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.
3856460The State and Revolution — Chapter 6: The Vulgarization of Marx by the OpportunistsAnonymousVladimir Ilyich Lenin CHAPTER VI.
THE VULGARIZATION OF MARX BY THE OPPORTUNISTS The question of the relation of the State to the Social Revolution, and of the Social Revolution to the State, like the question of revolution generally, was little considered by the best known theoreticians of the Second International (1889–1914). But the most characteristic thing in that process of the gradual growth of Opportunism, which led to the collapse of the Second International in 1914, is this that even when they actually came into contact with this question they did their best to evade it, or else to pass it by unnoticed. It may be said, in general, that the evasiveness on this question of the relation of the proletarian revolution to the State, an evasiveness which was both convenient to the Opportunists and which bred and fed them—resulted in a distortion of Marxism and in its complete vulgarization. To characterize this lamentable process, if only in brief, let us take the best-known theoreticians of Marxism: Plekhanoff and Kautsky.
1. The Controversy Between Plekhanoff and the Anarchists.
Piekhanoff devoted a special pamphlet to the question of the relation of Socialism to Anarchism, entitled Anarchism and Socialism, published in Germany in 1894. He managed somehow to treat this question without touching on the most vital controversial point, the essential point politically, in the struggle with the Anarchists: the relation of the Revolution to the State, and the question of the State in general. His pamphlet may be divided into two parts: one, historico-literary, containing valuable material for the history of the ideas of Stirner, Proudhon and others; the second, ignorant and narrow minded, containing a clumsy disquisition on the theme "that an Anarchist cannot be distinguished from a bandit," an amusing combination of subjects and most characteristic of the entire activity of Plekhanoff on the eve of Revolution and during the revolutionary period in Russia." Indeed, in the years 1908 to 1917 Plekhanoff showed himself to be half doctrinaire and half philistine, walking politically in the wake of the bourgeoisie.
We saw how Marx and Engels, in their polemics against the Anarchists, explained most thoroughly their views on the relation of the Revolution to the State. Engels, when editing in 1891 Marx's Criticism of the Gotha Program, wrote that "we"—that is, Engels and Marx—"were then in the fiercest phase of our battle with Bakunin and his Anarchists; hardly two years had then passed since the Hague Congress of the International" (the First). The Anarchists had tried to claim the Paris Commune as their "own"—as a confirmation of their teachings, thus showing that they had not in the least understood the lessons of the Commune or the analysis of those lessons by Marx. Anarchism has given nothing approaching a true solution of the concrete political problems; we are to break up the old State machine, and what shall we put in its place? But to speak of "Anarchism and Socialism" and to leave the whole question of the State out of account, taking no notice at all of the whole development of Marxism before and after the Commune—that meant an inevitable fall into the pit of Opportunism. For that is just what Opportunism wants—to keep these two questions in abeyance. To secure this is, in itself, a victory for Opportunism.
2. Kautsky's Controversy with the Opportunists.
Undoubtedly an immeasurably larger number of Kautsky's works have been translated into Russian than into any other language. It is not without some justification that German Social-Democrats sometimes make the joke that Kautsky is more read in Russia than in German—and we may say, in parentheses, that there is deeper historical significance in this joke than those who first made it suspected. For in 1905 the Russian workers manifested an extraordinarily strong, an unexampled demand for the best works, the best Social-Democratic literature in the world, and translations and editions of these works appeared in quantities unheard of in other countries. Thereby, with one sweep, the immense experience of the neighboring, more advanced country was transplanted on to the almost virgin soil of our proletarian movement. Besides his popularization of Marxism, Kautsky is particularly well known in our country by his controversies with the Oportunists, with Bernstein at their head. But one fact is almost unknown, which, however, cannot be passed over if we are to apply ourselves to the task of investigating how it was that Kautsky rolled down into the disgraceful morass of confusion and defense of Social-Chauvinism at the time of greatest crisis, in 1914–1915. This fact is that before he came forward against the best-known representatives of Opportunism in France (Millerand, Jaures), and Germany (Bernstein), Kautsky had shown very great vaciliation.
The Russian Marxist journal The Dawn, which was published at Stuttgart in 1901–2, and advocated revolutionary proletarian doctrines, had to call Kautsky to account, denouncing his resolution at the Paris International Socialist Congress of 1900 as a "piece of elastic," because of its evasive, temporizing and conciliatory attitude towards the Opportunists. Letters have been published from Kautsky's pen in Germany revealing no less hesitancy before he took the field against Bernstein. Of immeasurably greater importance, however, is the circumstance that, in his very debates with the Opportunists, in his formulation of the question and his method of treating it we can observe, now that we are investigating the history of his latest betrayal of Marxism, his systematic gravitation towards Opportunism, and that precisely on this question of the State.
Let us take Kautsky's first big work against Opportunism: Bernstein and the Social-Democratic Program. Kautsky refutes Bernstein in detail; but the characteristic thing about it is this: Bernstein in his famous, or infamous, Socialist Fundamentals accuses Marx of Blanquism—an accusation since repeated thousands of times by the Opportunists and Liberals of Russia against the representatives of Revolutionary Marxism, the Bolsheviks. In this connection Bernstein dwells particularly on Marx's Civil War in France, and tries—as we saw, quite unsuccessfully—to identify Marx's view of the lessons of the Commune with that of Proudhon. He also pays particular attention to Marx's conclusion, emphasized by him in his preface of 1872 to the Communist Manifesto to the effect that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machine and set it going for its own purposes." The dictum pleased Bernstein so much that he repeated it no less than three times in his book—interpreting it in the most distorted Opportunist sense. We have seen what Marx means—that the working class must shatter, break, blow up ("sprengen," explode, is the expression used by Engels), the whole State machine; whereas, according to Bernstein, it would appear as though Marx by these words warned the working class against excessive revolutionary zeal when seizing power.