robin blackburn, marxism: theory of proletarian revolution

8/10/2019 Robin Blackburn, Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution

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Marxism:Theory of Proletarian Revolution

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Robin Blackburn

The real originality of Marx and Engels lies in the field of politics, not in

economics or philosophy. They were the first to discover the historical potential

of the new class that capitalism had brought into existencethe modern pro-

letariat, a class that could encompass a universal liberation from all prevailing

forms of oppression and exploitation. The modern workers movement, capable

of self-determination and self-emancipation, able to draw on the best of bour-

geois culture and science, would have no need of utopias or religious exaltation.

The political capacity of the proletariat sprang from its objective position within

bourgeois society. Thus the analysis of capitalism, and of its historical ante-

cedents and consequences, to be found in the writings of Marx and Engelshowever necessarily partial its initial formulationswas a necessary under-

pinning for their political theory. But the decisive contribution made by the

founders of historical materialism was the theory of proletarian revolution.

Unfortunately, there has been an increasing tendency in twentieth-century

Marxism to identify the philosophical method or epistemology employed by


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Marx or Engels as their crucial contribution, and to represent these asthe touchstone of Marxist orthodoxy. In different ways this is done bythe Lukcs of History and Class Consciousness, the exponents of SovietDiamat and Louis Althusser and his collaborators in Reading Capital.There is little equivalent insistence on the originality of the politicalconceptions of Marx and Engels. Indeed, often attempts are made tosuggest that their political ideas are essentially a continuation or de-

velopment of those of Machiavelli or Montesquieu or Rousseau. Thisis especially curious since in no domain has Marxism been moreoriginal than in that of political theory. Historical materialism eitherdiscovered or thoroughly reworked every important political concept:class, party, state, nation, revolution, bureaucracy, programme and soon. Such concepts have developed in conjunction with Marxist politicalpractice and in the course of vigorous political polemics. Moreover, itis evident that all the major divisions of Marxism have arisen overdirectly political questions, which have thereby furnished the criticaldeterminants of Marxist orthodoxy. This does not mean that philo-sophical or epistemological disputes have had no significance forMarxism. It does mean that they have emerged as secondary by-products of conflicts over substantive political questions. Since Marx-ism adopts a completely consequent and complete materialism, thisshould not be so surprising. No standpoint in philosophy can produceproletarian revolutionary politicsbut in the long run only materialismis fully consistent with them.1

The theory of proletarian revolution developed by Marx and Engelssets them quite apart from those who have been claimed as their pre-

cursors in matters of political science. The fact that their political theorywas deeply grounded in an analysis of social and economic forces is inthe greatest contrast to Machiavellis arbitrary and self-sufficient notionof politics. Their insistence that the working class could emancipateitself and all other oppressed groups is sharply at variance with theMachiavellian conception of the state as a simple instrument of princelymanipulation, with its peremptory maxim to the effect that, as Machia-velli writes in theDiscourses, in all states, whatever their type of Govern-ment, the real rulers are never more than forty or fifty citizens. There

is no valid analogy between the Marxist conception of the party ofproletarian revolution and Machiavellis Prince. Rousseaus politicalideas, based on a profound critique of social inequality, are discrepantwith Marxism in a quite different way. With Rousseau, the critique of allpolitical institutions is so radical and sweeping that the very notion ofvalid political representation or delegation is denied. Thus the sovereign-ty of the people is only possible if there are no parties or factions withinthe state and no communication between its citizens. Rousseau declaresin the Social Contract: It is therefore essential, if the general will is toexpress itself, that there should be no partial society within the state,

and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts. Again, as weshall see, there is no valid analogy between Rousseaus vision of theGeneral Will, inaugurated by the Wise Legislator, and proletariandemocracy forged in class struggle.2

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1 Cf. Sebastiano Timpanaro, On Materialism, London 1976.2 Lucio Colletti has claimed: It is Rousseau to whom the critique of Parliamentarism,the theory of popular delegacy and even the idea of the states disappearance can all


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be traced back. This implies in turn that the true originality of Marxism must besought rather in the field of social and economic analysis than in political theory.

Introduction by Lucio Colletti to Karl Marx, Early Writings, London 1975, p. 46. Theclaims of Machiavelli as pre-eminent precursor of Marxist politics have been ad-vanced most notably by Antonio Gramsci, and it is the Machiavelli of The Princerather than The Discourses to whom he most often refers (see The Modern Prince inAntonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited by Quintin Hoare andGeoffrey Nowell Smith, London 1971, pp. 123205). A certain tendency to reduceMarxist politics to Jacobinism is often apparent in these identifications. It is interest-ing that it is a non-Marxist author who points out: The view that anyone had a rightto take part in politics, apart from any possession of property, is an extraordinarilylate onesecurely held no earlier than the second half of the nineteenth century,certainly neither the Americans of 1776 or the French of 1793 held it. BernardCrick, Introduction to Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses, London 1970, p. 38. On

the other hand, the notion of totalitarian democracy confected by the anti-Marxisthistorian J. L. Talmon insists on the identification of Rousseau and Marx, doing aserious injustice to both thinkers in the process: J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totali-tarian Democracy, New York 1960, and Political Messianism: the Romantic Phase, NewYork 1960.3 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right. Introduction in Early writings,London 1975, pp. 252, 257. This text is sometimes quoted as defining Marxs con-ception of the proletariats role in revolution (cf. the remarks of Alvin Gouldner in

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Marxist politics could not possibly spring fully armed from the heads ofMarx and Engels, but required decades of participation in the workersmovement. The development of capitalism and of the class strugglewas constantly presenting them with new problems and new solutions.In those texts written by Marx or Engels as interventions in the workersmovement, it is possible to trace their increasing awareness of the greatvariety of tactics and instruments of struggle that the working class

would need if it was to carry through a successful socialist revolutionagainst such a powerful antagonist as the world capitalist system. Theseworks by Marx and Engels lack the brilliant paradoxes of their philo-sophy, the literary polish of their journalism or the intricate abstractionof their economics, but they are unsurpassed in clarity and vigour: theyhave proved to be the iron rations of revolutionary socialism. It ishoped that this account of the origins of Marxist politics, although un-avoidably cursory and selective in its reference to the historical contextof the writings of Marx and Engels, will nevertheless underline theircrucial significance within the Marxist corpus.

The Discovery of the Proletarian Revolution

If the definitive tenet of Marxism is the proletarian revolution, then it ispossible to give a precise date to Marxs first announcement that he hadbecome a Marxist. In the early part of 1844 Marx published his last textas a critical philosopher and radical nationalist: The Introduction tothe Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right. In this he declares waron the stifling conditions that prevail in Germany in the name of

philosophy and the proletariat. The material base, the passive element,in this revolution will be supplied by the proletariat, the radicallyoppressed class, while philosophy will determine the revolutions goals.Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so theproletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy . . . The emancipa-tion of the German is the emancipation of man. The head of this emancipationisphilosophy, its heart theproletariat.3


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Marx spent the first part of 1844 studying political economy and fillinghis notebooks with the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In

June 1844 there was an armed revolt by the weavers in Silesia. It was tobe dismissed as an event of little consequence by Marxs closest col-laborator, Arnold Ruge, writing under the name A Prussian in theParis migr newspaper Vorwarts. Marx was provoked into an instantresponse: Our so-called Prussian denies that the King panicked for a

number of reasons, among them being the fact that few troops wereneeded to deal with the feeble weavers. . . . In a country where ban-quets with liberal toasts and liberal champagne froth provoke RoyalOrders in Council . . . where the burning desire of the entire liberalbourgeoisie for freedom of the press and a constitution could be sup-pressed withouta single soldier, in a country where passive obedience isthe order of the day, can it be anything but an event, indeed a terrifyingevent, when armed troops have to be called out against feeble weavers?And in the first encounter the feeble weavers even gained a victory.They were only suppressed when reinforcements were brought up. Isthe uprising of a mass of workers less dangerous because it can be de-feated without the aid of a whole army? Our sharp-witted Prussianshould compare the revolt of the Silesian weavers with the uprisings ofthe English workers. The Silesians will then stand revealed as strongweavers. Much of this article is still written in the old philosophicaljargon and concerns an argument about the nature of the Germanrevolution. But Marx concludes from the weavers revolt that the pro-letariat is the active agent of the revolution and the political conscious-ness they revealed is greatly superior to the meek, sober mediocrity of

the political literature of the German bourgeoisie, for all their philoso-phers and scholars. Marx points out that however limited an industrialrevolt may be it contains within itself a universal soul. Ruge had main-tained that Germany needed a social revolution with a political soul.Marx in conclusion replies: whether the idea of asocial revolution with a

political soul is paraphrase or nonsense, there is no doubt about therationality of apolitical revolution with asocial soul. All revolutiontheoverthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old orderis a political act. But without revolution socialism cannot be madepossible.4

Marxs reply to the article by A Prussian is dated Paris, 31July 1844.Naturally, it ended Marxs collaboration with Ruge and the othercritical philosophers. Some days after publication of the article, on26 August 1844, Marx met Engels in Paris and talked at length withhim for the first time. They discovered a profound community of viewsand interests. Engels, who had been living in Manchester, was deeplyimpressed by the Chartist movement and the working-class politics itrepresented. They both rejected the vacillation and vapourings of the

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The Metaphoricality of Marxism, Amsterdam 1974, a chapter of Gouldners forth-coming study On Marxism). This is most misleading and involves ignoring practicallyeverything that Marx and Engels subsequently wrote about the working class. Marxhad not at this time encountered the workers movement or adopted the standpointof socialist revolution, hence the largely passive and subordinate role ascribed to theproletariat in the revolution.4 Karl Marx, Critical Notes on the King of Prussia and Social Reform in EarlyWritings, pp. 403, 415, 416, 420.


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critical philosophers and looked upon the working class as a potentrevolutionary force. The fully fledged idea of proletarian revolutionwas to develop subsequently during the course of extensive practicalexperience in the workers movement in Brussels, Paris, London andManchester.

Although the encounter with the workers movement was to be decisive

for Marx and Engels, they certainly did not simply adopt its politics.Within the workers movement at this time, it was held that the emanci-pation of the labouring classes would be accomplished essentially bysome external agency. For the disciples of Proudhon or Robert Owen,co-operative schemes devised by enlightened reformers were to be thesalvation of the workers: this was the resolution of the social question.For the followers of Blanqui or Weitling, it was the revolutionary con-spiracy that would deliver the proletarian masses from their bondage:this was the path of political revolution. None of these thinkersadvanced the idea of the working class as the conscious, leading force ina revolution that would unite the social and the political. Indeed,they lacked a precise conception of the proletariat as a class: for Blanquithe term covered all those who worked, including the mass of thepeasantry, while for Weitling the most revolutionary social categorywas the lumpen proletarians or dangerous classes. For Marx and Engelsthe emergence of the propertyless industrial working class opened upthe possibility of a new type of politics no longer subordinated to con-spiracy or utopia. The workers were organized into giant industrialarmies by capitalism itself. They participated in a global system of pro-

duction and exchange. A conscious movement of this class could alonedestroy capitalism and establish a new society, free from exploitationand oppression, because based on mastery of the new social forces ofproduction. Marx and Engels first presented an integrated account ofthese ideas in the Communist Manifesto.

The Communist Manifesto was drafted and re-drafted by Marx and Engelsduring the course of nearly a year of lectures and discussions with themembers of the German Workers Educational Association. TheseGerman immigrant workersnineteenth-century Gastarbeiterwere in

the main skilled propertyless artisans drawn by the rapid economicadvance taking place in England and Belgium. Originally they organ-ized themselves as a classic revolutionary conspiracythe League ofthe Juston the model of the French revolutionary secret societies;but they learnt from the English Chartists the advantages of open massorganization and agitation. The Educational Associations were estab-lished for this latter purpose by a decision of the League. However,Marx and Engels opposed the authoritarian structure and cabalisticparaphernalia of a secret society with its codes, passwords and hier-

archieswhich still governed the operations of the League of the Just.The supporters of Marx and Engels successfully proposed a neworganization, to be called the Communist League, with a new pro-gramme, which was to be theManifesto. The new League was to have ademocratic constitution with elected officials and annual congresses. Ongrounds of security the League was to be secret, but it was to make fulluse of all available means of public propaganda and organization.

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The Politics of the Communist Manifesto

The first section of the Manifesto is an eloquent tribute to the historicachievements of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. In the economic field,Marx and Engels insisted that capitalism Has accomplished wondersfar surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothiccathedrals. They summarize these wonders as follows: The Bour-

geoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created moremassive and colossal productive forces than have all preceding genera-tions together. Subjection of natures forces to man, machinery, appli-cation of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, rail-ways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation,canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the groundwhat earlier century had even a presentiment that such productiveforces slumbered in the lap of social labour? Referring to the mostadvanced capitalist countries, Marx and Engels declare that theseaccomplishments are here crowned by the appropriate political struc-

ture in the course of the bourgeois revolution: the modern representa-tive nation state. Independent or but loosely connected provinces, withseparate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, becomelumped together in one nation, with one government, one code oflaws, one national class interest, one frontier and one customs tariff.The new nation state is increasingly responsive to the bourgeoisie,which has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and theworld market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state,exclusive political sway.5

The sweeping away of feudal particularism and fragmentation producesa simplification of the social order: society as a whole is more and moresplitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directlyfacing one another: bourgeoisie and proletariat. With the develop-ment of the modern forces of production, the modern working classbecomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feelsthat strength more.6 The workers find their conditions of existencecontinually threatened by the anarchic fluctuations of the capitalisteconomy. The private ownership of the means of production, super-

imposed on increasinglysocialized forces of production, generates harshinequality and recurrent crisis.

To begin with, the working class does not act for itself but is mobilizedby the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, in order to attain its own politicalends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is more-over yet, for a time, able to do so. At this time, the whole historicalmovement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; everyvictory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie. But with the de-velopment of capitalist industry and the resulting economic fluctuations,

the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against thebourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages;they found permanent associations in order to make provision before-

5 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party in TheRevolutions of 1848, edited and introduced by David Fernbach, London 1973, pp. 70,72, 69, 72.6 Ibid. pp. 68, 75.

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hand for these occasional revolts . . . Now and then the workers arevictorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battle lies, not inthe immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.This union is helped on by the improved means of communication thatare created by modern industry, and that place the workers of differentlocalities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that wasneeded to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same

character, into one national struggle between classes. But every classstruggle is a political struggle . . . This organization of the proletariansinto a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually beingupset again by competition between the workers themselves. But it everrises up stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition ofparticular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisionsamong the bourgeoisie itself.7

The class struggle could only be resolved by a victory for the workingclass and the suppression of capitalism. The working class alone had

the collective, co-operative character required to master the new forcesof production and to ensure that they did not dominate those who hadcreated them. With the accentuation of the crisis of bourgeois order,the workers as a class would be joined by a portion of bourgeois ideolo-gists who have raised themselves to the level of comprehendingtheoretically the historical movement as a whole. The working classwould become the basis for a new type of political movement. Allprevious historical movements were movements of minorities or in theinterests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious,

independent movement of the immense majority. Without any stake incapitalist private property, the proletariats historical mission is todestroy it. But to do this a revolutionary seizure of political power isnecessary: the first step in the revolution by the working class is toraise the working class to the position of ruling class, to win the battle ofdemocracy. Once the workers had conquered political power, theywould be forced to embark on a programme of despotic inroads on therights of private property and the conditions of bourgeois production.Because the bourgeois political framework was that of the nation state,the proletariat of each country must, of course, first settle matters with

its own bourgeoisie. But this was the form not the substance of theproletarian revolution. With the generalization of the proletarianrevolution, the global productive forces developed by capitalism wouldbe brought under social ownership and regulation: In place of the oldbourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall havean association, in which the free development of each is the conditionfor the free development of all.8

It would seem to be implied by the Communist Manifesto that the work-ers movement would develop most rapidly, and the socialist revolution

first erupt, in the most advanced countries, where capitalist contradic-tions were present in the most acute and purest form. Certainly this wasa view expressed by Engels in a speech made at about the time the

Manifesto was written: The English Chartists will rise up first because

7 Ibid. pp. 75, 76.8 Ibid. pp. 77, 78, 86, 78, 87.

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it is precisely here that the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariatis at its fiercest . . . thus the struggle has been simplified, thus thestruggle will be resolved at one decisive blow.9 Certainly this is oneoutline of proletarian revolution which can be drawn from the Mani-

festo. However, there is also an indication of a different perspective.When theManifesto was written, capitalist social relations were spread-ing throughout the world. The economic advance of capitalism, com-

bined with the political impact of the French revolutionary and Napo-leonic wars, had undermined feudal domination throughout most ofEurope. But a full-scale bourgeois revolution, of the sort invoked inthe Manifesto, had only triumphed in a handful of countries (Britain,France, Belgium, the Netherlands). The Manifesto implicitly acknow-ledges this by insisting that Communists will fight for the victory of thebourgeois-democratic revolution in all the countries where it had notyet been achieved. Moreover, the Manifesto states that a social revolu-tionary dynamic must underlie the movements for national liberation.Thus in Poland the Communists support the party that insists on anagrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation.More surprising than this is the assertion that Communist hopes arepinned on Germany, where no bourgeois revolution had yet takenplace. The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany be-cause that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is boundto be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civiliza-tion, and with a more developed proletariat, than that of England in theseventeenth or of France in the eighteenth century, and because thebourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to the im-

mediately following proletarian revolution.10

In this conception, thepolitical turmoil and social instability attendant upon a belated bourge-ois revolution, superimposed upon the fundamental contradictions ofcapitalist advance, combined to open the way for a proletarian revolu-tion. However, this idea was not further developed in theManifesto.

The directly political concepts contained in theManifesto are spare andrudimentary. The advancing sweep of the bourgeois revolution wasclearing away all the debris of pre-capitalist social relations andpolitical forms. The bourgeoisie was creating a world in its own image.

The state was but a committee for managing the common affairs of thewhole bourgeoisie. The essential function of the state could be definedin a similarly peremptory fashion: Political power, properly so called,is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.

9 Frederick Engels, Speech on Poland, The Revolutions of 1848, p. 101. Marx waslater to imply a similar perspective in his letter to the Chartist Labour Parliament in1855. This text also contains a succinct formulation on the reasons why the workingclass was the fundamental revolutionary force: It is the working millions of GreatBritain who have first laid down the real basis of a new societymodern industry,which transformed the destructive agencies of nature into the productive power of

man. The English working classes with invincible energies, by the sweat of theirbrows and brains, have called into life the material means for ennobling labour itself,and of multiplying its fruits to such a degree as to make general abundance possible.By creating the inexhaustible productive powers of modern industry they havefulfilled the first condition of the emancipation of labour. They have now to realizeits other condition. They have to free those wealth producing powers from theinfamous shackles of monopoly, and subject them to the joint control of the pro-ducers . . . Surveys from Exile, p. 278.10 Manifesto, The Revolutions of 1848, pp. 97, 98.

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The simplification of all social relations in the wake of the bourgeoisrevolution meant that the proletarian movement could develop in astraight line from economic combination to the socialist revolution.The programme of the Communists could be summed up in one slogan:The abolition of private property. Within the workers movement,the Communists distinguish themselves only by the fact that they seethe future development of the class struggle and bring to the fore the

interests of the working class as a whole, independently of all nation-ality. The Communists are practically the most advanced and resolutesection of the working-class parties of every country and theoreticallythey have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearlyunderstanding the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate generalresults of the proletarian revolution. But since the forward develop-ment of the movement is prepared by the development of capitalismitself, the Communists will be cutting with the grain of bourgeoissociety in carrying through their tasks; hence, The Communists do notform a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.11 Thereis little need to labour the point that theManifestos abrupt formulationson the bourgeois state or the proletarian movement were over-simpli-fied. Less evident, perhaps, is that each of these formulations retains adefinite value on the basis of a more complex analysis of historicaldevelopment and bourgeois society.

Permanent Revolution

The Communist League itself, for which theManifesto had been written,

did not function as a party during 1848 itself. The members of theLeague mostly returned to Germany, where they were caught up in thefragmented revolutionary process in the different German states. TheLeague was too newly formed to withstand such pressures as a coherentforce. Marx and Engels subsequently declared that A large number ofmembers who were directly involved in the movement thought that thetime for secret societies was over and that public activity alone wassufficient. This undoubtedly reflected their own attitude. The first set-backs persuaded Marx and Engels of the necessity of regrouping theLeagues forces. They thought there was still a possibility of a new

revolutionary upsurge, led by the democratic middle class, who wouldbe forced by monarchical reaction to adopt more radical measures thanhitherto. In an Address dispatched in March 1850 Marx and Engelsdefined the tactics that they thought should be developed by the League,and in doing so gave more precision to their concept of a proletarianrevolution. In the coming revolution, As far as the workers are con-cerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage labour-ers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better

11 Ibid. pp. 69, 87, 80, 7980. The schematism of the Manifesto represents in part a

residue of the paradoxical mode of philosophical reflection which is mocked in thesection on Socialist and Communist Literature. It also led to sweeping declarationsabout the significance of the nation and the family (Ibid. pp. 778). The economictheory of Marx and Engels at this time contained the following assumption: Wagelabour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers (Ibid. p. 79). For thisreason simply by combining into trade unions the proletariat cuts from under its feetthe very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products(Ibid. p. 79).

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wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by anextension of state employment and welfare measures; in short they hopeto bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and tobreak their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering theirsituation tolerable . . . While the democratic petty bourgeois want tobring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at mostthe aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the

revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes havebeen driven from their positions, until the proletariat has conqueredstate power and until the association of proletarians has progressedsufficiently farnot only in one country but in all the leading countriesof the worldthat competition between the proletarians of these coun-tries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concen-trated in the hands of the workers. In order to achieve this radicaliza-tion of the revolution, the League must drive the proposals of thedemocrats to their logical extreme (the democrats will in any case act ina reformist and not revolutionary manner) and transform these pro-posals into direct attacks on private property. If, for instance, the pettybourgeoisie propose the purchase of railways and factories, the workersmust demand that these railways and factories simply be confiscated bythe state without compensation as the property of reactionaries. Pur-suing these tactics would make it necessary for the proletarians to de-velop complete political independence. Through the initiative of theLeague the workers must be independently organized and centralizedin clubs. These clubs should put up working-class candidates for anyelections that are held: Even where there is no prospect of achieving

their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preservetheir independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring theirrevolutionary position and party standpoint to the public attention.The workers clubs should have a clear programme for developing anew type of armed power: the workers must try to organize themselvesindependently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and withtheir own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves notunder the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary localcouncils set up by the workers.12

This astonishing scenario of proletarian revolution was, of course,hopelessly unrealistic, as Engels was subsequently to admit. Not onlyhad the revolutions of 1848 been definitively defeated, but the state ofeconomic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a longway, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production.13 Nevertheless,

12 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Address of the Central Committee to the Com-munist League (March 1850), The Revolutions of 1848, pp. 3234, 326, 327, 329.13 Frederick Engels, Introduction to The Class Struggles in France in Marx/Engels,

Selected Works, London 1968, p. 656. For an evaluation of the political activity ofMarx and Engels during the early period, see in particular two important recent

studies: Michael Lwy, La Thorie de la Rvolution chez le Jeune Marx, Paris 1970, andFernando Claudin, Marx, Engels y la Revolucion de 1848, Madrid 1975. These workssupply a necessary corrective to the forced interpretation of this period to be foundin Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, London 1975. Thus Huntargues that many positions adopted by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto and theAddress of March 1850 were mere tactical concessions inconsistent with their overallpolitical strategy. Hunt fails to explain why Marx and Engels should choose to adopttactics at variance with their strategy and he does not explain how it was that both

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the Address of 1850 did provide a remarkable anticipation of certainelements of a proletarian revolution, either one arising from the turmoilof an unfinished bourgeois-democratic revolution, or one derivingfrom the contradictions of a reformism based on the extension of stateemployment and welfare.

Marx and Engels were soon persuaded, by their sense of political reality

and their insight into the historical process, to adopt a more soberperspective. However, a strong group within the Communist Leagueremained wedded, against all evidence, to the idea that new revolution-ary outbreaks were imminentand that the determined action ofrevolutionaries could hasten their arrival. Marx was to refer to thisconception as follows: For them revolutions are not the product of therealities of the situation but the result of a mere effort of will. What wesay to the workers is: You will have fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civilwar and national struggle and this is not merely to bring about a changein society but also to change yourselves and prepare yourselves for the

exercise of political power. Whereas you say on the contrary: Eitherwe seize power at once, or else we might as well take to our beds. Justas the word people has been given an aura of sanctity by the demo-crats, so you have made an idol of the word proletariat. Like thedemocrats you ignore the idea of revolutionary development andsubstitute for it the slogan of revolutions.14 Marxs concern to establishthe real workings of the economic and political order was directlyassociated with his understanding that the working class would onlyrealize its potential as a revolutionary force in the course of an extended

series of class struggles in which it would develop its political capacity.The manifold contradictions of the established order would have to bemeasured and mastered by the workers movement, if it was really tomake a conscious revolution and to ensure itself the leadership of allthe oppressed and exploited.

The Uneven Development of Capitalism

The fact that the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of 1848 were all tofail upset the picture of bourgeois advance contained in the Manifesto.Already in that text there are certain hints of the uneven character ofhistorical development, such as the concluding remarks on Poland andGermany, and it is these which indicate what were to become thecrucial problems for Marxist politics. Of course, the failure of the 1848revolutions certainly did not mean that the epoch of bourgeois advancewas over. Whether we consider only the subsequent decades or thewhole subsequent century, capitalism was able to achievealbeit at arising cost to mankind as a wholestriking economic and political

texts were subsequently republished without disclaimer. Throughout their life Marxand Engels referred to the Manifesto in the warmest terms, regarding it as the first

comprehensive statement of their position. The March 1850 Address certainly doesnot have the same status as the Manifesto, but it is absurd to deny that Marx andEngels were responsible for this text. Both in style and content the Address is verysimilar to Marxs Class Struggles in France; see also the remarkable letter byEngels to Wedemeyer, 12 April 1853, with its presentiment of the necessity andperils of a premature proletarian revolution: Marx/Engels, Selected Correspondence,Moscow 1965, pp. 778.14 Karl Marx, The Cologne Communist Trial, London 1971, pp. 623.

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advances. Henceforward, most bourgeois transformations of state andsociety were not to have a revolutionary democratic character: they wereto be imposed from above by an alliance of the bourgeoisie and the oldruling classes, or from outside by war, rather than from inside andbelow by popular revolution. One important reason for this was thatthe bourgeoisie could itself see that any revolutionary democratic up-heaval could easily spill over into a generalized revolt against all forms

of property and privilege. Moreover, at the economic level the capital-ist could not, and did not, immediately seek to displace pre-capitalistforms of exploitation and oppression, but instead incorporated them ina wider system of exchange dominated by capitalist production. Indeed,at the time the Manifesto was written capitalism co-existed withandbattened uponplantation slavery in the Americas, serfdom in Russiaand most of Eastern Europe, and a web of pre-capitalist forms of de-pendence in India. While the eventual consequence of the ascendancyof capitalism would be to undermine these anterior modes of produc-tion, the first effect was to give them a more concentrated, systematicand extensive character. In the general context of capitalist ascendancya feudal aristocracy could, by stages, convert itself into a specialfraction of the capitalist class, in the manner of the Prussian Junkers.Moreover, as the case of the Tsarist autocracy was to prove, a feudalabsolutism could continue to hold political power while capitalismbecame dominant in the Russian economy as a whole.

In the Manifesto, the relations of the advanced capitalist states to therest of the world were summed up by the formula that capitalism compelsall nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of pro-duction; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization intotheir midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. But the Manifestoadds that capitalism was making barbarian and semi-barbarian coun-tries dependent on civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations ofbourgeois, the East on the West.15 The experience of capitalist expan-sion was greatly to accentuate the implied inequality of these relations.Marxs account of the dynamic of capitalism stressed that it accumu-lated wealth at one pole and poverty at another, but it did not involve adetailed and direct analysis of how these processes worked themselves

out within the world economy capitalism was creating. Instead, Britainwas taken as a paradigm and some of the seeds of the later Marxisttheories of capitalist imperialism are to be found in the sections ofCapital dealing with Britains domination of Ireland. While capitalismdeveloped forces of production on a global scale, the political frame-work concentrating and guaranteeing the relations of production wasthat of the nation state. And as imperialism strengthened the process ofcapital accumulation in the metropolitan countries, so it undermined thedevelopment of an indigenous bourgeoisie in the dependent areas.Imperialism, as a superstructure upon capitalist and pre-capitalist social

relations, not only produced and intensified uneven development butalso combined the most various social forces, locking together the mostbackward and the most modern forms of economic activity, exploita-tion and political institutions, in different combinations in everydifferent area. Within this pattern and patchwork of uneven develop-

15 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto, The Revolutions of 1848, pp. 71, 72.

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ment a fundamental divide, however, can be defined in terms takenfrom the Manifesto. That is the divide between those areas that had abourgeois revolution, early or late, and those which did not. However,there remains an important distinction between those countries whichhad a bourgeois democratic revolution and those which had a bourgeoisrevolution imposed from above or from outside.

The Complexity of the Social Formation

The development of the social structure within each capitalist statefurther complicated and confounded the theses set forth in theManifesto.The notion that capitalism had already, or would soon, simplify theclass structure was not borne out. Thus a peasantry with its own internaldifferentiations continued to exist, even in most of the more advancedcountries, and to pose a crucial problem for revolutionary strategy.Both Marx and Engels were to recognize this and combat the anarchistslogan of abolition of all property inheritance mainly on the groundthat it would prevent the workers movement reaching an alliance withthe peasantry. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marxvigorously rejects the formula that relative to the working class allother classes are only one reactionary mass, demanding with particularemphasis whetherpeasants should be lumped together in this way withbourgeois and landowners.16

Even if we turn to the urban population, the simplification thesis wasnot to hold. In theManifesto itself, the thesis was qualified by the state-

ment that there was a new class of petty bourgeois ever renewing itselfas a supplementary part of bourgeois society. However, this categoryof persons was to be progressively supplanted by the advance ofmodern industry and replaced by overseers, bailiffs and shop assist-ants.17 The precise class interests and positions of these overseers,bailiffs and shop assistants was not specified. In Capital, Marx did notexplicitly abandon the polarization thesis, but the impetus of hisresearch was away from it. So far as the working class was concerned,he acknowledges the tendency of capitalism to produce a whole seriesof internal divisions the better paid strata, the nomad workers, the

reserve army of unemployed, etc. (see Capital, Volume 1, chapter 25).Marxs analysis of the mode of production hinged on the lattersability to integrate science with the productive process, and on the in-creasing discrepancy between socialized forces of production and privaterelations of production. This has necessarily thrown up a series ofthorny topics for Marxist class analysis, concerning the exact classattributes of such diverse categories as scientists, technicians, super-visors, teachers, civil servants, salesmen and so forth. Marx was greatlypreoccupied in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value with the distinction

between productive and unproductive workers, but he did not come toany systematic conclusions in the matter. Within the working class,competition on the labour market pits one group of workers againstanother and encourages differentiation on the basis of a whole series of

16 Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, The First International and After,edited and introduced by David Fernbach, London 1974, p. 349.17 Manifesto, The Revolutions of 1848, p. 89.

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secondary characteristics: age, sex, religion, language, ethnic origin andso forth. Meanwhile, between the bourgeoisie and proletariat theinvolution of the relations of production throws up a series of inter-mediate strata.

The uneven progress of the bourgeois revolution meant that there wasconsiderable heterogeneity among the possessing classes as well as

among the masses. Marx identifies a whole series of fractions within theFrench ruling class in his accounts of 1848 and its aftermath. Thesefractions reflected both the historical experience of the French bourge-oisie and the different types of property (land, industry, commerce,finance). In Capital, Marx was to explore the underlying processes bywhich capitalism took over and absorbed pre-capitalist forms of landrent. However, diversity within the possessing classes did not preventthe different factions rallying round the state power whenever the in-terests of property were threatened. A vivid demonstration of this hadbeen supplied by the bloody suppression of the popular insurrection in

Paris in June 1848, identified by Marx as a turning-point in the revolu-tionary process throughout Europe. The defeat of the June insurgentsprepared and flattened the ground on which the bourgeois republiccould be founded and erected.

Marx had characterized the constitutional republic as the dictatorshipof the united exploiters, exploiters united by fear around the state andthe constitution. Concerning the liberties enshrined in the constitutionof the French Republic, Marx points out that they were hedged aroundwith provisos that ensured that they could only be effectively enjoyed

by the possessing classes: each paragraph of the Constitution containsits own antithesis, its own upper and lower house, namely freedom inthe general phrase, abolition of freedom in the marginal note. In thisway, as long as the name of freedom was respected and only its actualimplementation prevented (in a legal way, it goes without saying), itsconstitutional existence remained intact and untouched however fatalthe blows dealt to it in its actual physical existence. Although formalsovereignty resides in the Constitution itself, its physical guarantor isthe executive and repressive power of the state. This power is concen-trated in the person of the President, with the whole of the armedforces behind him, and the extensive bureaucracy of the state adminis-tration, to which the President had power of appointment.18

The historical analysis of The Class Struggles in France and TheEighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte explain the particular circum-stances that led to a strengthening of the relative autonomy of the statefrom, and in the interest of, the possessing classes. But although thisphenomenon took the peculiar French form of Bonapartism, Marxsgeneral analysis of the capitalist mode of production suggested that itwould be, in some degree, a feature of any social formation dominatedby capitalism. This analysis implied a necessary separation of the eco-nomic and political level in bourgeois society. A consideration of thisthesis will establish more exactly the nature and the specificity of thepolitical order.

18 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Surveys from Exile,edited and introduced by David Fernbach, London 1973, pp. 155, 160, 161.

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Politics and Economics in Capitalist Society

Some essential features of the capitalist mode of production were speltout in theManifesto itself, but a more thorough account of Marxs viewsat this time was given in Wage Labour and Capital. It is in this latter textthat Marx defines the modern proletariat as a class of free labourers, incontradistinction to the slave or the serf. The slave, together with his

labour power, is sold once and for all to his owner. He is a commoditythat can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another . . . Theserf belongs to the land and turns over to the owner of the land thefruits thereof. The free labourer, on the other hand, sells himself and,indeed, sells himself piecemeal . . . The worker belongs neither to anowner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his dailylife belong to him who buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist towhom he hires himself whenever he likes, and the capitalist dischargeshim whenever he thinks fit, as soon as he no longer gets any profit outof him, or not the anticipated profit. But the worker, whose sole source

of livelihood is the sale of his labour power, cannot leave the whole classof purchasers, that is the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence.19

Given that the capitalist class owns the decisive means of production,they will always be able to exploit the mass of proletarians on the basisof a free and equal exchange of wages for labour power. Marx was, ofcourse, only to develop the concept of labour power, in all its implica-tions, in his later writings. But already in Wage Labour and Capital Marxwas stressing the vital distinctions quoted above between the positionof the direct producer in capitalism and in previous modes of produc-

tion. Marxs later insistence on the fact that the worker sold the capital-ist, not a definite quantity and type of labour, but rather his generalcapacity to work during a given period, served to reinforce the analysisof the worker under capitalism as a free labourer. A crucial feature ofthe labour process under developed capitalism was that surplus valuewas pumped out of the direct producer without the use of physicalcoercion by the immediate exploiter. This permits an increasing separa-tion of the organization of production from the organization of violenceor,to put it in other terms, of economics from politics. The slave owner

required teams of armed overseers, the feudal lord an armed retinue, ifthey were to extract surplus labour from the direct producer. All the

19 Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, Marx/Engels, Selected Works, pp. 756.The labourer is free also in the sense of being without property. Once inside thecapitalist factory the labourer is subject to the authority of the capitalist or hismanager. However, this fact does not cancel out the significance of the free contractby which the labourer sells his labour power to the capitalist, especially since thetransformation of the labour process produced by technical advance continuallyencourages both sides to re-define the terms of the original sale. Although theorganization of workers at the point of production will seek to set limits to thearbitrary power of management, in the end, so long as the capitalist ownership of

industry remains effective, this authority has to be accepted in some form. See thediscussion in Ernest Mandel, The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx,London 1971, chapters 4 and 9. A tendency to reduce capitalist social relations simplyto authority relations within the factory or workplace is to be found in the Frankfurtschool of critical social theory: see Herbert Marcuse, A Study On Authority, in

Studies in Critical Philosophy, London 1972, pp. 12843. However, it must be concededthat Marxists have not sufficiently studied the everyday struggle over authority in theworkplace that takes place within the general framework of capitalist social relations.

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capitalist needed, once the conditions of capitalist production had beenestablished with private ownership of the decisive means of production,was a free and equal contract to exchange wages for labour power.Under these conditions the worker would accumulate capital for thecapitalist and reproduce the conditions of his own exploitation. Ofcourse, capitalist private property would itself have to be defended fromindividual or collective attacks against it and a specialized body of

armed men would be required for this purposebut this specializedrepressive force would not be at the command of the individualcapitalist. The essential function of the state was to guarantee the con-ditions of capitalist production. In this context, the original formula-tions of the Manifesto take on a precise significance. The state was in-deed a mechanism for managing the common affairs of the whole rulingclassand first and foremost the organized power of this class foroppressing another.

The Nature of the Capitalist State

Following from Marxs analysis of the capitalist mode of production,we can therefore define the capitalist state as a specialized organizationof force to guarantee the conditions of capitalist production. If it is tomanage the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie, it needs anunchallenged monopoly of force within its own territory. Such a con-ception is, of course, close to that maintained by classical bourgeoissociology, notably Max Weber. This is not so surprising, since Weberacknowledged that his own definition of the state as the institutionsuccessfully claiming a monopoly of legitimate force in a given territorywas taken from the speech of a Russian Marxist, namely Trotsky.20

Webers conception was an abstract and ahistorical version of theMarxist original. Marx and Engels rooted the emergence of the state inthe historical development of a surplus product. The specific features ofthe capitalist state could only arise on the basis of capitalist relations ofproduction. Some of these features are already present in the late feudalAbsolutist state, on the basis of a developing market economy andunder pressure from the early bourgeois revolutions in the Netherlandsand England. But a unitary, stable and distinct state apparatus only

appeared after the bourgeois revolution. Modern police and armedforces required an efficient system of taxation as well as a minimumindustrial and communications infrastructure. By the middle of thetwentieth century, every capitalist state is engaged in a wide range ofsocial and economic activities and it might be thought that this dilutesor qualifies its essential function of monopolizing the organization offorce. Certainly these social and economic functions are very importantin late capitalist society. But they in no way weaken or qualify itsmonopoly of violence. It is this monopoly that allows the state to be thearbiter and guarantor of the social formation as a whole. Even though

20 Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation in From Max Weber, edited by H. H. Gerthand C. Wright Mills, New York 1946, pp. 77128. Trotsky first singled out theorganization of violence as the essential monopoly of the state in his defence speechbefore the Tsarist court in September 1906 (printed as an appendix to Leon Trotsky,1905, London 1974). The celebrated Marxist formula that the state will wither awayin the future socialist society refers essentially to the disappearance of physicalcoercion in social relations.

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this function of the state is only fully revealed in a period of war orcounter-revolution, it is the constant underpinning of social relations,defining the context in which all transactions take place.

The capitalist economy extends on a global basisonly with capitalismdid a world economy come into existence. It mediates production andexchange relations in a highly abstract manner. The law of value, the

market, the rate of profitall these economic mechanisms operate in anopaque and mysterious fashion. They bring vast populations into con-tact with one another, but only through complex and indirect mechan-isms. This fundamental characteristic of economic relations in capitalistsociety is partly concealed by an ideology which insists on a few, simpledirect relationships: that between the worker and the boss, the buyerand the seller, one group of workers and another in competition withthem. But in each case the truth about such relationships can only beunravelled by reference to the economic context as a whole. By contrast,the state apparatus is said to be governed by abstract principlestherule of law, constitutional formulae, the mechanisms of popular repre-sentation. In reality the state constitutes a sphere of compressed anddirect authority within a given territory, constituted by chains of com-mand, orders, police patrols, prison bars, frontier guards. It is becausethe state is an instrument of this sort that it brings all social classes intodirect relations with one another. Thus in the Poverty of PhilosophyMarx already characterized the state as the official resume of society.21

Each capitalist state thus constitutes and defines a particular relation-ship of class forces. Any fundamental discrepancy will lead to displace-

ment of the prevailing political rgime.

It will be recalled that in the Manifesto Marx and Engels speak of themodern representative state as the culmination of bourgeois politicalpower.22 They also refer to the historical movement in which thebourgeoisie of the more advanced countries in their battles with thefeudal aristocracyand with one anotherseek to enlist the support ofthe mass of proletarians. Marxs later writings analyse the economicfoundation of the bourgeois democracy that first appeared in the bour-geois revolutions. The absence of physical coercion in the productive

process requires its concentrated presence patrolling the perimeter ofthe social formation and guaranteeing its basic institutions. But thisdoes not mean that the separated-out apparatus of repression mustnecessarily govern society. Indeed, there are good reasons why theapparatus of repression should be a generally subordinate instrument ofgovernment in a developed capitalist society that is not faced with animmediate threat to its existence. Marxs analysis of the rise of LouisBonaparte had stressed that the reason for the super-added indepen-dence of the state power was the comparative weakness and division of

21 Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, London 1957, p. 156.22 Manifesto, The Revolutions of 1848, p. 69. In his The Leninist Theory of Organization,London 1974, Ernest Mandel discusses the class position of technicians and intel-lectual workers. See also Nicos Poulantzas, The Petty Bourgeoisie: Traditional andNew in Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London 1975, pp. 191327. For contem-porary evaluation of the validity of Marxs theses on the long-run tendencies ofcapitalist society, see J. Westergaard and H. Resler, Class in Capitalist Society, London1975 and Ernest Mandel,Late Capitalism, London 1975.

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be overcome by a purely internal development of the workers move-ment. But Marxs very presence before the General Council impliedthat this could not be the case. Even in the Manifesto, the developingorganization of workers was strengthened by the adhesion of bour-geois intellectuals who had raised themselves to the level of compre-hending theoretically the historical movement as a whole. The de-velopment of capitalism did lead to the increasing integration of science

into production, but it also led to a complex division of labour. Cultureand science developed outside the sphere of direct productionespecially in an increasingly ramified educational system. And theschools and universities did not only produce science and technology,but also reproduced workers and managers, scientists and teachers,rulers and ruled. Naturally the ruling class would secure for itself, andfor its immediate subalterns, a privileged access to education, scienceand culture. If the working-class movement was itself to become theruling class, it would need to break this monopoly, initially by drawingon the specialized knowledge of renegade bourgeois ideologists.Moreover, Marx was well aware of the paradox that if the workersmovement did not take advantage of these more or less individualdefections from the bourgeoisie, then it would remain subordinate tothe bourgeoisie as a class. Again the Manifesto had stressed that theinitial political formation of the working class was dominated by thebourgeoisie.

The International

Marxs activities within the International Working Mens Association(186472) were designed to induce the trade unions to overcome theireconomic limitation and corporate narrowness. The Inaugural Addressdrafted by Marx praised such political campaigns as that to limit thelength of the working day by legislation and the movement of solidaritywith the Polish insurrection of 1863. The Address referred enthusiastic-ally to the simultaneous efforts being made in a number of countries atthe political re-organization of the working mens party. It declaredthe lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their politicalprivileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economical mono-

polies . . . To conquer political power has therefore become the greatduty of the working classes.26 The Instructions drafted by Marx for theGeneva Congress of the International in 1867 criticized the trade unionsfor having kept too much aloof from general social and political move-ments. They should consider themselves as the champions and repre-sentatives of the whole working class and convince the world at largethat their efforts, far from being narrow and selfish, aim at the emanci-pation of the whole working class. However, Marx did not imply thatthe local struggles of trade unions against employers were unimportant:

they were guerrilla fights between labour and capital in which abroader organization and understanding could develop.27 Marx con-tinually urged the English trade-unionists to set up an independentpolitical party of their own and to cease serving as the tail of the Liberal

26 Karl Marx, Inaugural Address, The First International and After, p. 80.27 Karl Marx, Instructions for Delegates to the Geneva Congress, The First Inter-national and After, pp. 912.

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Party. Though Marx underestimated the potential strength of reform-ism, he cannot have doubted that a party set up by the English tradeunions would initially be reformist in character. Marx was confidentthat the important question was whether a real workers political partywas brought into existence or not, rather than its initial politicalphilosophy. An independent proletarian movement would be able tolearn from its own experience in a way that was precluded either for

small socialist sects or for a workers organization still under the tutelageof a bourgeois political party. Marxs conception of the proletarianparty combined two essential elements. It must be based on the experi-ence and organization forged in the struggles at the point of produc-tion. But it must learn how to take up all the questions, national andinternational, that affect any exploited or oppressed group. To this endit must use every available channel of political action, including thebourgeois electoral process.28 In his Report to the Basle Congress of theInternational in 1869, Marx stressed the significance of the wave ofstrikes that had broken out in Europe, notably in France. Even where,as in Normandy, the strike failed, this was compensated for by itsmoral results. It enlisted the Norman cotton-workers into the revolu-tionary army of labour, it gave rise to the birth of trade unions. Marxpointed out in this report that the successful participation of workerscandidates in the General Elections subsequently helped to stimulatethe strike movement: The only strange feature about those strikes wastheir sudden explosion after a seeming lull, and the rapid succession inwhich they followed each other. Still the reason of all this was simpleand palpable. Having, during the elections, successfully tried their

hands against their public despot, the workmen were naturally led totry them after the elections against their private despots. In one word,the elections had stirred their animal spirits.29

Marx clearly envisaged the ideal form of organization of the workersmovement as one which overcame the capitalist division of theeconomic and political spheres. This necessitated the co-ordinatedactivities of diverse forms of organization: trade unions, co-operatives,educational associations, socialist societies, working-class politicalparties. Marx devoted his energies to the International because it com-

bined these different elements in such a way as to permit a process ofpolitical development. The political heterogeneity of the Internationalwas a consequence of the fact that it was an expression of the realworkers movement. Because of the objectively antagonistic character ofcapitalist social relations, a real workers movement would continuallybe subject to experiences from which it could learn. Engels was later toexplain this in a new introduction to the Manifesto written in 1888:Marx, who drew up this programme [that of the International] to thesatisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the intellectual developmentof the working class, which was sure to result from combined action

and mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes of the struggleagainst capital, the defeats even more than the victories, could not helpbringing home to mens minds the insufficiency of their various favour-

28 For the development of Marxs political ideas at this time see Angiolina Arru,Clase y Partido en la International, Madrid 1974.29 Karl Marx, Report to the Basle Congress, The First International and After, p. 105.

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ite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight intothe true conditions of working-class emancipation. Although Marxmade tactical concessions in drawing up the Internationals statement ofaims, he was able to ensure that it opened with a ringing declaration ofthe necessity for an independent workers movement; in this same intro-duction, Engels explains our notion, from the very beginning, was thatthe emancipatation of the working class must be the act of the working

class itself.30 When the International was founded, Marx had a lowopinion of the existing working-class parties and socialist societies. Heevidently hoped that the trade unions which belonged to the Interna-tional, stimulated by their contact with it, would become the prime in-struments of the self-emancipation of the working class. As we haveseen, such an expectation was somewhat at variance with his economicanalysis, which stressed that the defensive activities of trade unionswere both necessary and effective. Although economic dislocationsmight impel them to more general political aims, they were essentiallyorganizations for securing economic concessions and this was thesource of both their strength and weakness. The Paris Commune of1871 was to impress on Marx the necessity for the proletarian move-ment to develop its own forms of political organization for seizing andsecuring power.

The Lessons of the Commune

The uprising of the Parisian masses in 1871 in the aftermath of theFrancoPrussian war was a decisive event in the development ofMarxs political ideas. In a foreword to the Communist Manifesto written

in 1872 Marx wrote that, while the political principles contained by theManifesto were generally correct, the experience of the Paris Communewhere the proletariat for the first time held political powerhadrendered it antiquated in at least one important respect. TheManifestohad given no detailed account of the political form of the proletarianrevolution and its consequences for the existing state machinery. TheCommune gave a vivid demonstration of what was meant by thedictatorship of the proletariat. Above all, it had shown that the work-ing class cannot take hold of the ready-made state apparatus and wield

it for its own purposes.31

From the days of his earliest political activity, Marx had a strong anti-pathy to the state bureaucracy and was critical of the political abstrac-tion of the representative state. He had described the function of thebureaucracy as that of protecting the imaginary universality of particularinterests. It was in the nature of the state bureaucracy to raise itselfabove society: the bureaucracy holds the state, the spiritual essence ofsociety in thrall as its private property. The universal spirit of bureau-cracy is secrecy, it is mystery preserved within itself by means of the

hierarchical structure . . . The principle of its knowledge is thereforeauthority, and its patriotism is the adulation of authority. Within itself,

30 Frederick Engels, Preface to the English Edition of the Communist Manifesto,The Revolutions of 1848, pp. 63, 65.31 Quoted ibid. p. 66. Hunt, op. cit. p. 190, by taking the single word antiquated outof context, manages to imply that Marx was abandoning many points in the

Manifesto.

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however, spiritualism degenerates into crass materialism, the materialismof passive obedience, the worship of authority, the mechanism of fixed,formal action, of rigid principles, views and tradition. As for theindividual bureaucrat, the purpose of the state becomes his private pur-pose, a hunt for promotion, careerism! But Marx insists that thebureaucracy is only a formal system for a content lying outside it.That content was the particular interests of property. Marxs conclusion

was that bureaucracy can be superseded only if the universal interestbecomes a particular interest in reality.32 The political institutions ofthe representative state do not produce such a result, rather they pro-duce an abstraction from civil society in favour of the dominantparticular interests: The separation of the political state from civilsociety takes the form of a separation of the deputies from theirelectors . . . The deputies of civil society are a society which is not con-nected to its electors by any instruction or commission . . . They haveauthority as the representatives ofpublic affairs, whereas in reality theyrepresent private interests.33 This critique of bureaucracy and therepresentative state was made by Marx prior to his identification of theworking class as the fundamental revolutionary class. This latter dis-covery was made by Marx at the same time as he identified the state asan apparatus of force that would have to be overthrown. The text inwhich Marx first outlines these two positions is his article on the revoltof the Silesian Weavers. Prior to this he had criticized the politicalabstraction represented by the state: from this time onwards he attackedthe state as an instrument of repression, which thereby concentratedsocial relations.

In The Civil War in France, the Address of the General Councildrafted by Marx in response to the Commune and its suppression, hefor the first time indicates the fundamental features of a workers state.Each of these features arises out of the necessity of overthrowing theold state power: The centralized state power, with its ubiquitousorgans of standing army, police bureaucracy, clergy and judicatureorgans wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division oflabour. In the wake of the development of capitalist industry and itsattendant class struggle, the state power assumes more and more the

character of the national power of capital over labour, of a public forceorganized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. Afterevery revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, thepurely repressive character of the state power stands out in bolder andbolder relief. Marx insisted that the parliamentary Republic had playeda decisive part in this strengthening of the state power, in order toconvince the working class that the social republic meant the repub-lic ensuring their social subjection. Since the state apparatus of repres-sion was the lynch-pin of the bourgeois orderwhether in the form of

32 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegels Doctrine of the State (1843), Early Writings,pp. 108, 109.33 Ibid. p. 195. For an interesting commentary on this passage, see the introductionto the volume by Lucio Colletti, especially pp. 2846. However, Colletti here makesthe mistake of equating the real abstraction of social relations brought about in theeconomic sphere by the law of value with the concentration of social relations pro-duced by a given form of the state. The latter is an effect of the state as an organiza-tion of violence, a crucial phenomenon not discussed by Colletti (see pp. 389).

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the parliamentary Republic or the Bonapartist Empirethe first taskof a real workers revolution must be that of settling accounts with it:The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of thestanding army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.34

The political institutions of the Commune represented a qualitativeadvance over even the most democratic bourgeois Republic. The

Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by univer-sal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocableat short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workingmen, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Com-mune was to be a working not a parliamentary body, executive andlegislative at the same time . . . From the members of the Communedownwards, the public service had to be done at workmens wages . . .While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental powerwere to be amputated and its legitimate functions were to be wrestedfrom an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and res-tored to the responsible agents of society. Instead of deciding once everythree or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresentthe people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people,constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every otheremployer in search for the workmen and managers of his business.35

Through the political form of the Commune, the working class couldlead all those classes menaced by capital in an assault on the old order.The Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that its

victory was their only hope . . . The Commune would have . . . trans-formed his (the peasants) present bloodsuckers, the notary, advocate,executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents,elected by, and responsible to, himself. It would have freed him of thetyranny of thegarde champtre, the gendarme and the prefect; would haveput enlightenment by the schoolmaster in place of stultification by thepriest. These were the immediate boons that the Commune offeredthe peasant; but Marx also points out that the Commune alone wouldbe able to cancel peasant debts and offer long-run economic salvation inthe face of the competition of capitalist farming. The Commune had

also proved that the middle strata could be won to the side of the work-ing class: this was the first revolution in which the working classwas openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiativeeven by the great bulk of the Paris middle class.36

Marx declares that the modest social measures which the Communewas able to implement during its two months of embattled existencecould only betoken the tendency of a government of the people by thepeople. Among the most significant of its plans were those concerning

education and culture: The whole of the educational institutions wereopened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of allinterference of church and state. Thus not only was education made

34 Karl Marx, Address of the General Council: The Civil War in France, The FirstInternational and After, pp.206, 207.35 Ibid. pp. 209, 210, 211.36 Ibid. 215, 216, 214.

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accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which classprejudice and governmental force had imposed on it. Marx privatelythought that the Commune should have undertaken bolder economicand military measuresin particular it should have launched an attackon Versailles while the relationship of forces was in its favour. Butwhatever the limitations of the Communes policy, its greatest achieve-ment was its own working existence. Even its errors were open to

scrutiny and correction: the Commune did not pretend to infallibility,the invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp. It publishedits doings and sayings, it initiated the public into all its shortcomings.The Commune had a number of incompetent and inadequate leaders,including survivors of and devotees to past revolutions. They are anunavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off; but time was notallowed to the Commune. Marx summarizes the significance of theCommune in the following terms: The multiplicity of interpretations towhich the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of inter-ests which construed it in their favour, show that it was a thoroughlyexpansive political form, while all previous forms of government hadbeen emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially aworking-class government, the product of the struggle of the producingclass against the appropriating class, the political form at last discoveredunder which to work out the economical emancipation of labour. Ex-cept on this last condition the Communal constitution would have beenan impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer can-not co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery.37

In The Civil War in France Marx was making propaganda for theCommune, highlighting what he saw as its most significant features.But at the same time he was irrevocably and publicly defining theMarxist conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx empha-sized the immense potentialities of the Commune in order to indicate thefuture path of social revolution. Breaking the power of the capitaliststate and destroying its repressive apparatus was an essential pre-condition for any generalized expropriation of the bourgeoisie. InMarxs account of the Commune it has seemed to some that there is anecho of Rousseau and of his own earliest writings on the state. Thus the

delegates to the Commune are not like parliamentary representativessince they are at any time revocable and bound by the mandat impratif(formal instructions) of his constituents.38 Moreover the particularinterest reflected in the Commune was at the same time capable ofleading a universal emancipation. However, it would be misleading toimagine that the old philosophical critiques had now merely discoveredan active historical protagonist. The new social forces reflected in theproletariat gave it the possibility of producing valid and effective formsof political representation and of controlling the responsible agents of

society. They did not need to fear representation. For Rousseau andthe young Marx, all forms of representation were a falsification and anabstraction. For the mature Marx, the truly collective character of theworking class had to find collective political expression if the produc-

37 Ibid. pp. 217, 20910, 217, 219, 212. For Marxs private reflections on the Com-mune, see Marx/Engels,Selected Correspondence, Moscow 1955, pp. 2615.38 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, The First International and After, p. 210.

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tive forces of modern society were to be mastered. Because the workingclass was the motor force of socialized forces of production, it had thepossibility of controlling the necessary forms of political abstraction, ofwhich the Commune itself was only the elementary and primitive form.In the first draft of The Civil War in France, Marx points out: Asthe state machinery and parliamentarism are not the real life of theruling classes, but only the organized general organs of their dominion,

the political guarantees and forms and expressions of the old order ofthings, so the Commune is not the social movement of the workingclass and therefore of a general regeneration of mankind, but theorganized means of action. The Commune does not do away with classstruggle . . . but it affords the rational medium in which that classstruggle can run through its different phases in the most rational andhumane way.39

In the aftermath of the Commune, Marx was certainly aware that theworkers movement would have to develop politically if the battle ofthe Communards was to be taken up again and pressed to a victoriousconclusion. The Commune had positively indicated the outline of aworkers state. But there can be no doubt from Marxs accounts of theCommune that it needed to develop a more clear-sighted social andeconomic programme. In the aftermath of the Commune the Englishtrade unions withdrew from the International, which had been thetarget of ruling-class hysteria throughout Europe. What remained ofthe International was riven by the disputes with the anarchists over the

39

Karl Marx, First Draft of the Civil War in France, The First International and After,pp. 2523. Colletti has developed his theses on the relationship between Rousseauand Marx in From Rousseau to Lenin, London 1972, especially in Part Three of thiswork, as well as in the previously quoted Introduction to Marxs Early Writings.Despite the criticisms made here, it should be said that there is much of value inCollettis discussion, including a valuable critique of Galvano Delia Volpes use ofRousseau. Colletti has elsewhere conceded that his attempt to reduce Marxist politicsto Rousseau was deliberately provocative: see Lucio Colletti, A Political andPhilosophical Interview, NLR86, JulyAugust 1974.Moreover, it must be conceded that Marxist politics do contain a suitably transformedversion of the Rousseauian concept of popular sovereignty; namely the concept ofthe dictatorship of the proletariat. As we have seen, Marxs explanation of this con-

cept unambiguously insists on the sovereignty of the proletariat and its allies withinthe revolutionary process. Proletarian representatives or delegates are subordinate tothe mass of electors, who retain sovereignty via the mandat impratif and the right torecall their delegates when they please. In his otherwise valuable study of the SocialContract, Althusser fails to register at all this vital Rousseauian contribution. It istrue that Rousseaus intransigent defence of the inalienable nature of popular sover-eignty is apparently discrepant with his preparedness to envisage special, and evendictatorial, measures to sustain this sovereignty, such as the ban on factions andparties. Althussers study is, however, chiefly concerned to establish the discrepan-cies of this sort which characterize the thought of the Genevan democrat (see LouisAlthusser,Politics and History, London 1972 pp. 11360.) Non-Marxist scholars have,of course, clearly grasped the revolutionary significance of Rousseaus concept of

sovereignty, despite its contradictory features: the destruction of the contract ofrulership cleared the way for the destruction of every right of the ruler; and from thepermanent and absolute omnipotence of the assemblage of the people, suspendingthe executive power and the whole jurisdiction of government as soon as it isassembled, he developed his programme of permanent revolution. Otto vonGierke, The Development of Political Theory: on the life and work of Johannes Althusius,London 1939, p. 98. The most comprehensive Marxist evaluation of Rousseau is theessay by Valentino Gerratana inRicerche di Storia del Marxismo, Rome 1972, pp. 369.

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necessity for political action. Marx was more convinced than ever ofthe need for the workers movement to develop adequate politicalforms. The Commune would have survived longer and accomplishedmore if there had been a stronger political leadership within it. Theanarchists were opposed to the workers movement developing openpolitical parties and instead regressed to the stage of revolutionaryconspiracies. Although Bakunin opposed Marxs hegemony within the

International in the name of democracy, his own conceptions of revolu-tionary organization envisaged no internal democratic structure at all.In some areas Bakunins representatives did establish real workersorganizations which Marx and Engels ignored to their cost. But for themost part his conspiratorial activities led to fiasco and fantasyorworse. The anarchist refusal of political action also had the conse-quence of removing the revolutionary organization from developingauthentic forms of proletarian representation. This was certainly adrastic antidote against reformism, but, as it turned out, not aneffective one.

Programme and Party

When the two wings of the German workers movementLassalleanand semi-Marxistunited, adopting a common programme, at Gothain 1875, Marx and Engels were forced again to define the essence oftheir conception of revolutionary proletarian politics. They had con-sistently opposed the influence of Lassalle, who had built up a consider-able following among German workers by adulterating the theories ofthe Manifesto with an accommodation to the Prussian state and Bis-

marcks policy of uniting Germany under Prussian hegemony. The keypoints in Lassalles agitation had been the demand for universalsuffrage and advocacy of workers co-operatives to be financed by thestate; in return for satisfaction of these demands Lassalle was preparedto support Bismarcks policy. As soon as Marx saw the orientation ofLassalles policy he broke relations with him. After Lassalles death,Marx successfully encouraged the leaders of the Lassallean party to de-velop a trade-union organization that would enable the Germanworkers to discover their own strength. Marx and Engels repeatedly

urged the need for a co-ordination of the divided forces of the Germanmovement, so that it is all the more significant that they were to reactso strongly to the programme of unification.

The main grounds on which Marx and Engels objected to the Gothaprogramme were that it failed to take up a revolutionary position onthe state, that it failed to place the German workers struggle in aninternationalist perspective and that it failed to base the partysstrategy on proletarian class struggle. Each of these failures was rootedin Lassallean confusions which spurred Marx to produce one of the

most succinct and peremptory statements of his politics. The GothaProgramme declared that: The German workers party, in order topave the way for the solution of the social question, demands thecreation of producers co-operatives with state aid. Marxs riposte wasas follows: The existing class struggle is discarded in favour of thehack phrase of a newspaper scribblerthe social question, for thesolution of which one paves the way. Instead of being the result of

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the revolutionary process of social transformation in society, thesocialist organization of the whole of labour arises from stateaid to producers co-operatives which the state, not the workers, is tocall into being. The notion that state loans can be used for the con-struction of a new society as easily as they can

robin blackburn, marxism: theory of proletarian revolution

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