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Title: Contra State and Revolution
Author: Chris Wright
Date: 2001
Language: en
Topics: Lenin, Leninism, criticism, critique, anti-Bolshevism, the State
Source: https://libcom.org/library/contra-state-and-revolution][Libcom.org]] and [[https://www.academia.edu/7136696/Contra_State_and_Revolution.

Chris Wright

Contra State and Revolution

For many years Lenin’s State and Revolution served as the prime account

of a Marxist understanding of the state outside academic circles. This

work has informed generations of Marxists with what appeared to be the

basic analysis of the state and a definitive conception of communism.

Other subsequent work falls into two categories. First we have

sophisticated, but often academic and definitely not popularly

accessible works, such as Pashukanis, Poulantzas, the German state

derivation debate (with authors such as Offe, von Braunmueller, Hirsch,

et al), Bob Jessop, John Holloway, Werner Bonefeld, Simon Clarke, and so

on. Second, we have more popular works which do not really go beyond

State and Revolution, or which fall short of it, such as work by Ralph

Milliband and a host of near-Marxists such as William Domhoff.

Oddly, in very little of the more sophisticated work do we find a direct

critique of Lenin’s work and its relationship to Marx. Few people have

advanced such critiques, and often the debate has remained between

academic Marxists. For example, the debate between Poulantzas and

Milliband generated a whole revival of the analysis of the state in

Marxism, but the center of attention became Poulantzas and Milliband.

Later, the German state derivation debate picked up on Evegny

Pashukanis’ book Marxism and Law from 1924, but this seems to be as

close to Lenin as most of these discussions got.

Some of this may have to do with the fact that many academic Marxists

have viewed State and Revolution as crude or simplistic. However, this

appreciation misses two important issues. First, Lenin is not as crude

as many people think. His work represents some of the most sophisticated

development of Marxism on the state from that period. Only Luxemburg’s

Reform or Revolution and some polemics by Anton Pannekoek against

Kautsky and Bernstein represent nearly as sophisticated approaches to

the state from that time period, but they have a much more limited

scope. Second, only Lenin’s work reflects on the problem of the

dictatorship of the proletariat, the Critique of the Gotha Program (from

here on referred to as the Gothacritik) and the Paris Commune in such

detail. Lenin’s book also has the merit of setting forth the most

libertarian approach to the state that Lenin would ever put forth. And

since we want to consider a work that has been central to the formation

of the views of tens of thousands of Marxists, where else can we go? It

would be like talking about the Leninist conception of the party without

discussing What Is To Be Done? And yet it happens all the time.

Therefore, I am going to make an attempt at a critique of State and

Revolution along several lines. First, I am going to take up Lenin’s

conception of the state, and the capitalist state in particular. In the

process, I will have to discuss Engels’ understanding of the state as

well because Lenin’s approach really comes from Engels, not Marx.

Second, I am going to take up the question of the dictatorship of the

proletariat in Lenin and Marx. Lenin makes a series of claims about both

the constitution of ‘socialism’ (the first phase of communism) and the

existence of the state. In both cases, Lenin refers heavily to Marx’s

The Civil War in France and the Gothacritik, but I think he

fundamentally departs from these works. Third, I am going to address the

relationship between Lenin’s conception of the post-revolutionary

society and the question of the party and consciousness. I will make a

few brief comments on alternative conceptions of the relationship of

revolutionary organizations to revolution and organs of workers’ power.

Finally, I will ask some questions to think about in terms of developing

a conception of revolution (starting from Marx's notion of fetishism and

the idea that communism is the real movement/struggle of the working

class) for the 21st century.

Lenin’s Conception of the State

Since Lenin begins State and Revolution with his understanding of the

state, it seems logical to start there as well. However, Lenin follows

Engels in this approach to the state, and so we must begin with the

criticism of Engels.

Lenin begins with Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Engels argues in this book that the state begins when classes begin,

that the division of society into classes gives rise to the state.

However, this seemingly simple, obvious argument misses something

essential: no state is ever a generic state. All states exist as states

of a particular society. But Engels’ approach does not start from there,

he starts from a meta-category. Richard Gunn, in his article on “Marxism

and Philosophy” (Capital and Class 37, 1989), characterizes this kind of

abstraction as empiricist abstraction, abstraction that assumes a

genus-species relationship with actual historical states. In other

words, we have a metaphysical object called a state, and we can then

line up all the actually existing states under it in a hierarchy. So

under the title of a meta-category called “the state”, we can line up

slave states, feudal states, capitalist states, etc. The state becomes a

transhistorical abstraction, an a priori construction that defines

whether such and such a "thing" is a state. Much the way meta-theory

does not ask “Is it true that roses are red?”, but asks, “What is

Truth?”, Engels asks, “What is ‘The State’?”, and he proceeds to give us

an answer: the special armed body of men organized to defend the

interests of the ruling class. This approach falls short of giving us

the means to understand what is unique about the capitalist state,

however.

Any approach has to answer the question “What makes this state a

capitalist state?” Engels’ (and therefore Lenin’s) approach treats the

state as an instrument of the ruling class, as an object, a "thing" that

exists and which is determined by its functions. The state is a

capitalist state because the capitalists control the state. How do they

control the state? The capitalists control the state through corruption,

through personal ties to the state, and “alliances” between the state

and capital (cf. Lenin, CW Vol. 25, pp. 397-8). Capital places its

representatives into the vessel of the state, thereby taking it over.

Those representatives in turn get positions in capitalist corporations

after they serve their term, solidifying the linkage. This assumes that

the state is an empty vessel until some class fills it with a new

content.

An alternative approach to the state would have to recognize what is

different about the capitalist state from other states. First, starting

from Marx’s notion of fetishism (that relations between people appear as

relations between things mediated by people), we have to start with the

state as a social relation, not as a thing. Engels and Lenin start from

the reified state by treating it as a thing, a vessel, an instrument,

rather than starting from the social relation underlying the state.

Second, having established the need to not reify the state, what makes

the state a capitalist state? Capital, based on the separation of the

producers from the means of production, and turning the labor power of

the producers into a commodity, creates a separation between the market

(the realm of free exchange) and production. This separation, however,

also separates the means of dominating labor from the exploitation of

labor power: the economic and the political become separate. Thus no

direct identity exists between capital and the state; the relation

appears indirect. In their effort to make that link explicit, Lenin and

Engels act as if capitalists directly control the state in various ways,

but this only serves to further fetishize the linkage because it assumes

the identity of state and capital in appearance. But appearance and

essence do not coincide in a fetishized world, and it is exactly this

that Marx takes up in his concept of fetishism and dialectics. Lenin and

Engels go from a dialectical to a positivist approach to the state, in

so far as they ask, “What makes this state a capitalist state?”

Thirdly, Lenin and Engels then proceed to adopt a functionalist attitude

towards the state. The state becomes nothing more than its functions:

the protection of the general interests of capital. Once the state

becomes a “thing”, an instrument, then we have reified the state,

therefore making the state more stable than it actually is. If we start

from fetishism, however, the state exists as a form (a mode of

existence) of the capital-labor relation, the state has to be a product

of struggle, which means the state cannot be defined by a pre-determined

series of functions. The ‘functions’ become the product of class

struggle. The constitution of the state becomes a constant process; a

process of continuously constituting a state that is fought over and

reflects class struggles. The capitalist state was not simply

constituted with the bourgeois revolutions or with Absolutism (as Lenin

discusses). Class struggle constantly constitutes and re-constitutes the

state as a fetishized social relation.

Finally, we have to ask how we can talk about “the capitalist state”, in

the face of so many specific capitalist states? Because capital is

global, has always been global from its origins in piracy, slavery and

conquest, the political, as a social relation, is also global. We can

then see each state as simply the fragmenting of the political into

localities. This fracturing revolves around two relations: the need to

control the movement of labor and the need to attract capital. Capital

moves (with varying degrees of mobility depending on whether capital

moves as productive capital, commodity capital, or money capital) and

only settles where the conditions appear attractive for the extraction

of surplus value. A contradiction develops between the mobility of

capital and the immobility of the state. In so far as capital exists as

global capital (national capital is really a fiction), the

identification of capital with a particular capitalist class or with a

particular capitalist state makes no sense. I cannot go into it in depth

here, but this approach would seriously undermine the concept of “state

monopoly capitalism” which Lenin also depends upon and develops. Lenin’s

state is ultimately a national state, as is his capital, and his world

is a state system where some states exploit others. In a theory starting

from fetishism, each state exists as a fragment, a fractured moment, of

the political as a global totality. As a result, exploitation is not

between imperialist states and colonial or neo-colonial states, but the

exploitation of global labor by global capital.

In the end, even though Lenin says that the state needs to be smashed

and he takes a revolutionary political position relative to the

capitalist state, his theory reflects that of the Second International.

In turn, we could just as correctly say that Lenin’s mechanics of

capitalist control of the state only differ terminologically from G.

William Domhoff or other perceptive liberal critics of the state as an

elite institution.

But what does that mean for our understanding of revolution? In the next

section, I will lay out the differences between Marx and Lenin on their

understanding of the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” and

communism.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Communism in Lenin and Marx

Several problems interest us here. How do Lenin and Marx understand the

term “dictatorship of the proletariat”? What is the relationship between

the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism? How did Lenin

interpret Marx’s discussion of the two phases of communism in the

Critique of the Gotha Program? Does Lenin have a concept of communism as

the self-emancipation of the working class, as the free association of

producers?

All of Lenin’s earlier work, and most of what comes later, understands

the dictatorship of the proletariat to mean a particularly dictatorial

type of state, whose task is the repression of the capitalist class

after the revolution. We should be clear: Lenin, unlike in other places,

does not consistently deploy this usage. He sometimes deploys the term

as Marx used it.

So how did Marx understand the phrase? In an extensive discussion of the

term The Dictatorship of the Proletariat from Marx to Lenin, Hal Draper

makes a powerful argument that Marx does not understand the term as

indicating a particular kind of state, but as the social dictatorship of

the working class. In the same way Marx would refer to all capitalist

states, and even capitalist society, as the dictatorship of the

bourgeoisie, so he referred to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In

fact, if you read the handful of places where Marx uses the phrase, that

meaning is quite apparent.

Second, Marx did not use the phrase often. The handful of time he uses

it, Draper clearly points out its polemical edge in reference to the

Blanquists and anarchists. The term actually originates with Auguste

Blanqui and his followers. Marx used their term in the discussion, but

he argued against a putschist notion of the social revolution, a notion

Lenin comes dangerously close to. At best, we can say that Lenin

sometimes takes the phrase in Marx’s sense, but even in State and

Revolution, he is inconsistent. In almost all of his other works, Lenin

consistently gets it wrong.

This difference reflects another problem. While both Marx and Lenin see

the working class as revolutionary, they do so for entirely different

reasons. For example, Lenin quotes this passage from Engels as gospel:

“As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in

subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for

existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the

collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing

more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special

coercive force, a state.”

(Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03,

third German edition, quoted in Lenin, CW, Vol. 25, p. 400)

Note how Engels associates capitalist oppression with the anarchy of

production, without ever discussing Marx’s central critique of capital:

the separation of the producer from the means of production. Compare

this to Lenin:

The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the

proletariat, the particular class whose economic conditions of existence

prepare it for this task and provide it with the possibility and the

power to perform it. While the bourgeoisie break up and disintegrate the

peasantry and all the petty-bourgeois groups, they weld together, unite

and organize the proletariat. Only the proletariat — by virtue of the

economic role it plays in large-scale production — is capable of being

the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeoisie

exploit, oppress and crush, often not less but more than they do the

proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle

for their emancipation. (CW, Vol. 25, p. 408, italics mine)

Lenin takes the position that the proletariat is the emancipatory class

because of its role in large-scale production. This confuses a

particular historical organization of labor power for the key relation

between labor and capital. Lenin never grasps Marx’s discussion of

alienated labor and fetishism. The emancipatory power of the proletariat

comes from the fact that the working class exists as the negation of

property, of exploitation. The total separation of producer from means

of production under capital means that the working class has no possible

existence as a propertied, i.e. as an exploiting, class. The particular

organization of alienated labor is secondary to the specific mode of

existence of labor under capitalism.

This matters simply because the two different perspectives lead to two

different views of revolution. For Lenin (and partially for Engels), the

first phase of communism is the taking over of the current production

process by the working class, the management of the existing production

relations by the (workers’) state. For Marx, the first phase of

communism means the free association of labor, the abolition of the

separation of the producers from the means of producing, i.e. the

abolition of relations of property. What Marx considers the most basic

preliminaries to communism, precursors fulfilled in the course of the

revolution, of the expropriation of the expropriators, Lenin considers

to be the first phase of communism.

Lenin completely misunderstands Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program and

the discussion of two stages of communism. For Marx, there is no stage

of communism with a state or commodity production or wage labor. Lenin

completely confuses the problem of the period of revolutionary overthrow

of with the first stage of communism. Lenin phrases it this way:

The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force,

an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the

exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population — the

peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians — in the work of

organizing a socialist economy. (CW, Vol. 25, p. 409)

In doing so, Lenin breaks with Marx in the second half of the sentence.

Up until that point, Lenin could argue that he represented Marx’s view.

Lenin highlights his confusion of the revolutionary period with the

first phase of communism in the quote below:

In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will

develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence

against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another,

and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether

since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary

conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.

(CW, Vol. 25, p. 461)

Clearly, Lenin still sees the first phase of communism as one of

subordination because he can only conceive of it in terms of capturing

state power and statification of private property. As such, Lenin goes

on to say that

…in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism)

"bourgeois law" is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only

in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in

respect of the means of production. "Bourgeois law" recognizes them as

the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common

property. To that extent - and to that extent alone - "bourgeois law"

disappears.

The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is

already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of

products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But

this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law",

which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal)

amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. (CW, Vol. 25, p. 472)

This utterly contradicts Marx. Marx says bourgeois right, not law, which

would assume the state. Lenin focuses on the ‘economic revolution’

solely from the technical side, from the ‘means of production’, unlike

Marx who focuses on the relations of production, the separator of the

producer from the means of production.

The idea that “socialism” merely equals the conversion of bourgeois

private property into common property completely misunderstands Marx.

For Marx, private property means capitalist property as a whole, as in

the total property of the capitalist class, not simply juridically

recognized individual property. State capitalism turned individual

property into common property, without ever violating private property,

i.e. capitalist property (see Paresh Chattopadhyay, The Marxian Concept

of Capital and the Soviet Experience, Praeger, 1994.) Therefore, Lenin

merely posits a different form of capitalism, since none of the social

relations of production change under “socialism”.[1]

Lenin even counterpoises the state to the working class here in his most

libertarian work. The following two paragraphs highlight how far Lenin

is from Marx.

We are not utopians, we do not "dream" of dispensing at once with all

administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based

upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are

totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to

postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we

want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people

who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and

accountants". (CW, Vol. 25, p. 430)

We, the workers, shall organize large-scale production on the basis of

what capitalism has already created, relying on our own experience as

workers, establishing strict, iron discipline backed up by the state

power of the armed workers. We shall reduce the role of state officials

to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible,

revocable, modestly paid "foremen and accountants" (of course, with the

aid of technicians of all sorts, types and degrees).

A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century

called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system.

This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business

organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is

gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type,

in which, standing over the "common" people, who are overworked and

starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of

social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the

capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron

hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the

modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from

the "parasite", a mechanism which can very well be set going by the

united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and

accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all "state" officials in

general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can

immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose

fulfillment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which

takes account of what the Commune had already begun to practice

(particularly in building up the state).

To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service so that

the technicians, foremen and accountants, as well as all officials,

shall receive salaries no higher than "a workman's wage", all under the

control and leadership of the armed proletariat - that is our immediate

aim. This is what will bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and

the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid

the laboring classes of the bourgeoisie's prostitution of these

institutions. (CW, Vol. 25, p. 430-1)

We must go even further and say that Lenin completely misunderstands

Marx’s discussion of bourgeois right under the first phase of communism,

believing that Marx means the continued existence of wage-labor. The

first phase of communism already assumes the end of money and the wage

relation. It assumes the end of the state and of capitalist relations of

production. Both phases of communism depend on what Marx called “the

free association of producers”, in which the freedom of each is the

precondition for the freedom of all.

Does this mean that Marx did not believe the proletariat needed a state,

albeit a transitional and immediately dying state, to suppress the

capitalist class? First, Marx clearly does have some kind of transient

form of state in mind, but this state exists only as long as the

expropriation of the expropriators continues. It has nothing to do with

the first phase of communism (what Lenin and others referred to as

socialism.)

Second, Marx did not conceive of the particular state form as

“dictatorial”, as a dictatorship in the modern sense, as I have

indicated elsewhere, while leaving the question of the specific form of

state open. At most, we can say that the Commune formed the core of his

conception, a form that certainly has none of the features of a

dictatorship in the modern sense of the term. A few of Marx’s more

‘statist’ quotes should suffice to make the point, as his writing in The

Civil War in France, and Notes on Adolph Wagner lean in an even more

unambiguously anti-statist direction. Marx comments as follows:

"... In depicting the most general phases of the development of the

proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within

existing society up to the point where that war breaks out into open

revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the

foundation for the sway of the proletariat....

"... We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the

working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling

class to win the battle of democracy.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree,

all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of

production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized

as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as

rapidly as possible." (pp.31 and 37, Communist Manifesto, seventh German

edition, 1906, quoted in Lenin, CW, Vol. 25, p. 407)

"If the political struggle of the working class assumes revolutionary

form," wrote Marx, ridiculing the anarchists for their repudiation of

politics, "and if the workers set up their revolutionary dictatorship in

place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, they commit the terrible

crime of violating principles, for in order to satisfy their wretched,

vulgar everyday needs and to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie,

they give the state a revolutionary and transient form, instead of

laying down their arms and abolishing the state." (Neue Zeit Vol.XXXII,

1, 1913-14, p.40, quoted in Lenin, CW, Vol. 25, pp. 440-1, Italics mine)

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the

revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to

this is also a political transition period in which the state can be

nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

(Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx, quoted Lenin, CW, Vol. 25, p. 464)

The Question of The Party and Consciousness

Lenin’s conception of the party depends on a notion of consciousness

that he derives from Kautsky and the Second International. Obviously,

Lenin makes the connection clear in What Is To Be Done? when he makes

the claim that the working class cannot get beyond trade union

consciousness, to revolutionary consciousness, without external

intervention by the party. Revolutionary consciousness comes from

outside the class struggle, from the development of science. (For

critiques of this view, see Open Marxism: Vols. 1-3, Bonefeld, Gunn,

Psychopedis et al, 1993-4)

Many people have claimed that Lenin goes beyond that perspective at

different moments, such as in State and Revolution. Supposedly Lenin

takes a different perspective on the question of the self-emancipation

of the class. Can we support this view?

I don’t think so. Lenin continues to view the development of

class-consciousness in a mechanical way that assumes the party as a

necessary catalyst and embodiment of class-consciousness. Lenin

clarifies on the role of the party in State and Revolution in the

following way,

By educating the workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the

proletariat, capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to

socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the

teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people

in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the

bourgeoisie.

This conception of the role of the party still very much places the role

of bearer of consciousness upon the party, as opposed to the working

class. The party exists as the educator, the bearer of special knowledge

and technique. Of course, we have a right to ask: Where does this

privileged information come from, this privileged knowledge? Lenin

answers us clearly: from the positive science of Marxism.

But then we have a few problems. Marx did not posit his ideas as a

positive science of the world. When Marx used the term science, he used

it in a negative way, indicating “a ruthless critique of everything

existing” (The Holy Family, p. ) For Marx, dialectics always means

negative dialectics. Engels is the first person to fail to grasp this,

and upon his partial mistakes grew a whole positivistic treatment of

dialectics, which Lenin fully absorbs. Therefore, Lenin’s notion of

Marxism stands juxtaposed to Marx’s Marxism.

Nor can we find a space outside the class struggle, outside alienation

and fetishization, from which to claim this positive science. In Marx we

find no outside to the capital-labor relation, no privileged, distanced,

objective space from which we can turn the working class or our own

activity or anything else into a pure object of study. Because capital

is nothing but alienated labor, labor in capital, capital has no

existence separate from labor. But because labor means nothing under

capital except as alienated labor, because capitalism exists as the

separation of the producers from the means of production, labor also

exists against capital. This reveals an interconnected relation of

antagonism, but an asymmetrical one: capital needs labor, but labor does

not need capital. Labor exists in-against-and-beyond capital

simultaneously.

In Marx, revolutionary consciousness is the special privilege of the

working class, not a party of intellectuals, or even a “vanguard” of

working class militants. The working class, rent by the antagonism of

being in-and-against capital is the only class, as a whole, in a

position to see through the process of fetishization. It is exploitation

and alienated labor, not “scientific socialist ideas”, which lead to

revolutionary class-consciousness for the class as a whole. Marx’s

notion of self-emancipation of the class (and his notions of

organization, stated in The Communist Manifesto, his work in the

International Workingmen’s Association, and his letters towards the end

of his life, including the Gothacritik) indicates a different notion of

consciousness from Lenin. This different conception of the formation of

consciousness implies a wholly different concept of state and

revolution. It also implies a wholly different conception of

organization.

If I am right, that Lenin's organizational concept embodies a departure

from Marx's approach to the problem of consciousness, and hence of

organization, then where do we begin?

First, we need to engage in a serious re-examination of non-Leninist

forms of organization, even those that ultimately failed. (In a sense,

they have all failed, but some failed better than others.). The council

communists drew upon and developed the question of workers' councils,

even if they made a fetish of councils at a certain point. Ultimately,

they seemed to decide that revolutionary organizations should dissolve

themselves into the councils and not propose a separate existence from

workers' organs of power after the revolution. Marxist-Humanism and

Socialism ou Barbarie developed different conceptions of organization

opposed to the idea of vanguardism, but with a strong emphasis on theory

and practice unity, even if they diverge at critical points. The

Situationist International developed an important critique of

'militantism'. They also developed the councilist position on the role

of Marxist organizations in the workers' councils, projecting a purely

negative, anti-bureaucratic role, but one that continues after the

revolution. Solidarity in England took a mix of ideas from these

different groups, and developed a series of ideas worth further

investigation. I only mention here what have been critical interventions

for me and each of us hopefully brings other examples and ideas to the

table.

Second, we might start by asking, "Since revolutionary consciousness

develops in the course of class struggle, but Marxism does not spring

into every revolutionary workers' head, what role for Marxists?" We

could do worse than to return to Marx's simple comments in the Communist

Manifesto on the role of communists in the workers' movement as a part

of our rethinking. Degrading Marx's organizational theory and practice

formed an essential part of Leninism (especially post-Lenin Leninism.)

Does that condemn us to a contemplative position? It did not do so for

Marx, so I do not think it should for us either. We still have to ask,

"What do we, as revolutionaries, do?" The attraction of Leninism was

always that it had the answer, even if it was the wrong answer.

Towards a Conception of Revolution

I have not addressed the problem of the Bolsheviks in power or even the

October, even though I thought about it and such a discussion is

implicit in this whole article. That would require considerably more

space than we have here. At best, I can recommend a series of works that

people can refer to, each of which captures a part of what I would see

as developing a further critique of Leninism, especially Leninism in

power.[2]

Instead, I would like to draw some conclusions. First, I don’t think we

can defend the idea that Lenin develops a coherent Marxist analysis of

the state. Rather, he develops a view that suffers from a strong strain

of functionalism and positivism. Second, Lenin's notion of revolution

has little in common with Marx's conception of revolution as the

self-emancipation of the working class. Where Lenin is right, he says

nothing we could not already get from Marx. Lenin generally

misunderstands Marx's Gothacritik. His whole discussion of communism and

the dictatorship of the proletariat is a departure from Marx, not an

extension. Rather, Lenin extends the line of thought we could refer to

as Lassalleanism, with its fetishization of the state. In other words,

we do not just have to go beyond Lenin; we have to abandon Leninism to

the dustbin of history. We have to start from somewhere else entirely.

Does that mean we just go back to Marx? We have new questions to ask,

and we have new experiences to assimilate. The world has not stood still

since Marx, and neither has revolution. By re-examining some of the

problems Marx grappled with, as Marx grappled with them, maybe we can

help reformulate a different Marxism, what John Holloway, Werner

Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, et al, have called an “Open Marxism”.

Certainly, after the 20th century, we can no longer think about power

and revolution in the same terms. We cannot just say, “Look at what the

Communards did.” At least no more than we can afford to ignore that

experience. I do not claim to have any answers, but I have questions. So

I am not going to propose a new conception of revolution here, so much

as I want to pose a series of points that may help us collectively to

develop that conception.

Central to this discussion has been the notion of the state and how we

understand it. Holloway, Bonefeld, Simon Clarke, and others Vital have

begun vital work, which I think we need to pick up and develop. We have

to go beyond the generic state or the state as an instrument of object

external to the capital-labor relation. I cannot elaborate this approach

here beyond the few things I have said in this article.

In discussing the problem of working class revolution, we have to

re-open the discussion of the forms of workers’ power we have seen,

especially the factory councils and workers’ councils. Not that this

discussion ever exactly ended, but it became the minority discussion

Marxism, on the fringes of a Leninist-dominated discussion, which

assumed it knew all the answers. We must ask if the concept of ‘smashing

the state’ really appreciates the whole problem of the relationship of

state and revolution adequately. We need to re-open the question of the

contours of revolution, starting with the recognition that we really no

longer know what it looks like (having mistaken one type of revolution

for another in Russia and having seen relatively few since, in a world

that has drastically changed in the last 30 years.)

We have to grapple with the notion of the dictatorship of the

proletariat. First, do we even want to use this term anymore? It already

seemed to be outdated in Marx's time and Engels even proposed talking

about the revolutionary state not as a state but using the German for

the word Commune (see his Letter to Bebel from 1875 dealing with this

topic, quoted in State and Revolution in the section on Marx’s Critique

of the Gotha Program.) Beyond that, though, we have to ask if the

“transient state”, as Marx’s calls it, will be a necessary barrier we

must overcome or a deadly detour from which no revolution can recover?

How do we understand communism? We have Marx’s insights, his

discussions after the Commune. We have a wide range of non-Leninist

ideas to draw from and, dare I say it, we even need to revisit anarchism

in a serious way.

We need to revisit the problem of organization and the role of

revolutionaries. I posed those questions above, but only in the briefest

outline.

These are simply some provisional questions and suggestions, but maybe

that is where we need to begin. Not only do we no longer have all the

answers, we have to reckon with the fact that we never did. We have to

try our best to see Marx with fresh eyes and rediscover revolution.

Appendix: Lenin Quotes, State and Revolution

1. Summing up his historical analysis, Engels says:

"The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from

without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the

image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a

product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the

admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble

contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable

antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these

antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might

not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became

necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would

alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and

this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and

alienating itself more and more from it, is the state." (pp.177-78,

sixth edition)

This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with

regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is

a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class

antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class

antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the

existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are

irreconcilable.

2. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for

the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of "order",

which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the

conflict between classes.

3. Engels continues:

"As distinct from the old gentile [tribal or clan] order, the state,

first, divides its subjects according to territory...."

This division seems "natural" to us, but it costs a prolonged struggle

against the old organization according to generations or tribes.

"The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public

power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing

itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary

because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become

impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists in

every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material

adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which

gentile [clan] society knew nothing...."

Engels elucidates the concept the concept of the "power" which is called

the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it

and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly

consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons,

etc., at their command.

4. 3. The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed

Class (section heading in Chapter 1)

5. In a democratic republic, Engels continues, "wealth exercises its

power indirectly, but all the more surely", first, by means of the

"direct corruption of officials" (America); secondly, by means of an

"alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange" (France and

America).

At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have "developed"

into an exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving

effect to the omnipotence of wealth in democratic republics of all

descriptions. Since, for instance, in the very first months of the

Russian democratic republic, one might say during the honeymoon of the

"socialist" S.R.s and Mensheviks joined in wedlock to the bourgeoisie,

in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky obstructed every measure

intended for curbing the capitalists and their marauding practices,

their plundering of the state by means of war contracts; and since later

on Mr. Palchinsky, upon resigning from the Cabinet (and being, of

course, replaced by another quite similar Palchinsky), was "rewarded" by

the capitalists with a lucrative job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per

annum — what would you call that? Direct or indirect bribery? An

alliance of the government and the syndicates, or "merely" friendly

relations? What role do the Chernovs, Tseretelis, Avksentyevs and

Skobelevs play? Are they the "direct" or only the indirect allies of the

millionaire treasury-looters?

Another reason why the omnipotence of "wealth" is more certain in a

democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the

political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A

democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism,

and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best

shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it

establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons,

institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake

it.

This quote is very important and captures the whole of the matter quite

succinctly, in terms of exactly how crudely Lenin and Engels conceive of

the state.

6. Engels gives a general summary of his views in the most popular of

his works in the following words:

"The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been

societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state

power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily

bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a

necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in

the development of production at which the existence of these classes

not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive

hindrance to production. They will fall as they arose at an earlier

stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which

will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association

of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will

then belong: into a museum of antiquities, by the side of the

spinning-wheel and the bronze axe."

We do not often come across this passage in the propaganda and agitation

literature of the present-day Social-Democrats. Even when we do come

across it, it is mostly quoted in the same manner as one bows before an

icon, i.e., it is done to show official respect for Engels, and no

attempt is made to gauge the breadth and depth of the revolution that

this relegating of "the whole machinery of state to a museum of

antiquities" implies. In most cases we do not even find an understanding

of what Engels calls the state machine.

Another important passage, especially for Engels’ crude economic

determinism, decision of what is progressive by level of

productivity/forces of production, not alienation/fetishization, but

also for Lenin completely missing Engels’ correct point of the free and

equal association of producers, which is the important and powerful

kernel of this statement.

7. Engel's words regarding the "withering away" of the state are so

widely known, they are often quoted, and so clearly reveal the essence

of the customary adaptation of Marxism to opportunism that we must deal

with them in detail. We shall quote the whole argument from which they

are taken.

"The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of

production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes

itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class

antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far,

operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an

organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of

its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for

the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of

oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom

or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of

society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it

was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself

represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the

state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal

nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes

the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself

unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held

in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for

existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the

collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing

more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special

coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes

forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking

possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also

its last independent act as a state. State interference in social

relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then

dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the

administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.

The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away. This gives the measure of

the value of the phrase 'a free people's state', both as to its

justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and

as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called

anarchists' demand that the state be abolished overnight."

(Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03,

third German edition.)

It is safe to say that of this argument of Engels', which is so

remarkably rich in ideas, only one point has become an integral part of

socialist thought among modern socialist parties, namely, that according

to Marx that state "withers away" — as distinct from the anarchist

doctrine of the "abolition" of the state. To prune Marxism to such an

extent means reducing it to opportunism, for this "interpretation" only

leaves a vague notion of a slow, even, gradual change, of absence of

leaps and storms, of absence of revolution. The current, widespread,

popular, if one may say so, conception of the "withering away" of the

state undoubtedly means obscuring, if not repudiating, revolution.

This quote by Engels is again another mixed bag of his crude materialism

alongside some profound restatings of Marx, Engels at his best.

8. As a matter of fact, Engels speaks here of the proletariat revolution

"abolishing" the bourgeois state, while the words about the state

withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the

socialist revolution. According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not

"wither away", but is "abolished" by the proletariat in the course of

the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the

proletarian state or semi-state.

Lenin here reads into Engels what Engels does not say (and which we

shall see later, contradicts Marx in the Critique of the Gotha

Program!!)

9. Secondly, the state is a "special coercive force". Engels gives this

splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost

lucidity. And from it follows that the "special coercive force" for the

suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of

working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a "special

coercive force" for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the

proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is precisely

what is meant by "abolition of the state as state". This is precisely

the "act" of taking possession of the means of production in the name of

society. And it is self-evident that such a replacement of one

(bourgeois) "special force" by another (proletarian) "special force"

cannot possibly take place in the form of "withering away".

More of the same. Again, we will return to this in detail.

10. Revolution alone can "abolish" the bourgeois state. The state in

general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only "wither away".

The failure to grapple with the state as a social relation, as a mode of

existence of the capital-labor relation, a fetishized social relation.

On to Section 2 (I here skip the discussion of violent overthrow of the

state in quotes, in part because we are not certain as to the character

of revolution.)

11. It is instructive to compare this general exposition of the idea of

the state disappearing after the abolition of classes with the

exposition contained in the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and

Engels a few months later - in November 1847, to be exact:

"... In depicting the most general phases of the development of the

proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within

existing society up to the point where that war breaks out into open

revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the

foundation for the sway of the proletariat....

"... We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the

working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling

class to win the battle of democracy.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree,

all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of

production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized

as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as

rapidly as possible."

(pp.31 and 37, seventh German edition, 1906)

Here we have a formulation of one of the most remarkable and most

important ideas of Marxism on the subject of the state, namely, the idea

of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (as Marx and Engels began to

call it after the Paris Commune); and, also, a highly interesting

definition of the state, which is also one of the "forgotten words" of

Marxism: "the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling

class."

This section and comment of Marx deserves careful attention. Does it

contradict his later writings (or his earlier ones in 1843-47)? What can

we say about this, which seems clear? Does Lenin grasp it clearly? Let

us see.

12. The proletariat needs the state — this is repeated by all the

opportunists, social-chauvinists and Kautskyites, who assure us that

this is what Marx taught. But they "forget" to add that, in the first

place, according to Marx, the proletariat needs only a state which is

withering away, i.e., a state so constituted that it begins to wither

away immediately, and cannot but wither away. And, secondly, the working

people need a "state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling

class".

The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of

violence for the suppression of some class. What class must the

proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e., the

bourgeoisie. The working people need the state only to suppress the

resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this

suppression, can carry it out. For the proletariat is the only class

that is consistently revolutionary, the only class that can unite all

the working and exploited people in the struggle against the

bourgeoisie, in completely removing it.

The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation,

i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the

vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule

in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests

of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant

minority consisting of the modern slave-owners — the landowners and

capitalists.

This is the core of Lenin’s ‘libertarian’ moment. This is actually not

bad in many ways, but can Lenin maintain this and draw out the logical

conclusions? Does Marx continue to defend such a notion (I think not,

given the post-Paris Commune Intorduction)? More importantly, can we

defend such a train of thought after the 20th century? Needless to say,

Lenin continues to treat the state as an instrument, rather than as a

set of social relations, so what can we say here? We should never be

afraid of the idea that Marx may not have followed through consistently

on this. Alan Shandro’s argument is worth considering in this light.

13. The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the