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V. I. LENIN
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION
The Marxist Teaching on the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat
in the RevolutionCHAPTER IV CONTINUATION. SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLANATIONS BY ENGELS Marx gave the fundamentals on the subject of the significance of the experience of the Commune. Engels returned to the same subject repeatedly and explained Marx's analysis and conclusions, sometimes elucidating other aspects of the question with such power and vividness that it is necessary to deal with his explanations separately.
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1. THE HOUSING QUESTION In his work, The Housing Question (1872), Engels already took into account the experience of the Commune, and dealt several times with the tasks of the revolution in relation to the state. It is interesting to note that the treatment of this concrete subject clearly revealed, on the one hand, points of similarity between the proletarian state and the present state -- such as give grounds for speaking of the state in both cases -- and, on the other hand, points of difference between them, or the transition to the destruction of the state.
"How is the housing question to be solved, then? In present-day society just as any other social question is solved: by the gradual economic adjustment of supply and demand, a solution which ever reproduces the question itself anew and therefore is no solution. How a social revolution would solve this question not only depends on the particular circumstances in each case, but is also connected with much more far-reaching questions, one of the most fundamental of which is the abolition of the antithesis between town and country. As it is not our task to create utopian systems for the arrangement of the future society, it would be more than idle to go into the question here. But one thing is certain: there are already in existence sufficient buildings for dwellings in the big towns to remedy immediately any real 'housing shortage,' given rational utilization of them. This can naturally only take place by the expropriation of the present owners, that is, by quartering in their houses the homeless or workers excessively overcrowded in their former houses.<"p68"> Immediately the proletariat has conquered political power such a measure dictated in the public interest will be just as easy to carry out as are other expropriations and billetings by the existing state." (German edition, 1887, p. 22.)[18]
The change in the form of the state power is not examined here, but only the content of its activity. Expropriations and billetings take place by order even of the present state. From the formal point of view the proletarian state will also "order" the occupation of houses and expropriation of buildings. But it is clear that the old executive apparatus, the bureaucracy, which is connected with the bourgeoisie, would simply be unfit to carry out the orders of the proletarian state.
". . . It must be pointed out that the 'actual seizure' of all the instruments of labour, the seizure of industry as a whole by the working people, is the exact opposite of the Proudhonist 'redemption.' Under the latter, the individual worker becomes the owner of the dwelling, the peasant farm, the instruments of labour; under the former, the 'working people' remain the collective owners of the houses, factories and instruments of labour, and will hardly permit their use, at least during a transitional period, by individuals or associations without compensation for the cost. Just as the abolition of property in land is not the abolition of ground rent but its transfer, although in a modified form, to society. The actual seizure of all the instruments of labour by the working people, therefore, does not at all exclude the retention of the rent relation." (P. 68.)
We shall discuss the question touched upon in this passage, namely, the economic basis for the withering away of the state, in the next chapter. Engels expresses himself most cautiously, saying that the proletarian state would "hardly" permit the use of houses without payment, "at least during a transitinal period." The letting of houses that belong to the whole people, to individual families presupposes the collection of rent a certain mount of control, and the employment of some standard in allotting the houses. All this calls for a certain form of state, but it does not at all call for a special military and bureaucratic apparatus, with officials occupying especially privileged positions. The transition to a state of affairs when it will be possible to supply dwellings rent-free is connected with the complete "withering away" of the state.
Speaking of the conversion of the Blanquists to the principles of Marxism after the Commune and under the influence of its experience, Engels, in passing, formulates these principles as follows:
". . . Necessity of political action by the proletariat and of its dictatorship as the transition to the abolition of classes and with them of the state. . . ." (P. 55.)
Addicts to hair-splitting criticism, or bourgeois "exterminators of Marxism," will perhaps see a contradiction between this recognition of the "abolition of the state" and the repudiation of this formula as an anarchist one in the above-quoted passage from Anti-Dühring. It would not be surprising if the opportunists stamped Engels, too, as an "anarchist," for now the practice of accusing the internationalists of anarchism is becoming more and more widespread among the social-chauvinists.
Marxism has always taught that with the abolition of classes the state will also be abolished. The well-known passage on the "withering away of the state" in Anti-Dühring accuses the anarchists not simply of being in favour of the abolition of the state, but of preaching that the state can be abolished "overnight."
In view of the fact that the now prevailing "Social-Democratic" doctrine completely distorts the relation of Marxism to anarchism on the question of the abolition of the state, it will be particularly useful to recall a certain controversy in which Marx and Engels came out against the anarchists.
2. CONTROVERSY WITH THE ANARCHISTS This controversy took place in 1873. Marx and Engels contributed articles against the Proudhonists, "autonomists" or "anti-authoritarians," to an Italian Socialist annual, and it was not until 1913 that these articles appeared in German in Neue Zeit.[19]
". . . If the political struggle of the working class assumes revolutionary forms," wrote Marx, ridiculing the anarchists for their repudiation of politics, "if the workers set up their revolutionary dictatorship in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, they commit the terrible crime of violating principles, for in order to satisfy their wretched, vulgar, everyday needs, in order to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, they give the state a revolutionary and transient form, instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the state. . . ." (Neue Zeit, Vol. XXXII, I, 1913-14, p. 40.)
It was solely against this kind of "abolition" of the state that Marx fought in refuting the anarchists! He did not at all combat the view that the state would disappear when classes disappeared, or that it would be abolished when classes were abolished; he opposed the proposition that the workers should renounce the use of arms, of organized violence, that is, the state, which is to serve to "crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie."
To prevent the true meaning of his struggle against anarchism from being distorted, Marx purposely emphasized the "revolutionary and transient form" of the state which the proletariat needs. The proletariat needs the state only temporarily. We do not at all disagree with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, we must ternporarily make use of the instruments, resources and methods of the state power against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the abolition of classes. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest way of stating his case against the anarchists: after overthrowing the yoke of the capitalists, should the workers "lay down their arms," or use them against the capitalists in order to crush their resistance? But what is the systematic use of arms by one class against another class, if not a "transient form" of state?
Let every Social-Democrat ask himself: is that the way he has been treating the question of the state in controversy with the anarchists? Is that the way it has been treated by the vast majority of the official Socialist parties of the Second International?
Engels expounds the same ideas in much greater detail and still more popularly. First of all he ridicules the muddled ideas of the Proudhonists, who called themselves "anti-authoritarians," i.e., repudiated every form of authority, every form of subordination, every form of power. Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels -- is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments, based on the employment of machinery and the planned cooperation of many pcople, could function without a certain amount of subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?
". . . When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but here it is not a case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted ! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. . . ."
Having thus shown that authority and autonomy are relative terms, that the sphere of their application changes with the various phases of social development, that it is absurd to take them as absolutes, and adding that the sphere of the application of machinery and large-scale production is constantly expanding, Engels passes from the general discussion of authority to the question of the state:
". . . If the autonomists," he wrote, "confined themselves to saying that the social organization of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the word.
"Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.
"Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon -- authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction." (P. 39.)This argument touches upon questions which must be examined in connection with the subject of the relation between politics and economics during the "withering away" of the state (this subject is dealt with in the next chapter). These questions are: the transformation of public functions from political into simple functions of administration, and the "political state." This last term, one particularly liable to cause misunderstanding, indicates the process of the withering away of the state: at a certain stage of this process the state which is withering away can be called a non-political state.
Again, the most remarkable thing in this argument of Engels is the way he states the case against the anarchists. Social-Democrats, claiming to be disciples of Engels, have argued on this subject against the anarchists millions of times since 1873, but they have n o t argued as Marxists can and should. The anarchist idea of the abolition of the state is muddled and non-revoiutionary -- that is how Engels put it. It is precisely the revolution in its rise and development, with its specific tasks in relation to violence, authority, power, the state, that the anarchists do not wish to see.
The usual criticism of anarchism by present-day Social-Democrats has boiled down to the purest philistine banality: "We recognize the state, whereas the anachists do not!" Naturally, such banality cannot but repel workers who are in the least capable of thinking and revolutionary. What Engels says is different. He emphasizes the fact that all Socialists recognize that the state will disappear as a result of the socialist revolution. He then deals concretely with the question of the revolution -- the very question which, as a rule, the Social-Democrats, because of their opportunism, evade, and leave, so to speak, exclusively for the anarchists "to work out." And, when dealing with this question, Engels takes the bull by the horns; he asks: should not the Commune have made more use of the revolutionary power of the state, that is, of the proletariat armed and organized as the ruling class?
Prevailing official Social-Democracy usually dismissed the question of the concrete tasks of the proletariat in the revolution either with a philistine sneer, at best, with the sophistic evasion: "wait and see." And the anarchists were thus justified in saying about such Social-Democracy that it was betraying its task of giving the workers a revolutionary education. Engels draws upon the experience of the last proletarian revolution precisely for the purpose of making a most concrete study of what should be done by the proletariat, and in what manner, in relation to both the banks and the state.
3. LETTER TO BEBEL One of the most, if not the most, remarkable observations on the state in the works of Marx and Engels is contained in the following passage in Engels' letter to Bebel dated March 18-28, 1875. This letter, we may observe parenthetically, was, as far as we know, first published by Bebel in the second volume of his memoirs (Aus meinem Leben ), which appeared in 1911, i.e., thirty-six years after the letter had been written and mailed.
Engels wrote to Bebel criticizing that same draft of the Gotha Program which Marx also criticized in his famous letter to Bracke. Referring particularly to the question of the state, Engels said:
"The free people's state is transformed into the free state. Taken in its grammatical sense, a free state is one where the state is free in relation to its citizens, hence a state with a despotic government. The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The 'people's state' has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists to the point of disgust, although already Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Commmnist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will dissolve of itself [sich auflöst ] and disappear. As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people's state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedorn the state as such ceases to exist. <"p77">We would therefore propose to replace state everywhere by the word 'community' [Gemeinwesen ], a good old German word which can very well represent the French word 'commune.'" (Pp. 32I-22 of the German original.)[20]
It should be borne in mind that this letter refers to the party program which Marx criticized in a letter dated only a few weeks later than the above (Marx's letter is dated May 5, 1875), and that at the time Engels was living with Marx in London. Consequently, when he says "we" in the last sentence, Engels, undoubtedly, in his own as well as in Marx's name, suggests to the leader of the German workers' party that the word "state" be struck out of the program and replaced by the word "community ."
What a howl about "anarchism" would be raised by the leading lights of present-day "Marxism," which has been falsified for the convenience of the opportunists, if such a rectification of the program were suggested to them!
Let them howl. This will earn them the praises of the bourgeoisie.
And we shall go on with our work. In revising the program of our party we must unfailingly take the advice of Engels and Marx into consideration in order to come nearer the truth, to restore Marxism by purging it of distortions, to guide the struggle of the working class for its emancipation more correctly. Certainly no one opposed to the advice of Engels and Marx will be found among the Bolsheviks. The only difficulty that may, perhaps, arise will be in regard to terminology. In German there are two words meaning "community," of which Engels used the one which does not denote a single community, but their totality, a system of communities. In Russian there is no such word, and perhaps we may have to choose the French word "commune," although this also has its drawbacks.
"The Commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word" -- from the theoretical point of view this is the most important statement Engels makes. After what has been said above, this statement is perfectly clear. The Commune was ceasing to be a state in so far as it had to suppress, not the majority of the population, but a minority (the exploit ers); it had smashed the bourgeois state machine; in place of a special repressive force, the population itself came on the scene. All this was a departure from the state in the proper sense of the word. And had the Commune become firmly established, all traces of the state in it would have "withered away" of themselves; it would not have been necessary for it to "abolish" the institutions of the state; they would have ceased to function in the measure that they ceased to have anything to do.
"The 'people's state' has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists." In saying this, Engels above all has in mind Bakunin and his attacks on the German Social-Democrats. Engels admits that these attacks were justified in so far as the "people's state" was as much an absurdity and as much a departure from Socialism as the "free people's state." Engels tried to put the struggle of the German Social-Democrats against the anarchists on right lines, to make this struggle correct in principle, to purge it of opportunist prejudices concerning the "state." Alas! Engels' letter was pigeonholed for thirty-six years. We shall see further on that, even after this letter was published, Kautsky obstinately repeated what in essence were the very mistakes against which Engels had warned.
Bebel replied to Engels in a letter, dated September 21, 1875, in which he wrote among other things, that he "fully agreed" with Engels' criticism of the draft program, and that he had reproached Liebknecht for his readiness to make concessions (p. 334 of the German edition of Bebel's Memoirs, Vol. II). But if we take Bebel's pamphlet, Our Aims, we find there views on the state that are absolutely wrong.
"The state must be transformed from one based on class rule into a people's state." (Unsere Ziele, German edition, 1886, p. 14.)
This was printed in the ninth (the ninth!) edition of Bebel's pamphlet! It is not surprising that so persistently repeated opportunist views on the state were absorbed by German Social-Democracy, especially as Engels' revolutionary interpretations had been safely pigeonholed, and all the conditions of life were such as to "wean" them from revolution for a long time!
4. CRITICISM OF THE DRAFT OF THE ERFURT PROGRAMIn examining the Marxian teaching on the state, the criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Program,[21] sent by Engels to Kautsky on June 29, 1891, and published only ten years later in Neue Zeit, cannot be ignored; for it is precisely the opportunist views of Social-Democracy on questions of state structure, that this criticism is mainly concerned with.
We shall note in passing that Engels also makes an exceedingly valuable observation on questions of economics, which shows how attentively and thoughtfully he watched the various changes being undergone by modern capitalism, and how for this reason he was able to foresee to a certain extent the tasks of our present, the imperialist, epoch. Here is the passage: referring to the word "planlessness" (Planlosigkeit ) used in the draft program, as characteristic of capitalism, Engels writes:
". . . When we pass from joint-stock companies to trusts which assume control over, and monopolize, whole branches of industry, it is not only private production that ceases, but also planlessness." (Neue Zeit, Vol. XX, I, 190I-02, p. 8.)
Here we have what is most essential in the theoretical appraisal of the latest phase of capitalism, i.e., imperialism, viz., that capitalism becomes monopoly capitalism. The latter must be emphasized because the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state-monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can already be termed "state Socialism," or something of that sort, is most widespread. The trusts, of course, never produced, do not now produce, and cannot produce complete planning. But however much they do plan, however much the capitalist magnates calculate in advance the volume of production on a national and even on an international scale, and however much they systematically regulate it, we still remain under capitalism -- capitalism in its new stage, it is true, but still, undoubtedly, capitalism. The "proximity" of such capitalism to Socialism should serve the genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving the proximity, facility, feasibility and urgency of the socialist revolution, and not at all as an argument in favour of tolerating the repudiation of such a revolution and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, an occupation in which all the reformists are engaged.
But let us return to the question of the state. In this letter Engels makes three particularly valuable suggestions: first, as regards the republic; second, as regards the connection between the national question and the structure of state, and, third, as regards local self-government.
As regards the republic, Engels made this the centre of gravity of his criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Program. And when we recall what importance the Erfurt Program acquired for the whole of international Social-Democracy, that it became the model for the whole of the Second International, we may state without exaggeration that Engels thereby criticized the opportunism of the whole Second International.
"The political demands of the draft," Engels writes, "have one great fault. What actually ought to be said is not there." (Engels' italics.)
And, later on, he makes it clear that the German constitution is but a copy of the highly reactionary constitution of 1850; that the Reichstag is only, as Wilhelm Liebknecht put it, "the fig leaf of absolutism" and that to wish "to transform all the instruments of labour into public property" on the basis of a constitution which legalizes the existence of petty states and the federation of petty German states is an "obvious absurdity."
"To touch on that is dangerous, however," Engels adds, knowing full well that it was impossible legally to include in the program the demand for a republic in Germany. But Engels does not rest content with just this obvious consideration which satisfies "everybody." He continues: "And yet somehow or other the thing has got to be attacked. How necessary this is is shown precisely at the present time by the inroads which opportunism is making in a large section of the Social-Democratic press. For fear of a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law and from recollection of all manner of premature utterances which were made during the reign of that law they now want the Party to find the present legal order in Germany adequate for the carrying out of all the demands of the Party by peaceful means. . . ."
Engels particularly stresses the fundamental fact that the German Social-Democrats were prompted by fear of a renewal of the Anti-Socialist Law, and without hesitation calls opportunism; he declares that precisely because there was no republic and no freedom in Germany, the dreams of a "peaceful" path were absolutely absurd. Engels is sufficiently careful not to tie his hands. He admits that in republican or very free countries "one can conceive" (only "conceive!") of a peaceful development towards Socialism, but in Germany, he repeats,
". . . in Germany, where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to proclaim such a thing in Germany -- and moreover when there is no need to do so -- is to remove the fig leaf from absolutism, and become oneself a screen for its nakedness. . . ."
The great majority of the official leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party, who pigeonholed this advice, have indeed proved to be a screen for absolutism.
". . . Ultimately such a policy can only lead one's own party astray. They put general, abstract political questions into the foreground, thus concealing the immediate concrete questions, the questions which at the first great events, the first political crisis, put themselves on the agenda. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the Party is suddenly left without a guide, that unclarity and disunity on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed? . . .
"This forgetting of the great main standpoint for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment without consideration for the later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present maybe 'honestly' meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and 'honest' opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all. . . .
"If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of the democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown. . . ."Engels repeats here in a particularly striking form the fundamental idea which runs like a red thread through all of Marx's works, namely, that the democratic republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat. For such a republic -- without in the least abolishing the rule of capital, and, therefore, the oppression of the masses and the class struggle -- inevitably leads to such an extension, development, unfolding and intensification of this struggle that, as soon as there arises the possibility of satisfying the fundamental interests of the oppressed masses, this possibility is realized inevitably and solely through the dictatorship of the proletariat, through the leadership of those masses by the proletariat. These, too, are "forgotten words" of Marxism for the whole of the Second International, and the fact that they have been forgotten was demonstrated with particular vividness by the history of the Menshevik Party during the first half year of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
On the subject of a federal republic, in connection with the national composition of the population, Engels wrote:
"What should take the place of present-day Germany?" (with its reactionary monarchical constitution and its equally reactionary division into petty states, a division which perpetuates all the specific features of "Prussianism" instead of dissolving them in Germany as a whole). "In my view, the proletariat can only use the form of the one and indivisible republic. In the gigantic territory of the United States a federal republic is still, on the whole, a necessity, although in the Eastern states it is already becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in England, where the two islands are peopled by four nations and in spite of a single Parliament three different systems of legislation exist side by side even today. In little Switzerland, it has long been a hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European state system. For Germany, federalization on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backward. Two points distinguish a union state from a completely unified state: first, that each separate state forming part of the union, each canton, has its own civil and criminal legislative and judicial system, and, second, that along side of a popular chamber there is also a federal chamber in which each canton, large and small, votes as such." In Germany the union state is the transitional stage to the completely unified state, and the "revolution from above" of 1866 and 1870 must not be reversed but supplemented by a "movement from below."
Far from displaying indifference in regard to the forms of state, Engels, on the contrary, tried to analyze the transitional forms with the utmost thoroughness in order to establish, in accordance with the concrete, historical, specific features of each separate case, from what and into what the given transitional form is passing.
Approaching the matter from the point of view of the proletariat and the proletarian revolution Engels, like Marx, upheld democratic centralism, the republic -- one and indivisible. He regarded the federal republic either as an exception and a hindrance to development, or as a transitional form from a monarchy to a centralized republic, as a "step forward" under certain special conditions. And among these special conditions, the national question comes to the front. Although mercilessly criticizing the reactionary nature of small states, and the screening of this by the national question in certain concrete cases, Engels, like Marx, never betrayed a trace of a desire to brush aside the national question -- a desire of which the Dutch and Polish Marxists are often guilty, as a result of their perfectly justified opposition to the narrow philistine nationalism of "their" little states.
Even in regard to England, where geographical conditions, a common language and the history of many centuries would seem to have "put an end" to the national question in the separate small divisions of England -- even in regard to that country, Engels reckoned with the patent fact that the national question was not yet a thing of the past, and recognized in consequence that the establishment of a federal republic would be a "step forward." Of course, there is not the slightest hint here of Engels abandoning the criticism of the shortcomings of a federal republic or that he abandoned the most determined propaganda and struggle for a unified and centralized democratic republic.
But Engels did not at all understand democratic centralism in the bureaucratic sense in which this term is used by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologists, the anarchists among the latter. His idea of centralism did not in the least preclude such broad local self-government as would combine the voluntary defence of the unity of the state by the "communes" and districts with the complete abolition of all bureaucracy and all "ordering" from above. Enlarging on the program views of Marxism on the state, Engels wrote:
"So, then, a unitary republic -- but not in the sense of the present French Republic, which is nothing but the Empire established in 1798 without the Emperor. From 1792 to 1798 each Department of France, each commune (Gemeinde ), enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is what we too must have. How self-government is to be organized and how we can manage without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the first French Republic, and is being shown even today by Canada, Australia and the other English colonies. And a provincial and local self-government of this type is far freer than for instance Swiss federalism under which, it is true, the canton is very independent in relation to the Union" (i.e., the federated state as a whole), "but is also independent in relation to the district and the commune. The cantonal governments appoint the district governors (Bezirksstatthalter ) and prefects -- a feature which is unknown in English-speaking countries and which we shall have to abolish here just as resolutely in the future along with the Prussian Landräte and Regierungsräte " (commissioners, district police chiefs, governors, and in general all officials appointed from above). Accordingly, Engels proposes the following wording for the self-government clause in the program: "Complete self-government for the provinces" (gubernias and regions), "districts and communities through officials elected by universal suffrage. The abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state."<"p87">
I have already had occasion to point out -- in Pravda (No. 68, May 28, 1917),[22] which was suppressed by the government of Kerensky and other "Socialist" ministers -- how on this point (of course, not on this point alone by any means) our pseudo-Socialist representatives of pseudo-revolutionary pseudo-democracy have made absolutely scandalous departures from democracy. Naturally, people who have bound themselves by a "coalition" with the imperialist bourgeoisie have remained deaf to this criticism.
It is extremely important to note that Engels, armed with facts, disproves by a most precise example the prejudice which is very widespread, particularly among petty-bourgeois democrats, that a federal republic necessarily means a greater amount of freedom than a centralized republic. This is not true. It is disproved by the facts cited by Engels regarding the centralized French Republic of 1792-98 and the federal Swiss Republic. The really democratic centralized republic gave more freedom than the federal republic. In other words, the greatest amount of local, provincial and other freedom known in history was accorded by a centralized and not by a federal republic.
Insufficient attention has been and is being paid in our Party propaganda and agitation to this fact, as, indeed, to the whole question of the federal and the centralized republic and local self-government.
5. THE 1891 PREFACE TO MARX'S
THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCEIn his preface to the third edition of The Civil War in France (this preface is dated March 18, 1891, and was originally published in the Neue Zeit ), Engels, in addition to some interesting incidental remarks on questions connected with the attitude towards the state, gives a remarkably vivid summary of the lessons of the Commune.[23] This summary, rendered more profound by the entire experience of the twenty years that separated the author from the Commune, and directed particularly against the "superstitious belief in the state" so widespread in Germany, may justly be called the last word of Marxism on the question under consideration.
In France, Engels observes, the workers emerged with arms from every revolution; "therefore, the disarming of the workers was the first commandment for the bourgeois, who were at the helm of the state. Hence, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle, ending with the defeat of the workers."
This summary of the experience of bourgeois revolutions is as concise as it is expressive. The essence of the matter -- also, by the way, on the question of the state (h a s t h e o p p r e s s e d
c I a s s a r m s? ) is here remarkably well grasped. It is precisely this essence of the matter which is most often ignored both by professors, who are influenced by bourgeois ideology, and by petty-bourgeois democrats. In the Russian Revolution of 1917, the honour (Cavaignac[24] honour) of blabbing this secret of bourgeois revolutions fell to the "Menshevik," "also-Marxist," Tsereteli. In his "historic" speech of June 11, Tsereteli blurted out that the bourgeoisie was determined to disarm the Petrograd workers -- presenting, of course, this decision as his own, and as a matter of necessity for the "state" in general!Tsereteli's historic speech of June 11 will, of course, serve every historian of the Revolution of 1917 as one of the most striking illustrations of how the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik bloc, led by Mr. Tsereteli, deserted to the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary proletariat.
Another incidental remark of Engels', also connected with the question of the state, deals with religion. It is well known that German Social-Democracy, as it decayed and became more and more opportunist, slipped more and more frequently into the philistine misinterpretation of the celebrated formula: "Religion is to be proclaimed a private matter." That is, this formula was twisted to mean that religion was a private matter even for the party of the revolutionary proletariat!! It was against this utter betrayal of the revolutionary program of the proletariat that Engels vigorously protested. In 1891 he saw only the very feeble beginnings of opportunism in his party, and, therefore, he expressed himself extremely cautiously:
". . . As almost only workers, or recognized representatives of the workers, sat in the Commune, its decisions bore a decidedly proletarian character. Either these decisions decreed reforms which the republican bourgeoisie had failed to pass solely out of cowardice, but which provided a necessary basis for the free activity of the working class -- such as the realization of the principle that in relation to the state religion is a purely private matter -- or the Commune promulgated decrees which were in the direct interest of the working class and in part cut deeply into the old order of society."
Engels deliberately underlined the words "in relation to the state," as a straight thrust at the German opportunism, which had declared religion to be a private matter in relation to the party, thus degrading the party of the revolutionary proletariat to the level of the most vulgar "free-thinking" philistinism, which is prepared to allow a non-denominational status, but which renounces the party struggle against the opium of religion which stupefies the people.
The future historian of German Social-Democracy, in tracing the root causes of its shameful bankruptcy in 1914, will find a good amount of interesting material on this question, beginning with the evasive declarations in the articles of the party's ideological leader Kautsky, which open wide the door to opportunism, and ending with the attitude of the party towards the "Los-von-Kirche-Bewegung " (the "leave-the church" movement) in 1913.
But let us see how, twenty years after the Commune, Engels summed up its lessons for the fighting proletariat.
Here are the lessons to which Engels attached prime importance:
". . . It was precisely the oppressing power of the former centralized government, army, political police, bureaucracy which Napoleon had created in 1798 and which since then had been taken over by every new government as a welcome instrument and used against its opponents -- it was precisely this power which was to fall everywhere, just as it had already fallen in Paris.
"From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment."Engels emphasizes again and again that not only under a monarchy, but also in the democratic republic the state remains a state, i.e., it retains its fundamental characteristic feature of transforming the officials, the "servants of society," its organs, into the masters of society.
"Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society -- an inevitable transformation in all previous states the Commune made use of two infallible means. In the first place, it filled all posts -- administrative, judicial and educational -- by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs.[*] In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were added besides."
Engels here approaches the interesting boundary line at which consistent democracy, on the one hand, is transformed into Socialism, and on the other, demands Socialism. For, in order to abolish the state, the functions of the civil service must be converted into the simple operations of control and accounting that are within the capacity and ability of the vast majority of the population, and, subsequently, of every single individual. And in order to abolish careerism completely it must be made i m p o s s i b l e for "honourable" though profitless posts in the public service to be used as a springboard to highly lucrative posts in banks or joint-stock companies, as constantly happens in all the freest capitalist countries.
But Engels did not make the mistake some Marxists make in dealing, for example, with the question of the right of na-
* *Nominally about 2,400 rubles; according to the present rate of exchange, about 6,000 rubles. Those Bolsheviks who propose that a salary of 9,000 rubles be paid to members of municipal councils, for instance, instead of a maximum salary of 6,000 rubles -- quite an adequate sum -- for the whole state are acting in an unpardonable way.tions to self-determination, when they argue that this is impossible under capitalism and will be superfluous under Socialism. Such a seemingly clever but actually incorrect statement might be made in regard to any democratic institution, including moderate salaries for officials; because fully consistent democracy is impossible under capitalism, and under Socialism all democracy withers away.
It is a sophistry like the old joke as to whether a man will become bald if he loses one more hair.
To develop democracy to the utmost, to seek out the forms for this development, to test them by practice, and so forth -- all this is one of the constituent tasks of the struggle for the social revolution. Taken separately, no kind of democracy will bring Socialism. But in actual life democracy will never be "taken separately"; it will be "taken together" with other things, it will exert its influence on economic life, will stimulate its transformation; and in its turn it will be influenced by economic development, and so on. Such are the dialectics of living history.
Engels continues:
"This shattering [Sprengung ] of the former state power and its replacement by a new and truly democratic one is described in detail in the third section of The Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell briefly here once more on some of its features, because in Germany particularly the superstitious belief in the state has been carried over from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers. According to the philosophical conception, the state is the 'realization of the idea,' or the Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realized. And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with it, which takes root the more readily since people are accustomed from childhood to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its lucratively positioned officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap."
Engels warned the Germans not to forget the fundamentals of Socialism on the question of the state in general in connection with the substitution of a republic for the monarchy. His warnings now read like a veritable lesson to the Messrs. Tseretelis and Chernovs, who in their "coalition" practice here revealed a superstitious belief in, and a superstitious reverence for, the state!
Two more remarks. 1. The fact that Engels said that in a democratic republic, "no less" than in a monarchy, the state remains a "machine for the oppression of one class another by no means signifies that the form of oppression is a matter of indifference to the proletariat, as some anarchists "teach." A wider, freer and more open form of the class struggle and of class oppression enormously assists the proletarlat in its struggle for the abolition of classes in general.
2. Why will only a new generation be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap? This question is bound up with that of overcoming democracy, with which we shall deal now.
6. ENGELS ON THE OVERCOMING OF DEMOCRACYEngels had occasion to express his views on this subject in connection with the fact that the term "Social-Democrat" was scientifically wrong.
<"p95"> In a preface to an edition of his articles of the seventies on various subjects, mainly on "international" questions (Internationales aus dem Volksstaat[25]), dated January 3, 1894, i.e., written a year and a half before his death, Engels wrote that in all his articles he used the word "Communist," and not "Social-Democrat," because at that time the Proudhonists in France and the Lassalleans in Germany called themselves Social-Democrats.
". . . For Marx and me," continues Engels, "it was therefore absolutely impossible to use such an elastic term to characterize our special point of view. Today things are different, and the word ("Social-Democrat") may perhaps pass muster (mag passieren ), however inexact (unpassend -- unsuitable) it still is for a party whose economic program is not merely Socialist in general, but directly Communist, and whose ultimate political aim is to overcome the whole state and, consequently, democracy as well. The names of real (Engels' italics) political parties, however, are never wholly appropriate; the party develops while the name stays."[26]
The dialectician Engels remains true to dialectics to the end of his days. Marx and I, he says, had a splendid, scientifically exact name for the party, but there was no real party, i.e., no mass proletarian party. Now (at the end of the nineteenth century) there is a real party, but its name is scientifically inexact. Never mind, it will "pass muster," if only the party develops, if only the scientific inexactness of its name is not hidden from it and does not hinder its development in the right direction!
Perhaps some wit would console us Bolsheviks in the manner of Engels: we have a real party, it is developing splendidly; even such a meaningless and ugly term as "Bolshevik" will "pass muster," although it expresses nothing whatever but the purely accidental fact that at the Brussels-London Congress of 1903 we were in the majority. . .[27] Perhaps, now that the persecution of our Party by republicans and "revolutionary" petty-bourgeois democracy in July and August has earned the name "Bolshevik" such a universal respect, now that, in addition, this persecution attests to the tremendous historical progress our Party has made in its real development, perhaps now even I might hesitate to insist on the suggestion I made in April to change the name of our Party. Perhaps I would propose a "compromise" to my comrades, viz., to call ourselves the Communist Party, but to retain the word "Bolsheviks" in brackets. . . .
But the question of the name of the Party is incomparably less important than the question of the attitude of the revolutionary proletariat to the state.
In the usual arguments about the state, the mistake is constantly made against which Engels uttered his warning and which we have in passing indicated above, namely, it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy; that the withering away of the state means the withering away of democracy.
At first sight this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible; indeed, someone may even begin to fear that we are expecting the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed -- for democracy means the recognition of just this principle.
No, democracy is n o t identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recogizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another.
We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against man in general. We do not expect the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But in striving for Socialism we are convinced that it will develop into Communism and, hence, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.
In order to emphasize this element of habit, Engels speaks of a new generation, "reared in new and free social conditions," which "will be able to throw on the scrap heap the entire lumber of the state" -- of every kind of state, including the democratic-republican state.
In order to explain this it is necessary to examine the question of the economic basis of the withering away of the state.