The State and Revolution (n. d.)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
CONTINUATION
SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLANATION BY ENGELS-
Marx gives us the fundamentals on the subject of the meaning of the Commune. Engels returned to the same question repeatedly, elucidating Marx's analysis and conclusions, sometimes explaining so clearly and forcibly other sides of the question that we must stop expressly to consider these explanations.
1. The Housing Question.
Already in his work on the Housing Question (1872), Engels took into account the experience of the Commune, dwelling several times on the problems of the Revolution in relation to the State. It is interesting to note that in the treatment of this concrete question we are shown clearly on the one hand, those features of the proletarian State which resemble features of the present State—features which give us ground for speaking of a State in both cases; and, on the other hand, the features which differentiate them and mark the transition to the destruction of the State.
"How can the housing problem be solved? In modern society this question is solved, like every other social question, by a gradual economic equalization of supply and demand. This, however, is a kind of solution which itself constantly creates the problem anew, that is, it gives no solution. How the Social Revolution will solve this question depends not only on circumstances of time and place, but it is also bound up with questions which go much further, amongst which one of the most important is the abolition of the distinction between town and country. As we are not interested in Utopian speculations on the structure of the future Society, it would be more than a waste of time to dwell upon this point. One thing is certain: even now there are sufficient habitable buildings in the large towns materially to relieve the real shortage of accommodation, if sensible use were made of them. This, of course, could only be brought about by the expropriation of their present possessors, and by settling in them the homeless workers or the workers who are now living in over-crowded homes. And as soon as the workers win political power, such a measure, based on the best interests of Society, will be as easily carried out as all other expropriations and commandeerings by the modern State." (German edition, 1887, p. 22.)
Here it is not the change in the form of the State which is considered, but only the character of its activity. Expropriations and the occupation of houses take place by direction even of the present State. The proletarian State, from the formal point of view, will also "direct" the occupation of houses and the expropriation of buildings. But it is clear that the old executive apparatus, the bureaucracy connected with the bourgeoisie, would simply be useless for the carrying out of the orders of the proletarian State.
"It is necessary to state that the actual seizure of all the means of labor and of all industry by the laboring masses of the nation is the direct antithesis to the Proudhonist 'buying out.' Under the Proudhonist system the individual worker becomes the owner of a house, of a small-holder's plot of land, of necessary tools. In the other case, however, the 'laboring people' becomes the collective owner of houses, factories and tools. The use of these houses, factories and so forth, will hardly be offered, at any rate, during the transition period, to single individuals or to companies, without recovering the expense. In the same way, the abolition of the private ownership of land does not presuppose the abolition of rent, but its handing over, although in a different form, to the whole of Society. The actual appropriation of all the means of labor by the laboring masses does not exclude in any way, therefore, the preservation of the right to rent or let." (Page 69.)
In the next chapter we shall discuss the question touched on here, namely, the economic reasons for the "withering away" of the State. Engels expresses himself most cautiously here, saying that the proletarian State will "hardly" allot houses without pay, "at any rate, during the transition period." The letting of houses belonging to the whole nation, to separate families for rent presupposes the collection of this rent, a certain amount of control, and some standard or other to guide the allotment of the houses. All this demands a certain form of State, but it does not at all involve a special military and bureaucratic apparatus, with officials occupying privileged position. But a transition to a state of affairs when it will be possible to let houses without rent is bound up with a complete "withering away" of the State.
Speaking of the conversion of the Blanquists after the Commune, and under the influence of its experience, to the Marxist point of view, Engels, it so happens, formulates it as "The necessity for political action by the proletariat and for proletarian dictatorship, as the transition towards the abolition of classes, and, together with them, of the State. …" (Page 55.)
Those who are addicted to hair-splitting, or bourgeois "exterminators of Marxism," will perhaps see a contradiction between this admission of the "abolition of the State" and the repudiation of a formula, like that of the Anarchists, contained in the quotation from the Anti-Duehring given above. It would not be surprising if the Opportunists wrote down Engels, too, as an "Anarchist," for the Socialist-chauvinists are now more and more adopting the fashion of accusing the Internationalists of Anarchism.
That, together with the abolition of classes, the State will also be abolished—this Marxism has always taught. The well-known passage of the "withering away of the State" in the Anti-Duehring does not accuse the Anarchists merely of being in favor of the abolition of the State, but of spreading the theory that it is possible to accomplish this "within twenty-four hours." In view of the complete distortion by the present predominating "Social-Democratic" doctrine concerning the relation of Marxism to Anarchism, of the question of the abolition of the State, it will be especially useful to recall one particular controversy of Marx and Engels with the Anarchists.
2. The Dispute with the Anarchists.
This dispute occurred in 1873. Marx and Engels then contributed articles against the Proudhonist "Autonomists" or "Anti-Authoritarians" to an Italian Socialist review, and it was only in 1913 that these articles appeared in German in the Neue Zeit.
"If the political struggle of the working class [wrote Marx, ridiculing the Anarchists for their repudiation of political action] assumes a revolutionary form, if the workers, in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, set up their own revolutionary dictatorship, then they commit a terrible crime and offer an insult to principle, because, forsooth, the workers, in order to meet the miserable, gross requirements of the moment, in order to crush the resistance of the capitalist class, cause the State to assume a revolutionary and transitional form, instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the State." (Neue Zeit, 1913–14, year 32, vol. I, page 40.)
This alone is the kind of "abolition" of the State against which Marx protested, refuting the Anarchists. He protested not against the theory of the disappearance of the State when classes disappear, or its abolition when classes have been abolished, but only against the proposition that the workers should deny themselves the use of arms, the use of organized force, that is, the use of the State, for the purpose of "breaking the resistance of the capitalist class." Marx purposely emphasizes, in order that the true sense of his contentions against the Anarchists: might not be perverted, "the revolutionary and transitional form" of the State necessary for the proletariat. The proletariat only needs the State temporarily. We do not at all disagree with the Anarchists on the question of the abolition of the State as a final aim. But we affirm that, for the attainment of this aim, we must make temporary use of the weapons and methods of the State against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the annihilation of all classes. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest mode of stating the position against the Anarchists. Having cast off the yoke of the capitalists, ought the workers "to lay down their arms" or should they use them against the capitalists in order to break their resistance? And the systematic employment of arms by one class against the other, what is that if not a "transitional form of the State"?
Let every Social-Democrat ask himself whether that was the way in which he examined the question of the State in his discussions with the Anarchists! Was that the way in which the vast majority of the official Social-Democratic parties of the Second International treated it?
Engels develops these same ideas in even greater detail and more simply. He first of all ridicules the muddled ideas of the Proudhonists who call themselves "Anti-Authoritarians," that is, who denied every form of authority, or subordination of power. Take a factory, a railway, a vessel on the open seas, said Engels; is it not clear that not one of these complex technical concerns, based on the use of machines and the ordered co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination, and, consequently of authority or power? "When I use these arguments," writes Engels, "against the most hopeless Anti-Authoritarians, they can only give me the following answer, 'Ah, that is true, but the question is not of the authority we confer on our delegates, but of a certain commission.' These people think that a thing can be altered by merely changing its name."
Having shown in this way that authority and autonomy are relative terms, that the sphere of their application varies with the various phases of social development, that it is absurd to regard them as absolute terms; after adding that the domain of the application of machinery and. production of a large scale is ever extending, Engels passes from a general discussion of authority to the question of the State.
"If the Autonomists [he writes] merely meant to say that the social organization of the future would admit authority only within those limits which the conditions of industry inevitably dictate, then it would be possible to come to an understanding with them. But they are blind in respect of all the facts which make authority necessary, and they fight passionately against a mere word.
"Why do not the Anti-Authoritarians limit themselves to shouting against the political authority, against the State? All Socialists agree that the State, together with it, also political authority, will vanish as the result of the future Socialist Revolution, i. e., that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into simple administrative functions, concerned with social interests. But the Anti-Authoritarians demand the political State should be abolished at one blow, even before those social relations which gave birth to the State are themselves abolished. They demand that the first act of the Social Revolution shall be the abolition of all authority.
"These gentlemen, have they ever seen a revolution? Revolution is undoubtedly the most authoritative thing possible. Revolution is an act in which part of the population forces its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, cannon, i. e., by most authoritative means. And the conquering party is inevitably forced to maintain its supremacy by means of that fear which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Had the Paris Commune not relied on the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie would it have lasted longer than a single day? May we not rather censure the Commune for not having made sufficient use of this authority? And so, either the Anti-Authoritarians themselves do not know what they are talking about, in which case they merely show confusion; or they do know what they are talking about, in which case they are betraying the proletariat. In either case they serve only the interests of reaction." (P. 39.)
In this discussion questions are touched on, which must be investigated in connection with the subject of the correlation of politics and economics during the withering away of the State. (The next chapter treats of this subject.) Such are the problems of the transformation of the nature of public functions, from political to simple administrative, and of the "political State." This last term, particularly liable to cause misunderstanding, indicates the process of the withering away of the State: the dying State, at a certain stage of its decay, can be called a non-political State. The most remarkable point in our quotation from Engels' work is, again, the way he puts the case against the Anarchists. Social-Democrats, desiring to be disciples of Engels, have disputed with the Anarchists thousands of times since 1873, but they have not disputed at all as Marxists can and should. The Anarchist idea of the abolition of the State is muddled and non-revolutionary—that is how Engels put it. It is precisely the Revolution, in its rise and development, with its specific problems in relation to violence, authority, power and the State, that the Anarchists do not wish to see. The usual criticism of the Anarchists by the modern Social-Democrats has been reduced to the purest middle-class triviality: "We, forsooth, recognize the State, whereas the Anarchists do not." Naturally such trivialities cannot but repel any revolutionary workingmen who think at all. Engels says something quite different. He emphasizes that all Socialists recognize the disappearance of the State as a result of the Socialist Revolution. He then deals with the concrete question of the Revolution—that very question which, as a rule, the Social-Democrats, because of their Opportunism, evade, leaving it so to speak exclusively for the Anarchists "to work out." And in thus formulating the question Engels takes the bull by the horns. Ought not the Commune to have made more use of the revolutionary power of the State, that is, of the proletariat armed and organized as the ruling class?
The modern predominating official Social-Democracy has generally dismissed the concrete problems facing the proletariat during the revolution, either by some inane philistine jeers, or, at the best, by the evasive sophism "Wait and see!" And the Anarchists have thus gained the right to reproach such Social-Democrats with betraying their mission of educating the working class in revolution. Engels makes use of the experience of the last proletarian revolution for the direct purpose of drawing from it concrete conclusions as to how the proletariat should act concerning both banks and the State.
3. The Letter to Bebel.
One of the most remarkable, if not the most remarkable, items of reasoning in the works of Marx and Engels on the State is contained in the following passage in Engels' letter to Bebel on March 18, 1875. This letter, we may remark in passing, was first published, so far as we know, by Bebel, in the second volume of his memoirs (My Life), published in 1911, that is, thirty-six years after the writing and dispatch of the letter.
Engels wrete to Bebel, criticizing that same draft of the Gotha program which Marx criticized in his famous letter to Bracke, and, referring particularly to the question of the State, said:
"The Free People’s State has been transformed into a Free State. According to the grammatical meaning of the words, the Free State is one in which the State is free in relation to its citizens, that is, a State with a despotic government. It would be well to throw overboard all this nonsense about the State, especially after the Commune, which was already no longer a State in the proper sense of the word.
"The Anarchists have too long been able to throw into our teeth this 'People's State,' although already, in Marx's works against Proudhon, and then in the Communist Manifesto, it was stated quite plainly that with the introduction of the Socialist order of Society, the State will dissolve of itself (sich auflöst) and will disappear. As the State is only a transitional institution which we are obliged to use in the revolutionary struggle in order forcibly to crush our opponents, it is a pure absurdity to speak of a Free Peopie's State. During the period when the proletariat still needs the State, it does not require it in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of crushing its antagonists; and when it becomes possible really to speak of freedom, then the State, as such, ceases to exist. We should, therefore, suggest that everywhere the word State be replaced by Gemeinwesen (Commonwealth), a fine old German word, which corresponds to the French word .'Commune,'" (German edition, p. 322.)
One should bear in mind that this letter refers to the party program which Marx criticized in his letter dated only a few weeks later than the above (Marx's letter of May 5, 1875), and that Engels was living at the time with Marx in London. Consequently, when he says "we" Engels undoubtedly suggests to the leader of the German working class party, both in his own and in Marx's name, that the word "State" should be struck out of their program and exchanged for "Commonwealth."
What a howl about "Anarchism" would be raised by the leaders of the present-day “Marxism” adulterated to meet the requirements of the Opportunists, if such an alteration, in their program were suggested to them. Let them howl. The capitalist class will pat them on the back for it.
In the meantime, however, we shall go on with our work. In revising the program of our party, Engels' and Marx's advice must undoubtedly be taken into consideration in order to come nearer to the truth, to re-establish Marxism, to purge it from distortion, to direct the struggle for freedom of the working class into the right channels. Among the Bolsheviks there will certainly be none opposed to the advice of Engels and Marx. Difficulties may, perhaps, crop up regarding terminology. In German there are two words meaning "Commonwealth," of which Engels used the one which does not denote a single community, but the sum of all, 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." Here is Engels' most important theoretical proposition. After what has been said above, this statement is quite intelligible. The Commune ceased to be a State in so far as it had to repress, not the majority but a minority of the population (the exploiters); it had broken the bourgeois machinery of government, and, in the place of a special repressive force, the whole population itself was coming on the scene. All this is a departure from the State in its proper sense. And had the Commune become consolidated, the relics of the State would of themselves have "withered away" within it; there would have been no need for the State to "abolish" its institutions, they would have ceased to function in proportion as less and less was left for them to do.
"The Anarchists throw into our teeth the 'People's State.'" In saying this, Engels has in mind especially Bakunin and his attacks on the German Social-Democrats. Engels admits these attacks to be justified in so far as the "People's State" is as senseless and as far removed from Socialism as the "Free People's State." Engels tries to alter the character of the controversy of the German Social-Democrats with the Anarchists to make it true to principle, and to clear it from Opportunist prejudice concerning the “State.” Alas! Engels’ letter has been stowed away for thirty-six years. We shall see below that, even after the publication of Engels' letter, Kautsky still obstinately continues to repeat those very mistakes against which Engels gave his warning.
Bebel replied to Engels in a letter dated September 21, 1875, in which, amongst other things, he wrote that he "fully agreed with Engels' criticism of the projected program, and that he had reproached Liebknecht for his readiness to make concessions" (Bebel's Memoirs, German edition, vol. ii, p. 304). But if we take Bebel's pamphlet, Our Aims, we shall find there absolutely wrong views of the State. "The State must be transformed from one based on class supremacy to a people's State." (Unsere Ziele, 1886, p. 14.) This is printed in the ninth edition of Bebel's pamphlet. Small wonder that such constantly repeated Opportunist views of the State have been absorbed by the German Social-Democracy, especially as the revolutionary interpretations by Engels were safely stowed away, and all the conditions of life have been such as to wean:them from Revolution.
4. Criticism of the Draft of the Erfurt Program.
In a discussion of the doctrines of Marxism regarding the State, the criticism of the Erfurt Program sent by Engels to Kautsky on June 29, 1891, and only published ten years later in the Neue Zeit, cannot be passed over; for this criticism is mainly concerned with the Opportunist views of Social Democracy on the questions of State organization.
In passing, we may note that Engels also raises an exceedingly valuable point of economics, which shows how attentively and thoughtfully he followed :the various phases of the latest developments of Capitalism, and how he was able, in consequence, to foresee to a certain extent the problems of our own, the Imperialist epoch. Here is this point. Touching on the words used in the draft of the program "the want of ordered plan" as characteristic of Capitalism, Engels writes:
"If we pass from joint stock companies to trusts, which get hold of and monopolize whole branches of industry, not only private production, but also the want of ordered plan disappears." (Neue Zeit, year 20, vol. 1, 1901–02, p. 8.)
Here we have what is most essential in the theoretical appreciation of the latest phase of Capitalism, that is, Imperialism, viz., that Capitalism becomes monopolistic Capitalism. This fact must be "emphasized because the "Reformist" middle class view, that monopolistic Capitalism, whether private or State, is no longer Capitalism, but can already be termed "State Socialism," or something of that sort, is one of the most widespread errors. The trusts, of course, have not given us, and indeed, cannot give us, full and complete order and system in production. But, however closely much of an ordered plan they may yield, however closely capitalist magnates may estimate in advance the required extent of production on a national and even international scale, and however carefully and systematically they may regulate it, we still remain under Capitalism—Capitalism, it is true, in its latest phase, but still, undoubtedly, Capitalism. The nearness of such Capitalism to Socialism should be, in the mouth of real representatives of the proletariat, an argument for the nearness, ease, feasibility and urgency of the Socialist Revolution, and not at all one for tolerating a repudiation of such a revolution, or the attempts to make Capitalism look attractive, in which the Reformists are habitually engaged.
But to return to the question of the State, Engels makes here three valuable suggestions: in the first place, on the question of a Republic; secondly, on the connection between the problems of nationalities and the form of the State; and thirdly, on local self-government.
With regard to the question of a Republic, Engels made this point the gravamen of his criticism of the draft of the Erfurt program; and when we remember what an important part the Erfurt program has played in the International Social-Democracy, how it became the model for the whole of the Second International, it may, without exaggeration, be said that Engels criticized in this connection the opportunism of the whole Second International. "The political demands of the draft," Engels writes, "are vitiated by a great fault. They do not mention (Engels' italics) what ought certainly to have been said."
And, later on, he makes it clear that the German constitution is but a copy of the reactionary constitution of 1850, that the Reichstag is only, as Wilhelm Liebknecht put it, "the fig-leaf of Absolutism," and that to "wish to make all the means of production public property" on the basis of a constitution which has legalized the existence of petty States and the federation of petty German States, is an "obvious absurdity."
"It is dangerous to touch on this subject," Engels adds, knowing full well that it was impossible for police reasons to include in the program a demand for a Republic in Germany. But Engels does not simply rest content with this obvious consideration which satisfies "everybody." He continues:
"But the matter must, in one way or another, be pressed forward. To what an extent this is essential is shown particularly just now by the way Opportunism is gaining ground in the Social-Democratic press. Fearing a renewal of the anti-Socialist laws, or remembering some premature declarations made when those laws were in force, some people desire now that the party should recognize the present legal order in Germany as sufficient for the peaceful realization of all its demands."
Engels brings out as of prime importance the fact that German Social-Democracy was acting in fear of the renewal of the Exceptional Laws, and, without hesitation, calls this Opportunism, declaring that just because of the absence of a Republic and freedom in Germany, the dreams of a "peaceful" path were quite absurd. Engels is sufficiently careful not to tie his hands in advance. He admits that in Republican oy very free countries "one can conceive" (only "conceive") 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 anything of that sort, and that without any need, is to take off the fig leaf from Absolutism and to screen its nakedness by one's own body. …"
The great majority of official leaders of German Social-Democracy who "stowed away" this advice, have indeed proved the screen of Absolutism.
"Such a policy can only, in the end, lead the party on to a false road. General abstract political questions are pushed to the foreground, and in this way, all the immediate concrete problems which arise automatically on the order of the day at the first approach of important events, during the first political crisis, are hidden from sight. What else can result from this than that the party may suddenly, at the first critical moment, prove helpless, that on decisive questions confusion and division will arise within the party-because these questions had never been discussed?
"This neglect of great fundamental considerations for the sake of the momentary successes of the day, this chase after momentary success, and this race after them without account of ultimate results, this sacrifice of the future movement for the present is, perhaps, the result of 'honest' motives, but is and remains, none the less, Opportunism, and 'honest' Opportunism is, perhaps, more dangerous than any other. … If there is anything about which there can be no doubt, it is that our party and the working class can only gain supremacy under a political regime like a Democratic Republic. This latter is, indeed, the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as has been demonstrated by the great French Revolution. …"
Engels repeats here in a particularly emphatic form the fundamental idea which, like a red thread, runs throughout all Marx's work, viz., that the Democratic Republic is the nearest jumping board to the dictatorship of the proletariat. For such a republic, without in the least setting aside the domination of capital, and, therefore, the oppression of the masses and the class struggle, inevitably leads to such an extension, intensification and development of that struggle that, as soon as the chance arises for satisfying the fundamental interests of the oppressed masses, this chance is realized inevitably and solely in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the guidance of these masses by the proletariat. These also have been, for the whole of the Second International, "forgotten words" of Marxism, and their neglect 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 question of a Federal Republic, in connection with the national composition of the population, Engels wrote:
"What ought to arise in the place of present-day Germany (with its reactionary monarchist constitution and the equally reactionary division into small States, a division which perpetuates the peculiarities of 'Prussianism' instead of submerging them in Germany as a singe whole)? In my opinion the proletariat can only make use of the form of a one and indivisible republic. A federal republic is still, as a whole, a necessity in the enormous territory of the United States, but even so, it is already becoming an impediment in the Eastern States. It would be a progressive step in England, where four nationalities live on the two islands, and where, in spite of one Parliament, three systems of legislation exist side by side. It has long since become a hindrance in little Switzerland, and if there the Federal Republic can still be tolerated, it is only because Switzerland is content with the role of an entirely passive member of the European State system. For Germany, a federalization on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backward. Two points differentiate a federated State from a unitary State, viz., that each individual State within the union has its own civil and criminal legislation, its own particular judicial system; and then this: that, side by side with the popular chamber, there is a chamber of representatives from the States in which every canton votes as such irrespective of its size."
In Germany the Federated State is the transition to the complete unitary State, and the "revolutions from above" of 1866 and 1870 must not be turned backwards, but must be completed by a "movement from below."
Engels not only shows no indifference to the question of the form of the State, but, on the contrary, analyzes with the greatest possible care the transitional forms, in order to establish, from the concrete historical peculiarities of each separate case, from what and to what the given transitional form is evolving.
Engels, like Marx, insists from the point of view of the proletariat and the proletarian revolution, on democratic centralism, on the one and indivisible republic. The Federal Republic is considered by him to be either an exception and a hindrance to development, or a transitional form between a monarchy and a centralized republic—a "progressive step" in certain definite conditions. And amongst these definite conditions arises the problem of nationalities.
With Engels, as with Marx, in spite of their pitiless criticism of the reactionary nature of the small States, often in concrete cases hidden from the eye under the cloak of the national question, there is nowhere a trace of any desire to ignore the national question—a desire of which the Dutch and Polish Marxists are often guilty, as a result of their most justifiable opposition to the narrow, middle-class nationalism of "their" little States.
Even in England, where the geographical conditions, the common language, and the history of many centuries would seem to have put an end to the national question of the separate small divisions in England—even here Engels is cognizant of the patent fact that the national question has not yet been overcome, and recognizes, in consequence, that the establishment of a federal republic would be a "progressive" step. Of course; there is no trace here of a renunciation of criticism of the defects of the Federal Republic or of the most determined propaganda and fight for a unitary and democratically centralized republic.
But Engels' conception of a centralized democracy is not of that bureaucratic order with which the middle-class ideologists (including Anarchists) identify it. Centralism does not, with Engels, in the least exclude the wide local autonomy which combines a voluntary defense of the unity of the State by the communes and districts with the absolute abolition of all bureaucracy and all "ordering about" from above.
"And so we want a unitary Republic [writes Engels, setting out the programatic views of Marxism on the State], but not in the sense of the present French Republic, which is neither more nor less than the Empire established in 1798, without the Emperor. From 1792 to 1798 each French Department, each municipality, enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is what we, too, ought to have. How local self-government should be organized and how it is possible to do without a bureaucracy has been demonstrated to us by America and the first French Republic, and is still being demonstrated by Canada, Australia and other British Dominions. Such a provincial and communal self-government is a far freer institution than, for instance, the Swiss Federation under which, it is true, the Canton is very independent of the Bund (that is, of the Federal State as a whole), but is also independent of the district and the commune. The cantonal governments appoint the district stateholders and prefects, a feature which is quite absent in the English-speaking countries, and which we, in our own country, must in the future abolish as completely as the Prussian Landraete, Regierungsraete (that is, all officials appointed from above)."
In accordance with this, Engels suggests the following wording for the clause in the program regarding self-government: "Complete self-government for the provinces, districts and communes through officials elected by universal suffrage, the abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the State."
In the Pravda of May 28, 1917, suppressed by the Government of Kerensky and other "Socialist" ministers, I had already occasion to point out how in this connection (not by any means in this alone) our sham Socialist representatives of the sham revolutionary sham democracy, have scandalously departed from democracy. Naturally people who have allied themselves with the Imperialist capitalist class remained deaf to this criticism.
It is particularly important to note that Engels, armed with precise facts, disproves by a telling example the superstition prevalent especially among the lower middle class democracy that a Federal Republic necessarily means a larger amount of liberty than a centralized republic. This is not true. The facts cited by Engels regarding the centralized French Republic of 1792–1798, and Federal Switzerland disprove this. The really democratic centralized republic gave more liberty than the federal republic—in other words, the greatest amount of local freedom known in history was granted by a centralized republic, and not by a Federal Republic.
Insufficient attention has hitherto been paid in our party literature and agitation to this fact, as, indeed, to the whole question of federal and centralized republics and local self-government.
5. The Preface of 1891 to Marx's "Civil War in France."
In 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, side by side with many other interesting items with regard to the State, gives a remarkably striking resume of the lessons of the Commune. This resume, confirmed by all the experience of the period of twenty years separating the author from the Commune, and directed particularly against the "superstitious faith in the State" so widely diffused in Germany, can, quite justly, be called the last word of Marxism on the question here dealt with.
In France, Engels notes the workers were armed after every revolution. "Consequently the first commandment for every bourgeois at the head of the State was the disarmament of the workers. Accordingly, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle arose which ended with their defeat. …"
This is a summing up of the experience of bourgeois revolutions which is as short as it is expressive. The essence of the whole matter—also, by the way, of the question of the State, viz., has the oppressed class arms?—is here wonderfully well expressed. It is just this essential thing which, more often than not, is ignored by both professors under the influence of capitalist ideology and by the lower middle class democrats. In the Russian Revolution of 1917, it was to the "Menshevik," a so-called "Marxist" Tseretelli, that the Cavaignac honor fell of babbling out this secret of bourgeois revolutions. In his "historic" speech of June 9, Tseretelli blundered out the decision of: the bourgeoisie to disarm the Petrograd workers—referring, of course, to this decision as his own, and as a vital necessity for the State.
Tseretelli's historic speech of June 9 (22nd), will certainly constitute for every historian of the Revolution of 1917, one of the clearest illustrations of how the bloc of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, led by Mr. Tseretelli, went over to the side of the capitalist class against the revolutionary proletariat.
Another incidental remark of Engels' also connected with the question of the State dealt with religion. It is well-known that the German Social-Democracy, in proportion as it began to decay and to become more and more opportunistic, slid down more and more frequently to the philistine misinterpretation of the celebrated formula that "religion is a private matter." That is, this formula was twisted to mean that even for the party of the revolutionary proletariat the question of religion was a private matter. It was against this complete betrayal of the revolutionary program of the proletariat that Engels revolted. In 1891 he only saw the very feeble beginnings of Opportunism in his party, and therefore he expressed himself on the subject most cautiously:
"Corresponding with the fact that in the Commune there sat, almost without exception, only workmen or the recognized representatives of the workers, its decisions were distinguished by their resolute proletarian character. These decisions either decreed such reforms as the republican bourgeoisie had rejected only out of base cowardice, but which formed a necessary foundation for the free activity of the working class. Such, for instance, was the adoption of the principle that in relation to the State religion is simply a private matter. Or the Commune promulgated decrees directly in the interests of the working class and, to a certain extent, inflicting deep wounds on the old body social."
Engels deliberately emphasized the words "in relation to the State," not as a mere hint, but as a straight thrust at German Opportunism which had declared religion to be a private matter in relation to the party; thus lowering the party of the revolutionary proletariat to the level of the most superficial "free-thinkers" of the middle class, ready to admit a non-religious State, but renouncing all party struggle against the religious opium which stupifies the people.
The future historian of the German Social-Democracy investigating the root causes of its shameful collapse in 1914, will find no little material of interest on this question, beginning with the evasive declarations in the articles of the intellectual leader of the party, Kautsky, opening the door wide to Opportunism, and ending with the attitude of the party towards the Los-von-Kirche Bewegung (the movement for the disestablishment of the Church) in 1913.
But let us pass on to the manner in which, twenty years after the Commune, Engels summed up its lessons for the struggling proletariat.
Here are the lessons to which Engels attached prime importance:
"It was just this oppressive power of the former centralized Government, the army, the political police, the bureaucracy, which Napoleon created in 1798, and which, from that time onwards, every new Government had taken over as a desirable weapon for use against its opponents—it was just this power which should have fallen throughout France as it had fallen in Paris.
"The Commune was compelled to recognize from the very first that the working class, having obtained supremacy, could no longer carry on the business of government by means of the old machinery; that, in order that the working class might not lose again its newly-won supremacy, it must, on the one hand, sweep aside the whole of the old machine of oppression which had hitherto been used against it, and on the other, secure itself against its own deputies and officials by declaring them all, without exception, revocable at any time."
Engels emphasizes again and again that not only in a Monarchy, but also in a democratic republic, the State remains the State, that is, it retains its fundamental and characteristic feature, viz., the transformation of officials—"the servants of society"—and of its organs into the rulers of Society.
"Against this inevitable feature of all systems of government that have existed hitherto, viz., the transformation of the State and its organs from servants into the lords of Society, the Commune used two unfailing remedies. First, it appointed to all posts, administrative, legal, educational, persons elected by universal suffrage; introducing at the same time the right of recalling those elected at any time by the decision of their electors. Secondly, it paid all officials, both high and low, only such pay as was received by any other worker. The highest salary paid by the Commune was 6,000 francs (about $1,200).
"Thus was created an effective barrier to place-hunting and career-making even apart from the imperative mandates of the deputies in representative institutions introduced by the Commune over and above this."
Engels touches here on the interesting boundary where a consistent democracy is, on the one hand, transformed into Socialism, and, on the other, Socialism. For, in order to destroy the State, it is necessary to convert the functions of the public service into such simple operations of control and bookkeeping as are within the reach of the vast majority of the population, and, ultimately, of every single individual.
And, in order to do away completely with the political adventurer it must be made impossible for an "honorable," though unsalaried, sinecure to the public service to be used as a jumping-off ground for a highly profitable post in a bank or a joint stock company, as happens constantly in the freest capitalist countries.
But Engels does not make the mistake made, for instance, by some Marxists on the question of the right of a nation to self-determination, viz., that, forsooth, this is impossible under Capitalism and will be unnecessary under Socialism. Such an apparently clever, but really incorrect statement might be repeated of any democratic institution, amongst others, of the payment of moderate salaries to officials; for during the lifetime of capitalism a completely consistent democracy is impossible whilst under Socialism all political democracy disappears.
This is a sophism, comparable to the old humorous problem of at what point a man will become bald if he loses his hair one by one.
The development of democracy to its logical conclusion, the investigation of the forms of this development, testing them by practice, and so forth,—all this is part of the objects in the struggle for the Social Democracy. Taken separately, no kind of democracy will yield Socialism. But in actual life Democracy will never be "taken by itself"; it will be "taken together," with other things, it will exert its influence also on economics, helping in its reorganization; it will be subjected, in its turn, to the influence of economic development, and so on. That is the dialectical process of actual living History. Engels continues:
"This disruption (Sprengung) of the old machinery of government and its replacement by a new and really democratic one, is described in detail in the third part of the Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell once more in brief on this point, that is, on one or two features of this replacement, because in Germany the superstitious faith in the State has left the realm of philosophy and passed into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers. According to the teaching of the philosophers, the State is the "realization of Idea," or translated into theological language, the "Kingdom of God on earth"; the State is the field in which is, or should be realized, eternal Truth and Justice. And from this follows a superstitious reverence which takes root the more readily as people are accustomed, from their childhood, to think that the affairs and interests common to the whole of Society cannot be carried out and protected in any other way than in the one in existence—that is, by means of the State and its well-paid officials. People think they are making an extraordinary big step forward if they rid themselves of faith in a hereditary Monarchy and become partisans of a democratic republic. Whereas, in reality, the State is nothing more than an apparatus for the oppression of one class by another, in a democratic republic, not a whit less than in a Monarchy. At the best the State is an evil inherited by the proletariat after coming out victorious in the struggle for class supremacy. This victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, will be obliged immediately to amputate the worst features of this evil, until such time as a new generation, brought up under new and free social conditions, will prove capable of throwing on the dust-heap all the useless old rubbish of State organization."
Engels cautioned the Germans, in the event of the Monarchy being replaced by a Republic, not to forget the fundamentals of Socialism on the question of the State in general. His warnings now read like a direct lesson to Messrs. Tseretelli and Tchernoff, who revealed in their coalition tactics a superstitious faith in and respect towards the State!
Two more points. (1) When Engels says that in a democratic republic, "not a whit less" than in a Monarchy, the State remains "an apparatus for the oppression of one class by another," this by no means signifies that the form of oppression is a matter of indifference to the proletariat as some Anarchists "teach." A wider, more free and open form of the class struggle and class oppression enormously assists the proletariat in its struggles for the annihilation of all classes. (2) Why only a new generation will be able completely to scrap the ancient lumber of the State;—this question is bound up with the question of the supersession of Democracy, to which we now turn.
6. Engels on the Supersession of Democracy.
Engels had occasion to speak on this subject in connection with the question of the "scientific" incorrectness of the term "Social-Democrat."
In the introduction to his edition of his articles of the 'seventies on various subjects, mainly on international questions ("Internationales aus dem Volksstaat"), dated January 8, 1894 (that is, a year and a half before his death), Engels wrote that in all his articles he used the word "Communist" not "Social-Democrat" because at that time it was the Proudhonists in France and the Lassalleans in Germany who called themselves Social-Democrats.
"For Marx and for me [Engels continues], it was, therefore, quite impossible to use such an elastic term to describe our particular point of view. At the present time things are different, and this word ('Social-Democrat') may, perhaps, pass muster, although it remains inexact ('unpassend, literally 'unsuitable') for a party whose economic program is not simply a general Socialist one, but definitely Communist—for a party whose final political aim is the supersession of the whole State and, therefore, also of Democracy. But the names of real (the italics are Engels') political parties never completely correspond with fact: the party develops, the name remains."
The dialectician Engels remains true to dialectics to the last day of his life. Marx and I, he says, had a splendid, scientific, exact name for the party, but there was no real party, that is, no mass-proletarian party. Now, at the end of the 19th century, there is a real party; but its name is scientifically incorrect. Never mind, "it will pass muster," only let the party grow, only let not the scientific inexactness of its name he hidden from it, and let it not hinder its development in the right direction.
Perhaps, indeed, some humorist might comfort us Bolsheviks a la Engels: we have a real party, it is developing splendidly; even such a meaningless and barbarous term as "Bolshevik" "will pass muster" although it expresses nothing but the purely accidental fact that at the Brussels-London Conference of 1903 we had a majority (Boshinstvo). Perhaps now, when the July and August persecutions of our party by the Republican and "revolutionary" middle-class democracy have made the word "Bolshevik" such a universally respected name; when, in addition, these persecutions have signalized such a great historical step forward made by our party in its actual development, perhaps now even I should hesitate ‘to repeat my April suggestions, to change the name of our party. Perhaps I would propose a "compromise" to our comrades, to call ourselves the Communist Party, but to retain "Bolsheviks" in brackets. …
But the question of the name of the party is incomparably less important than the question of the relation of the revolutionary proletariat to the State.
In the usual debates about the State the mistake is constantly made against which Engels cautions us here, and which we have indicated above. Namely, it is constantly forgotten that the destruction of the State involves also the destruction of. Democracy; that the withering away of the State also means the withering away of Democracy. At first sight such a statement seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible. Indeed, perhaps someone or other may begin to fear lest we be expecting the advent of such an order of Society in which the principle of majority rule will not be respected—for is not Democracy just the recognition of this principle?
No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. No, Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against another.
We set ourselves, as our final aim, the task of the destruction of the State, that is, of every organized and systematic violence, every form of violence against man in general. We do not expect the advent of an order of Society in which the principle of the submission of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But, striving for Socialism, we are convinced that it will develop further into Communism, and, side by side with this, there will vanish all need for force, for the subjection of one man to another, of one section of Society to another, since people will grow accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social existence without subjection.
In order to emphasize this element of habit, Engels speaks of a new generation, "brought up under new and free social conditions which will prove capable of throwing on the dust heap all the useless and old rubbish of State organizations"—every sort of State, including even the democratic republican State.
For the elucidation of this, we must examine the question of the economic foundations of the withering away of the State.