
CONTINUATION SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLANATION BY ENGELS- Marx gives us the fundamentals on the subject of the meaning of the Commune. Engels returned to the same question repeatedly, elucidating Marx's analysis and conclusions, sometimes explaining so clearly and forcibly other sides of the question that we must stop expressly to consider these explanations.
1. The Housing Question.
Already in his work on the Housing Question (1872), Engels took into account the experience of the Commune, dwelling several times on the problems of the Revolution in relation to the State. It is interesting to note that in the treatment of this concrete question we are shown clearly on the one hand, those features of the proletarian State which resemble features of the present State—features which give us ground for speaking of a State in both cases; and, on the other hand, the features which differentiate them and mark the transition to the destruction of the State.
"How can the housing problem be solved? In modern society this question is solved, like every other social question, by a gradual economic equalization of supply and demand. This, however, is a kind of solution which itself constantly creates the problem anew, that is, it gives no solution. How the Social Revolution will solve this question depends not only on circumstances of time and place, but it is also bound up with questions which go much further, amongst which one of the most important is the abolition of the distinction between town and country. As we are not interested in Utopian speculations on the structure of the future Society, it would be more than a waste of time to dwell upon this point. One thing is certain: even now there are sufficient habitable buildings in the large towns materially to relieve the real shortage of accommodation, if sensible use were made of them. This, of course, could only be brought about by the expropriation of their present possessors, and by settling in them the homeless workers or the workers who are now living in over-crowded homes. And as soon as the workers win political power, such a measure, based on the best interests of Society, will be as easily carried out as all other expropriations and commandeerings by the modern State." (German edition, 1887, p. 22.)
Here it is not the change in the form of the State which is considered, but only the character of its activity. Expropriations and the occupation of houses take place by direction even of the present State. The proletarian State, from the formal point of view, will also "direct" the occupation of houses and the expropriation of buildings. But it is clear that the old executive apparatus, the bureaucracy connected with the bourgeoisie, would simply be useless for the carrying out of the orders of the proletarian State.
"It is necessary to state that the actual seizure of all the means of labor and of all industry by the laboring masses of the nation is the direct antithesis to the Proudhonist 'buying out.' Under the Proudhonist system the individual worker becomes the owner of a house, of a small-holder's plot of land, of necessary tools. In the other case, however, the 'laboring people' becomes the collective owner of houses, factories and tools. The use of these houses, factories and so forth, will hardly be offered, at any rate, during the transition period, to single individuals or to companies, without recovering the expense. In the same way, the abolition of the private ownership of land does not presuppose the abolition of rent, but its handing over, although in a different form, to the whole of Society. The actual appropriation of all the means of labor by the laboring masses does not exclude in any way, therefore, the preservation of the right to rent or let." (Page 69.)
In the next chapter we shall discuss the question touched on here, namely, the economic reasons for the "withering away" of the State. Engels expresses himself most cautiously here, saying that the proletarian State will "hardly" allot houses without pay, "at any rate, during the transition period." The letting of houses belonging to the whole nation, to separate families for rent presupposes the collection of this rent, a certain amount of control, and some standard or other to guide the allotment of the houses. All this demands a certain form of State, but it does not at all involve a special military and bureaucratic apparatus, with officials occupying privileged position. But a transition to a state of affairs when it will be possible to let houses without rent is bound up with a complete "withering away" of the State.
Speaking of the conversion of the Blanquists after the Commune, and under the influence of its experience, to the Marxist point of view, Engels, it so happens, formulates it as "The necessity for political action by the proletariat and for proletarian dictatorship, as the transition towards the abolition of classes, and, together with them, of the State. …" (Page 55.) Those who are addicted to hair-splitting, or bourgeois "exterminators of Marxism," will perhaps see a contradiction between this admission of the "abolition of the State" and the repudiation of a formula, like that of the Anarchists, contained in the quotation from the Anti-Duehring given above. It would not be surprising if the Opportunists wrote down Engels, too, as an "Anarchist," for the Socialist-chauvinists are now more and more adopting the fashion of accusing the Internationalists of Anarchism.
That, together with the abolition of classes, the State will also be abolished—this Marxism has always taught. The well-known passage of the "withering away of the State" in the Anti-Duehring does not accuse the Anarchists merely of being in favor of the abolition of the State, but of spreading the theory that it is possible to accomplish this "within twenty-four hours." In view of the complete distortion by the present predominating "Social-Democratic" doctrine concerning the relation of Marxism to Anarchism, of the question of the abolition of the State, it will be especially useful to recall one particular controversy of Marx and Engels with the Anarchists.
2. The Dispute with the Anarchists.
This dispute occurred in 1873. Marx and Engels then contributed articles against the Proudhonist "Autonomists" or "Anti-Authoritarians" to an Italian Socialist review, and it was only in 1913 that these articles appeared in German in the Neue Zeit. "If the political struggle of the working class [wrote Marx, ridiculing the Anarchists for their repudiation of political action] assumes a revolutionary form, if the workers, in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, set up their own revolutionary dictatorship, then they commit a terrible crime and offer an insult to principle, because, forsooth, the workers, in order to meet the miserable, gross requirements of the moment, in order to crush the resistance of the capitalist class, cause the State to assume a revolutionary and transitional form, instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the State." (Neue Zeit, 1913–14, year 32, vol. I, page 40.)
This alone is the kind of "abolition" of the State against which Marx protested, refuting the Anarchists. He protested not against the theory of the disappearance of the State when classes disappear, or its abolition when classes have been abolished, but only against the proposition that the workers should deny themselves the use of arms, the use of organized force, that is, the use of the State, for the purpose of "breaking the resistance of the capitalist class." Marx purposely emphasizes, in order that the true sense of his contentions against the Anarchists: might not be perverted, "the revolutionary and transitional form" of the State necessary for the proletariat. The proletariat only needs the State temporarily. We do not at all disagree with the Anarchists on the question of the abolition of the State as a final aim. But we affirm that, for the attainment of this aim, we must make temporary use of the weapons and methods of the State against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the annihilation of all classes. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest mode of stating the position against the Anarchists. Having cast off the yoke of the capitalists, ought the workers "to lay down their arms" or should they use them against the capitalists in order to break their resistance? And the systematic employment of arms by one class against the other, what is that if not a "transitional form of the State"?
Let every Social-Democrat ask himself whether that was the way in which he examined the question of the State in his discussions with the Anarchists! Was that the way in which the vast majority of the official Social-Democratic parties of the Second International treated it? Engels develops these same ideas in even greater detail and more simply. He first of all ridicules the muddled ideas of the Proudhonists who call themselves "Anti-Authoritarians," that is, who denied every form of authority, or subordination of power. Take a factory, a railway, a vessel on the open seas, said Engels; is it not clear that not one of these complex technical concerns, based on the use of machines and the ordered co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination, and, consequently of authority or power? "When I use these arguments," writes Engels, "against the most hopeless Anti-Authoritarians, they can only give me the following answer, 'Ah, that is true, but the question is not of the authority we confer on our delegates, but of a certain commission.' These people think that a thing can be altered by merely changing its name."