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Red & Black Revolution
A magazine of libertarian communism
Issue 1 October 1994
Produced by Workers Solidarity Movement
Marx & the State
"Indeed how do these people propose to run a
factory, operate a railway or steer a ship
without having, in the last resort, one
deciding will, without single management
they do not tell us"(1)
Engels
Since the Nineteenth century Marxism and
anarchism have confronted each other as the
two dominant strains of revolutionary
thought. Some Marxists claim that in fact
Marxism is not a statist or vanguardist
ideology. Like all Marxists they also
generally dismiss anarchism as utopian,
marginal and non-scientific.
The aim of this article is to show that Marx
and Engels were deeply ambiguous on the
nature of the state and the party, and that
the criticisms by anarchists of them were
and remain valid.Far from being utopian
anarchism has the same materialist origins
as Marxism and, far from being marginal, has
had a huge influence among workers since the
nineteenth century. As Daniel Guerin put
it:
"Anarchism and Marxism at the start , drank
at the same proletarian spring"(2)
Since then many anarchists have,
unfortunately, tended to demonise Marx. The
genius of Marx and Engels was in the way
they were able to combine the materialism of
Hegel with various economic theories to come
up with a critique of capitalism. By Marx's
own admission Capital his major economic
work is a synthesis of ideas from right-wing
economists like Adam Smith to socialists
like the Irishman William Thompson.
One of Marx's main contributions was to
popularise the labour theory of value
(though he was not the first to come up with
this idea). Put crudely this is the idea
that all material goods or commodities have
another value besides their actual
usefulness (or "use-value"). This value is
determined by the amount of labour required
to produce them. The capitalist does not
pay this full value in wages (which only
provide enough to feed and maintain the
worker) the rest is held back as surplus
value or profit.(3)
Thus workers have a real material interest
in overthrowing capitalism. As well as this
Marx pointed to capitalism's tendency to
bring workers together in large workplaces
where they can struggle together. This
creates the social basis for labour
organisation and the realisation of
collective class interests.
Before Marx socialists were aware that
workers were exploited but they had no
explanation of the economic basis of this
exploitation. The mechanics of capitalism
were not understood.
Bakunin and his followers fully accepted
this and other ideas in Marx's critique of
capitalism. In fact Bakunin began the
translation of Capital into Russian and the
Italian anarchist Carlo Cafiero published a
summary of the same work in Italian.
With regards to materialism Bakunin begins
his seminal work God and State(4) by clearly
taking sides. He asks:
"Who are right, The idealists or the
materialists? The question, once stated in
this way, hesitation becomes impossible.
Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the
materialists are right"
What are the divisions between anarchists
and Marxists? You don't need a degree in
political science to figure out the major
one:
The State
Marx and Engels saw the State as being a
product of class struggle. It was the
executive committee of the ruling class. It
was an instrument by which one class rules
another. In most of their writings they
seem to see the State as a neutral tool. It
can be taken and used by either workers or
capitalists.
Their classical political statement is The
Communist Manifesto(5). In its 10 main
demands it calls for the centralisation of
credit, transport and means of production
under the State. This is justified
(according to Marx) because:
"political power, properly called, is merely
the instrument of one class for oppressing
another"
Here we have the idea of the State as a tool
to be used by either class (capitalists or
workers).
In his Comments on Bakunin(6) Marx claims
that the workers:
"must employ forcible means hence
governmental means"
This is a common trend in Marx and Engels
thinking (see also first quote). Kropotkin
describes it well as:(7)
"the German school which insists on
confusing the state with society"
Workers will probably have to use force in a
revolution but why does this imply a
government?
Bakunin vigorously opposed the Marxist
conception of the State. The State was
more than simply a product of class
antagonism. If the programme of the
manifesto was realised then a new
bureaucratic class based on it rather than
the market could arise. This for Bakunin
would have nothing to do with socialism:
"The most fatal combination that could
possibly be formed , would be to unite
socialism to absolutism"(8)
Bakunin was right. Getting rid of
competition and the law of value did not
stop the Leninist states from being class
societies. The state embodied the interests
of the ruling class and extracted profit
from workers by brute force and ruthless
exploitation. The state failed to wither
away. The prediction by Engels that the
seizing and centralising of property would
be the state's last official act(9) proved
to be a sick joke on the workers of the
Stalinist countries.
At the end of the day no state can
encapsulate the interests of the masses
better than the masses themselves. As
Bakunin says in The Paris Commune and the
Idea of the State(10):
"where are those brains powerful enough and
wide ranging enough to embrace the infinite
multiplicity and diversity of the real
interests, aspirations, wishes and needs
whose sum constitutes the collective will of
the people?"
Marx the Libertarian?
Of course many libertarian Marxists will
point out that Marx and Engels did sometimes
move beyond the position of the Manifesto on
the State. After the 1848 uprising in
Berlin and the Paris Commune of 1871, for
example. In The Civil War in France (1871)
Marx says that the State has:
"assumed more and more the character of the
national power of capital over labour...of
an engine of class despotism..."
Therefore:
"the working class cannot simply lay hold of
the ready made State machinery and weld it
for its own purposes"
and the liberation of the working class
cannot come about "without the destruction
of the apparatus of state power which was
created by the ruling class"
He also calls for self-government of the
producers and delegation from communes to
higher organs of power by recallable
delegates. However even here he fails to
outline with any precision the forms of
workers self-rule which might emerge: the
ideas of worker's councils, militias,
collectives on the land etc. (all of which
are taken up by Bakunin in Letters to a
Frenchman (1871)
In his 1850 Address to the Communist League
(again a comparatively libertarian and
revolutionary speech) Marx comes closest to
outlining this by saying that workers must:
"immediately establish their own
revolutionary governments, whether in the
form of municipal committees and municipal
councils or in the form of worker's clubs or
worker's committees"
Marx the Democrat
However if you were to pick up the 1895
edition of this address you would be
confronted by a new introduction by Engels.
In it he informs us:
"The mode of struggle of 1848(11) is today
obsolete in every respect"
Why? Simple:
"They [the German workers] rendered a second
great service to their cause...they supplied
their comrades in all countries with a new
weapon, and one of the sharpest, when they
showed them how to make use of universal
suffrage"
He quotes Marx(12) on how voting had been:
"transformed by them from a means of
deception, which it was, into an instrument
of emancipation"
"We are not so crazy as to let ourselves be
driven to street fighting in order to please
them (the bourgeois)" says Engels in 1895
However in Marx's 1869 Critique of the Gotha
Programme and in an 1879 letter by the two
to Bebel, the German Social Democratic Party
is savagely attacked for supporting
parliamentary elections:
"We cannot therefore co-operate with people
who openly state that the workers are too
uneducated to emancipate themselves"
Confused? You should be. Marx and Engels
are about as consistent (in their writings
on the state) as a Labour Party manifesto
and at many stages actually sound like such
a manifesto. We are treated to Marx the
democrat, the communist, the partisan of
workers control and Marx the fan of
representative democracy. The state, to
Marx and Engels was just the executive
committee of a particular class. Once
capitalism went so would the State.
"Do away with Capitalism and the State will
fall by it-self" says Engels (On Authority
1872). Tragically he was wrong. As we
shall see Marx's and Engels ambiguity on
this springs from deeper problems. In fact,
there are major problems in their whole
conception of socialism.
What is socialism?
The anarchist answer to this question is
that socialism, at base, must be about
freedom. A society run collectively to
maximise the amount of choice available to
the individual. A society based on
satisfying the needs and wants of many and
not on the profit of the few, with full
participation at all levels.
A revolution is a conscious act by workers
to liberate themselves from the constraints
of class society. It is a subjective act.
There is a fundamental contradiction in
Marxism between subjective and
objective.(13) Humanity according to Marx
goes through a series of distinct historical
stages based on ever increasing levels of
production. Certainly it is true that the
level of production in a given society does
determine the range of possibilities open to
those trying to change it. However Marx
tends to reduce all human development to
this single cause. Just as feudalism gives
way to capitalism, so capitalism gives way
to socialism. He leaves out or minimises
the importance of other variables like the
role of political institutions, culture,
ideology and individuals. To Marx all these
'subjective' things are totally conditioned
by the 'objective conditions' of economic
development.
Social and political systems rise and fall
because of their ability or inability to
materially improve the life of their
populations. Each new order arises because
it does a better job at improving production
than the old one. The transition from
socialism to capitalism is seen by him as
coming about as inevitably as the change
from slavery to feudalism. Here Marx is
wrong. For the first time in history a
transition from one social system to another
requires mass participation. Capitalism,
like feudalism and the systems that went
before, already contains the seeds of its
own destruction in that it creates its
grave-diggers: the working class. But Marx
in much of his later work went way beyond
this and implied that the death of
capitalism was inevitable:
"Capitalist production begets with the
inexorability of a law of nature its own
negation ..." (Capital Vol. I, p 837)
Further on, in the same chapter he even goes
so far as to describe capitalism as:
"already practically resting on socialised
production"
Or, as he puts it in Grundrisse (notes for
Capital) :
"beyond a certain point, the development of
the powers of production becomes a barrier
for capital" Its "violent destruction" must
come about "as a condition of its own
preservation"
This is pure determinism. It takes away the
central role of people in changing their own
destiny. It removes workers, as thinking
and acting individuals, from the centre
stage. It ignores the very seeds which
might blossom into revolution: the workers.
If the destruction of capitalism is inherent
in its own evolution then there is no reason
to fight against it. If maximising
production is the key then why not work
harder to help it along?
In fact, historically, capitalism,with
increasing productivity, has been very slow
to disappear. Instead it has become more
centralised and bureaucratic, with the state
playing an increasing role. So the leopard
has changed its spots a little. But the
monopoly capitalism of today has no more
resemblance to socialism than the free
enterprise capitalism of Marx's time.
This idea was to be taken up and expanded
on by Lenin who believed that:
"Socialism is merely a state capitalist
monopoly which is made to serve the
interests of the whole people and to this
extent has ceased to be a state capitalist
monopoly"(14)
As I have said already this is the exact
opposite of socialism. Socialism is about
freedom and collective participation, not
some bureaucratic dictatorship or state
capitalism.
Bakunin is particularly good on the topic of
'scientific' socialism:
"History is made, not by abstract
individuals but by acting, living and
passing individuals"(15)
He opposed the idea of the political
scientists leading humanity by the nose to
an enlightened dictatorship:
"What I preach then is, to a certain extent,
the revolt of life against science, or
rather against the government of science,
not to destroy science, that would be high
treason to humanity, but to remand it to its
place so it cannot leave it again"
It is worth noting, to be fair, that the
young Marx did consider the subjective
element especially in works like his 1844
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts where
he declares that the political form of the
destruction of private property will be
"Universal human emancipation"
However the later writings of Marx and
Engels concentrate more and more on the
outcome of capitalist development and less
and less on how to win workers to
revolution. This combined with a blind
respect for authority (see starting quote)
leads Marxism to be a great recipe for
incipient dictatorship even assuming the
best intentions of the two authors.
The political ideas of Marx and Engels
(despite their excellent economic analysis
of capitalism) are ambiguous and
contradictory. Even at their best they in
no way approach the clarity and depth of
Bakunin's conception of socialism.
1 Engels On Authority (1872).
2 in Anarchism and Marxism (1973).
3 This is only a very simple picture. In
reality there are a host of other factors
such as competition that reduces prices,
mechanisation that reduces the amount of
labour, costs of raw materials and energy
etc, but further explanation is outside the
scope of this article.
4 Written in 1872.
5 First published in 1847 and continually
reprinted in unaltered form. (If you
disagree with an original position you
usually change it in your next version!)
6 1874.
7 The State, its Historical Role (1897).
8 Bakunin on Anarchy (edited by Sam Dolgoff)
p.4
9 Anti Duhring (1878).
10 Written just after the commune in 1871
and published in 1878.
11 Revolution, workers self government and
all that
12 Preamble to the Constitution of the
French Workers Party (1880).
13 Objective conditions are those over which
the individual has no control. For example
whether it rains or not tomorrow. One
could, however, take the subjective decision
to bring an umbrella.
14 Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 25 p358
15 Both quotes from God and State (1872)
BOX 1 In the 1st International
Bad theory leads to bad practice. Marx and
Engels were well capable of intrigue and
authoritarianism in practice. In February
1869 Bakunin's "Alliance for Social
Democracy" put in a bid to join the
international. It applied for membership as
separate Swiss, Italian and Spanish
sections. These were accepted. This was
the high point of the international in terms
of practical activity and Bakunin's
influence was growing. Rather than take him
on ideologically Marx and Engels opted for
bureaucratic intrigue.
They held a special "conference of
delegates" in London in September 1871 (up
to then the International had open delegate
congresses). This was stage managed with
the 'delegates' being the London based
Council of the International (dominated by
Marx) and a few selected delegates. It was
totally unrepresentitive. This body then
passed several constitutional amendments-
that it had no power to do (only a full
congress could do this- the council was
supposed to look after administration). It
passed a resolution that political action
which previous congresses had defined as a
subordinate instrument for social
emancipation be linked "indissolubly" to it.
This (party building, electoralism, etc)
could not be accepted by the anarchists who
could hardly remain in the international.
In 1872, delegates were hastily convened to
a rigged 'congress' to which some sections
were not invited and others (like the
Italian) were boycotting due to actions of
the London congress. This congress resolved
that Bakunin's Alliance was a secret
organisation attempting to impose a
sectarian programme on the International.
This was despite the fact that Bakunin's
Alliance hadn't existed since 1869. Even
Marx's own "Committee of Inquiry" had found
insufficient evidence of its existence.
However condemnation and expulsion of
Bakunin and his supporters was not enough.
We continue in the words of Paul Thompson,
himself sympathetic to Marx, from "Marx,
Bakunin and the International";
"It was at this point-the vendetta against
Bakunin having been concluded that Engels
backed by Marx, Longuet and (some) other
members of the general council, produced the
bombshell of the Hague congress, moving that
the seat of the general council be moved to
New York. This motion, which was completely
unexpected by the assembled delegates, was
carried amid considerable (and
understandable) confusion. Marx had
destroyed the international in order to save
it."
BOX 2 Bakunins secret dictatorship
Bakunin is sometimes accused of being in
favour of dictatorship. Indeed he often
talks about secret dictatorships. However
if you read what he actually said in detail
it is quite obvious that what he was talking
about was the classic anarchist position of
a leadership of ideas. In a letter ending
his relationship with the notorious Russian
revolutionary Nechayev he says of his secret
society;(1)
"Thus the sole aim of a secret society must
be, not the creation of an artificial power
outside the people, but the rousing, uniting
and organising of the spontaneous power of
the people; therefore, the only possible,
the only real revolutionary army is not
outside the people, it is the people
itself."
The secrecy aspect may be regrettable
(though understandable given the climate of
Tsarist Russia) but these are not the words
of one who sought to set up a dictatorship
over the workers. I would also hazard a
guess that many of the people who peddle the
Bakunin-secret dictator line are well aware
of this.
Secret liberal and socialist societies were
a permanent and widespread phenomenon in
Europe and had been since the end of the
Napoleonic empire often for good reason.
Marx and Engels joined the secret German
organisation "The League of the Just" in
1847 and changed its name to the "Communist
League". The Communist Manifesto was
published by this secret organisation in
1848 using the German Workers Education
society as a sort of front. At the time of
the major confrontation between Marx and
Bakunin (1871) many sections of the
international such as the Spanish one had
again gone secret because of the persecution
following the suppression of the Paris
Commune.
1 Letter written to Nechayev June 2 1870 and
reprinted from the Herzen archives by the
"Anarchist Switchboard" , NYC.
Andrew Flood
anflood@macollamh.ucd.ie
Phone: 706(2389)