accoring to marx, what class is the most revolutionary
The Eve of Revolution
The Revolution Summed Upwardly
The Presentation of the Question by Marx in 1852
1. The Eve of Revolution
The beginning works of mature Marxism — The Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto — appeared just on the eve of the revolution of 1848. For this reason, in improver to presenting the general principles of Marxism, they reflect to a sure degree the concrete revolutionary situation of the time. It will, therefore, be more than expedient, perchance, to examine what the authors of these works said about the land immediately before they drew conclusions from the experience of the years 1848-51.
In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx wrote:
"The working class, in the grade of development, will substitute for the old bourgeois society an association which will preclude classes and their antagonism, and there volition be no more than political power groups, since the political power is precisely the official expression of class animosity in bourgeois guild." (p.182, German language edition, 1885)[1]
It is instructive to compare this general exposition of the idea of the state disappearing after the abolitionism of classes with the exposition contained in the Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels a few months later--in Nov 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 guild up to the signal where that state of war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat....
"... Nosotros have seen in a higher place that the beginning pace in the revolution by the working class is to heighten the proletariat to the position of the ruling class to win the battle of republic.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, past caste, all upper-case letter from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.east., of the proletariat organized equally the ruling course; and to increase the total productive forces as chop-chop as possible." (pp.31 and 37, seventh German edition, 1906)[2]
Hither nosotros take a formulation of i of the well-nigh remarkable and most important ideas of Marxism on the bailiwick of the state, namely, the thought 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 land, which is also i of the "forgotten words" of Marxism: "the state, i.eastward., the proletariat organized every bit the ruling class."
This definition of the state has never been explained in the prevailing propaganda and agitation literature of the official Social-Autonomous parties. More than that, it has been deliberately ignored, for it is admittedly irreconcilable with reformism, and is a slap in the face for the common opportunist prejudices and philistine illusions about the "peaceful development of democracy".
The proletariat needs the state — this is repeated by all the opportunists, social-chauvinists and Kautskyites, who clinch united states that this is what Marx taught. Merely they "forget" to add together that, in the offset place, co-ordinate to Marx, the proletariat needs just a state which is withering away, i.eastward., 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 organisation of forcefulness: it is an arrangement of violence for the suppression of some grade. What class must the proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting grade, i.e., the bourgeoisie. The working people demand the country only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and simply the proletariat can directly this suppression, tin acquit it out. For the proletariat is the just class that is consistently revolutionary, the only form 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.eastward., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule in social club to completely abolish all exploitation, i.due east., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and confronting the insignificant minority consisting of the modernistic slave-owners — the landowners and capitalists.
The trivial-conservative democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy style — not equally the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class, merely as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority which has get aware of its aims. This picayune-bourgeois utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state beingness in a higher place classes, led in practice to the betrayal of the interests of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and by the experience of "socialist" participation in conservative Cabinets in Great britain, France, Italy and other countries at the turn of the century.
All his life Marx fought confronting this piddling-conservative socialism, now revived in Russia past the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. He developed his theory of the class struggle consistently, downward to the theory of political ability, of the state.
The overthrow of conservative rule tin can be accomplished only by the proletariat, the particular class whose economical conditions of existence prepare it for this chore and provide it with the possibility and the ability to perform it. While the bourgeoisie break up and atomize the peasantry and all the fiddling-conservative groups, they weld together, unite and organize the proletariat. Only the proletariat — by virtue of the economical role it plays in big-scale production — is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeoisie exploit, oppress and vanquish, often non less but more than they practice the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation.
The theory of course struggle, applied past Marx to the question of the state and the socialist revolution, leads as a matter of form to the recognition of the political dominion of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i.e., of undivided power direct backed by the armed force of the people. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie tin can be achieved just by the proletariat condign the ruling course, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system.
The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to pb the enormous mass of the population — the peasants, the fiddling bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians — in the piece of work of organizing a socialist economy.
By educating the workers' political party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming ability and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of existence 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. Past contrast, the opportunism at present prevailing trains the members of the workers' party to be the representatives of the meliorate-paid workers, who lose touch with the masses, "go along" fairly well under capitalism, and sell their birthright for a mass of pottage, i.eastward., renounce their office every bit revolutionary leaders of the people confronting the bourgeoisie.
Marx's theory of "the state, i.e., the proletariat organized equally the ruling class", is inseparably jump up with the whole of his doctrine of the revolutionary role of the proletariat in history. The culmination of this rule is the proletarian dictatorship, the political dominion of the proletariat.
But since the proletariat needs the state as a special form of organization of violence confronting the bourgeoisie, the following conclusion suggests itself: is it believable that such an organisation can exist created without starting time abolishing, destroying the state machine created by the bourgeoisie for themselves? The Communist Manifesto leads straight to this determination, and it is of this determination that Marx speaks when summing up the feel of the revolution of 1848-51.
ii. The Revolution Summed Up
Marx sums up his conclusions from the revolution of 1848-51, on the subject of the state we are concerned with, in the following argument independent in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:
"But the revolution is throughgoing. It is all the same journeying through purgatory. It does its piece of work methodically. By December 2, 1851 [the day of Louis Bonaparte's coup d'etat], information technology had completed 1 half of its preparatory piece of work. Information technology is now completing the other half. Beginning it perfected the parliamentary power, in order to be able to overthrow information technology. Now that information technology has attained this, it is perfecting the executive power, reducing it to its purest expression, isolating it, setting it up confronting itself every bit the sole object, in social club to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has washed this second one-half of its preliminary work, Europe volition leap from its seat and exultantly exclaim: well grubbed, old mole!
"This executive ability with its enormous bureaucratic and military machine organisation, with its vast and ingenious state mechanism, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half million, this appalling parasitic body, which enmeshes the body of French society and chokes all its pores, sprang up in the days of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal organization, which it helped to hasten." The offset French Revolution adult centralization, "but at the aforementioned time" it increased "the extent, the attributes and the number of agents of governmental ability. Napoleon completed this state machinery". The legitimate monarchy and the July monarchy "added nothing but a greater division of labor"....
"... Finally, in its struggle against the revolution, the parliamentary democracy found itself compelled to strengthen, forth with repressive measures, the resource and centralization of governmental ability. All revolutions perfected this machine instead of groovy information technology. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state building as the principal spoils of the victor." (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
pp.98-99, quaternary edition, Hamburg, 1907)[three]
In this remarkable argument, Marxism takes a tremendous footstep forwards compared with the Communist Manifesto. In the latter, the question of the state is still treated in an extremely abstruse style, in the virtually general terms and expressions. In the above-quoted passage, the question is treated in a physical way, and the conclusion is extremely precise, definite, applied and palpable: all previous revolutions perfected the land machine, whereas it must be broken, smashed.
This conclusion is the master and primal point in the Marxist theory of the state. And it is precisely this fundamental point which has been completely ignored by the dominant official Social-Democratic parties and, indeed, distorted (as we shall see later) by the foremost theoretician of the Second International, Karl Kautsky.
The Communist Manifesto gives a general summary of history, which compels us to regard the state equally the organ of course rule and leads u.s.a. to the inevitable conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the suburbia without start winning political power, without attaining political supremacy, without transforming the land into the "proletariat organized as the ruling class"; and that this proletarian state will begin to wither away immediately after its victory because the state is unnecessary and cannot be in a gild in which in that location are no class antagonisms. The question every bit to how, from the signal of view of historical evolution, the replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is to take place is not raised hither.
This is the question Marx raises and answers in 1852. True to his philosophy of dialectical materialism, Marx takes as his footing the historical experience of the peachy years of revolution, 1848 to 1851. Hither, as everywhere else, his theory is a summing upward of experience, illuminated by a profound philosophical conception of the world and a rich cognition of history.
The trouble of the state is put specifically: How did the bourgeois state, the state machine necessary for the rule of the bourgeoisie, come up into being historically? What changes did it undergo, what development did it perform in the course of conservative revolutions and in the face up of the contained actions of the oppressed classes? What are the tasks of the proletariat in relation to this land automobile?
The centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois club came into being in the menstruation of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions nearly characteristic of this state automobile are the bureaucracy and the standing regular army. In their works, Marx and Engels repeatedly evidence that the bourgeoisie are connected with these institutions by thousands of threads. Every worker's experience illustrates this connection in an extremely graphic and impressive manner. From its own bitter feel, the working class learns to recognize this connection. That is why information technology then hands grasps and so firmly learns the doctrine which shows the inevitability of this connectedness, a doctrine which the fiddling-bourgeois democrats either ignorantly and flippantly deny, or however more than flippantly admit "in full general", while forgetting to describe appropriate applied conclusions.
The bureaucracy and the continuing regular army are a "parasite" on the body of bourgeois guild--a parasite created past the internal antagonisms which rend that order, but a parasite which "chokes" all its vital pores. The Kautskyite opportunism now prevailing in official Social-Democracy considers the view that the state is a parasitic organism to exist the peculiar and sectional attribute of anarchism. Information technology goes without saying that this baloney of Marxism is of vast reward to those philistines who have reduced socialism to the unheard-of disgrace of justifying and prettifying the imperialist war by applying to information technology the concept of "defence of the fatherland"; but it is unquestionably a distortion, notwithstanding.
The development, perfection, and strengthening of the bureaucratic and war machine appliance proceeded during all the numerous conservative revolutions which Europe has witnessed since the autumn of feudalism. In item, it is the petty bourgeois who are attracted to the side of the big bourgeoisie and are largely subordinated to them through this appliance, which provides the upper sections of the peasants, minor artisans, tradesmen, and the like with insufficiently comfy, quiet, and respectable jobs raising the holders above the people. Consider what happened in Russia during the six months following February 27, 1917. The official posts which formerly were given past preference to the Black Hundreds have now become the spoils of the Cadets, Mensheviks, and Social-Revolutionaries. Nobody has really thought of introducing any serious reforms. Every endeavor has been fabricated to put them off "until the Constituent Assembly meets", and to steadily put off its convocation until after the war! But there has been no delay, no waiting for the Constituent Assembly, in the thing of dividing the spoils of getting the lucrative jobs of ministers, deputy ministers, governors-full general, etc., etc.! The game of combinations that has been played in forming the government has been, in essence, only an expression of this sectionalisation and redivision of the "spoils", which has been going on in a higher place and below, throughout the country, in every section of central and local regime. The half-dozen months between February 27 and Baronial 27, 1917, can exist summed up, considerately summed upwards across all dispute, as follows: reforms shelved, distribution of official jobs accomplished and "mistakes" in the distribution corrected by a few redistributions.
But the more the bureaucratic apparatus is "redistributed" among the various conservative and little-bourgeois parties (amid the Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the case of Russia), the more than keenly aware the oppressed classes, and the proletariat at their head, become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of conservative society. Hence the need for all conservative parties, even for the nigh democratic and "revolutionary-democratic" among them, to intensify repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the appliance of coercion, i.e., the country machine. This course of events compels the revolution "to concentrate all its forces of destruction" against the state ability, and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, just of smashing and destroying information technology.
Information technology was not logical reasoning, but actual developments, the bodily feel of 1848-51, that led to the matter being presented in this way. The extent to which Marx held strictly to the solid ground of historical experience can be seen from the fact that, in 1852, he did not yet specifically raise the question of what was to take the place of the state car to exist destroyed. Experience had not yet provided material for dealing with this question, which history placed on the agenda later on on, in 1871. In 1852, all that could be established with the accuracy of scientific observation was that the proletarian revolution had approached the task of "concentrating all its forces of destruction" against the country power, of "slap-up" the state machine.
Here the question may arise: is information technology correct to generalize the feel, observations and conclusions of Marx, to employ them to a field that is wider than the history of France during the three years 1848-51? Before proceeding to deal with this question, allow us recall a remark made past Engels then examine the facts. In his introduction to the 3rd edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire, Engels wrote:
"France is the country where, more anywhere else, the historical form struggles were each fourth dimension fought out to a terminate, and where, consequently, the irresolute political forms within which they move and in which their results are summarized accept been stamped in the sharpest outlines. The heart of bullwork in the Middle Ages, the model country, since the Renaissance, of a unified monarchy based on social estates, France demolished feudalism in the Groovy Revolution and established the rule of the bourgeoisie in a classical purity incomparable by any other European land. And the struggle of the upward-striving proletariat against the ruling bourgeoisie appeared hither in an acute form unknown elsewhere." (p.4, 1907 edition)
The last remark is out of date insomuch as since 1871 there has been a lull in the revolutionary struggle of the French proletariat, although, long as this lull may be, it does non at all preclude the possibility that in the coming proletarian revolution France may show herself to be the archetype country of the class struggle to a finish.
Let the states, notwithstanding, cast a full general glance over the history of the avant-garde countries at the turn of the century. We shall run across that the aforementioned procedure went on more slowly, in more than varied forms, in a much wider field: on the 1 manus, the development of "parliamentary ability" both in the republican countries (France, America, Switzerland), and in the monarchies (Britain, Germany to a certain extent, Italy, the Scandinavia countries, etc.); on the other paw, a struggle for power among the diverse bourgeois and piddling-bourgeois parties which distributed and redistributed the "spoils" of office, with the foundations of bourgeois society unchanged; and, lastly, the perfection and consolidation of the "executive power", of its bureaucratic and military machine apparatus.
At that place is non the slightest uncertainty that these features are common to the whole of the modern evolution of all capitalist states in general. In the final three years 1848-51 France displayed, in a swift, precipitous, concentrated form, the very aforementioned processes of evolution which are peculiar to the whole capitalist world.
Imperialism--the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, of the evolution of monopoly commercialism into state-monopoly capitalism--has clearly shown an unprecedented growth in its bureaucratic and military machine apparatus in connection with the intensification of repressive measures against the proletariat both in the monarchical and in the freest, republican countries.
World history is at present undoubtedly leading, on an incomparably larger scale than in 1852, to the "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution on the "destruction" of the state machine.
What the proletariat will put in its identify is suggested by the highly instructive material furnished by the Paris Commune.
three. The Presentation of the Question past Marx in 1852
In 1907, Mehring, in the magazine Neue Zeit [four] (Vol.XXV, 2, p.164), published extracts from Marx'due south letter to Weydemeyer dated March 5, 1852. This letter, amidst other things, contains the following remarkable observation:
"And now equally to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and conservative economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to evidence: (1) that the beingness of classes is just bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Produktion), (ii) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."[five]
In these words, Marx succeeded in expressing with striking clarity, first, the chief and radical divergence between his theory and that of the foremost and almost profound thinkers of the bourgeoisie; and, secondly, the essence of his theory of the country.
It is often said and written that the main bespeak in Marx's theory is the class struggle. Merely this is wrong. And this wrong notion very ofttimes results in an opportunist baloney of Marxism and its falsification in a spirit acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the theory of the course struggle was created non past Marx, simply by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and, by and large speaking, it is adequate to the suburbia. Those who recognize only the class struggle are non even so Marxists; they may exist constitute to be withal within the bounds of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing information technology to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. But he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is what constitutes the most profound distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well every bit big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real agreement and recognition of Marxism should be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working grade confront to face up with this question as a applied issue, not just all the opportunists and reformists, but all the Kautskyites (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and little-bourgeois democrats repudiating the dictatorship of the proletariat. Kautsky's pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, published in Baronial 1918, i.e., long after the outset edition of the present book, is a perfect instance of niggling-bourgeois baloney of Marxism and base renunciation of it in deeds, while hypocritically recognizing information technology in words (run across my pamphlet, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, St. petersburg and Moscow, 1918).
Opportunism today, as represented by its principal spokesman, the ex-Marxist Karl Kautsky, fits in completely with Marx's characterization of the bourgeois position quoted above, for this opportunism limits recognition of the class struggle to the sphere of conservative relations. (Within this sphere, inside its framework, non a single educated liberal will refuse to recognize the course struggle "in principle"!) Opportunism does not extend recognition of the class struggle to the central point, to the period of transition from capitalism to communism, of the overthrow and the consummate abolitionism of the suburbia. In reality, this menstruum inevitably is a period of an unprecedently violent class struggle in unprecedentedly acute forms, and, consequently, during this menstruation the state must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie).
Further. The essence of Marx'due south theory of the state has been mastered only past those who realize that the dictatorship of a unmarried class is necessary not only for every class order in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the suburbia, merely also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from "classless society", from communism. Bourgeois states are almost varied in form, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the concluding analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and diverseness of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Endnotes
[1] Meet Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1973, p. 151.
[ii] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. i, Moscow, 1973, pp. 118-xix and 126.
[3] Come across Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1973, p. 477).
Further below, on pp. 414-15 of this book, Lenin is quoting from Engels's preface to the third edition of the work (op. cit., p. 396).
[4] Die Neue Zeit (New Times)--theoretical journal of the German language Social-Democratic Party, published in Stuttgart from 1883 to 1923. It was edited by Karl Kautsky till October 1917 and by Heinrich Cunow in the subsequent catamenia. It published some of Marx'south and Engels'south writings for the offset fourth dimension. Engels offered communication to its editors and ofttimes criticised them for departures from Marxism.
In the second one-half of the nineties, upon Engels's death, the journal began systematically to publish revisionist articles, including a serial past Bernstein entitled "Issues of Socialism". which initiated a revisionist campaign confronting Marxism. During the Start World War the journal adhered to a Centrist position, and virtually hacked the social-chauvinists.
[five] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. tb').
Adjacent: Feel of the Paris Commune of 1871
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch02.htm
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