Interesting point about Rubel Kurasje - can you give me some references?
With regard to the council communists, i would have said that they tended to identify the proletarian dictatorship with the state by defining the workers councils as the state, but perhaps you are thinking of other lines of thought they might have developed.
And isn't your tone in that last post just a little sectarian Dave.
So now there are sectarian "tones"? Or is it just that criticizing the ICC is sectarian? Anyway, I don't see how being anti-sectarian means being in favor of all the little sects -- to me it means being hostile to all sects, particularly the more dogmatic ones.
You argue against identifying the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yet as Dave has pointed out, the meaning of "state" (for Marx), is the organized power of a class used to suppress another class. So if the proletariat wields political power as a class in order to enforce its decrees, then this falls under what Marx refers to as "state." I don't see any way to argue against this while using Marx's definition of "state". If you don't think that the proletariat should wield political power as a class, which I don't think you are saying given what I know about the ICC, then you are not arguing against the identification of "state" (in Marx's sense) and proletarian dictatorship, but against both proletarian dictatorship and the state. But since that isn't what you're saying (I don't think), I don't know what you're on about.
With regard to the council communists, i would have said that they tended to identify the proletarian dictatorship with the state by defining the workers councils as the state, but perhaps you are thinking of other lines of thought they might have developed.
Exactly. And this is correct, so long as the state is understood as the organized means of domination by a class. Are you trying to say that the word "state" should not be used to describe this form of proletarian domination? If so, then you are engaging in an argument over the word state rather than the actual forms of organization proposed. This is fine, but it is good to be clear about this, lest you begin to talk past your opponents. But if you are arguing over the word "state", I don't see exactly how the word "semi-state" (frequently referred to by ICC'ers) could overcome the supposed ambiguities that come from the word "state." It just creates more ambiguity.
As for the first sentence I think that this reading of Marx has been questioned several times in the past. For just one example you should consult Maximillian Rubels writings. As you are about to argue yourself Marx actually did quite some reservations about this 'traditional' identification of state and dictatorship of the proletariat in his notes about the Paris Commune.
I don't think so. I think Marx was pretty consistent (post-German Ideoogy) with his use of "state" -- an organized means of domination by a class. In his published draft of The Civil War in France, Marx says nothing that implies that the proletariat abolished all forms of state. He just clarifies what he means by proletarian rule: direct democracy with recallable delegates, bottom up organization, the abolition of the standing army, etc. This is still a "state" in Marx's sense.
Perhaps you are referring to a passage or two from the First Draft, where he talks about the Commune abolishing the "State as such" (paraphrasing), but it is probable that he was referring to the bourgeois state, given both the context and the capitalization of "State".
Mikus: it's true that there is a danger of this discussion about the transitional state going off into a debate about words. But the underlying, material problem of the transitional state is the survival of other classes than the proletariat in the transition period. In other words, while the working class has to wield power as a class through its councils, there will also be a need for the entire population (except for the remains of the bourgeoisie) to be organised alongside the working class. You can call the workers councils the state if you like; we prefer to call this general organisation the state, following Marx's remark that "the state is the organisation of society" (as long as there are still classes). The fundamental issue is not the term we use but the necessity for the working class to remain autonomous and not to cede control to this general organisation. The same goes for other classically 'statist' organs that may appear during the revolution, such as an army distinct from the workers' militias. We don't think this is just abstract speculation: it is based on the real experience of the Soviet state in Russia. Certainly many things have changed since that time in the composition of the different classes, but we still think there are fundamental lessons to be drawn from this experience with regard to the relationship between the working class and the transitional state. Of course none of these lessons would apply for the majority of anarchists or councilists who see the soviet state as a pure creation of the Bolshevik party and/or as anti-working class from the beginning.
Marxism has always polemicised against the anti-statism of anarchist moralism. A far greater danger than this though is to see the state as an agency, a force for the liberation of humanity. In the "Civil War in France" Marx talked about smashing the state and, though I can't find the quote, I believe in the same book he said something to the effect that the revolution wasn't against this or that form of state, but against the state itself. I shall look this up.
In Anti-durhing and "Origins..", Engels denounces the idea that state control could equate with the proletariat's emancipation and calls for the former to be consigned to the Museum of Aniquities.
Despite confusions over the role of the state, the communist left from Marx, the Bolsheviks and the Italian (specifically as Alf points out), the Dutch and German lefts, today we can draw a synthesis of their clearest positions, not only on the essentially conservative nature of the state - its inherent tendency to maintain the status quo - but also on the primacy of the dictatorship of the workers' councils as the organs of change and the organs that have to maintain their autonomy from the transitional state.
The bourgeois state has to be smashed but can't simply be replaced with a proletarian one because the state feeds off scarcity and class division. A "proletarian state" is like a "national socialism". Even without the existence of a bourgeoisie, the very essence of a transitional state would be a restraint on the communist perspective.
Marxism has always polemicised against the anti-statism of anarchist moralism.
The irony in this remark, besides the fact that it's predictably trite sectarian nonsense, is that as the discussion above has shown (some) Marxists have used the word without disagreement to the strategy of anarchists. In fact the usage of 'state' in a councilist sense is quite in keeping with something we wouldn't call a state, but 'anti-statism'. Are we then to believe that the motivations of the anarchists were vain individualistic moralism in comparison to Marxists who were grounded in the working class? Rubbish. And again mate, 'Marxism' was so many polemics behind what anarchists knew already.
Read his 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.
Did, long ago. And I don't agree. As for the German Ideology, it could have been written by an anarchist - in large part attacking another anarchist, Stirner, who was just a philosophical anti-social wanker. You seemed to suggest Marx was consistent on the state from then on (which is interesting anyway), but of course this was after the 1843 Critique. What's it to be? Or has he always had a perfect conception of it?
There's certainly a lot of cross-overs in his early and late work - almost a resurgence of the spirit of his earliest projects. But there's also contradictions in between. What evidence do you have that proletarian rule was for him was always "direct democracy with recallable delegates, bottom up organization..."?
Marx says nothing that implies that the proletariat abolished all forms of state
Perhaps you are referring to a passage or two from the First Draft, where he talks about the Commune abolishing the "State as such" (paraphrasing), but it is probable that he was referring to the bourgeois state, given both the context and the capitalization of "State".
Which is rather confusing.
It should be pointed out that not only were the healthiest features of the Commune already long part of the programme of anarchists, but unlike Marx, anarchists criticized its reactionary parts and its throwbacks to the 'bourgeois State'. For all we know Marx was quite happy to incorporate those elements into his 'proletarian rule'. Words and their meanings are vitally important.
Who then is incorrect? Those who always recognised the class-based nature of the state, and then the 'nation-state' as a fundamentally bourgeois engine - therefore seeking the abolition of all states and principled opposition to its machinery in the present...or those who couldn't even decide what the state was, who opposed and supported it on different occassions, saw it as class-based, but then possible to be used and manipulated and who could get away with interpreting the 'Civil War' a la Lenin?
I don't want to overstate the clarity of Marx and Engels on the question of the state but they certainly approached the question with rigour and some substantial doubts about the proletarian state. It's the negative elements of the proletarian state that I want to concentrate on here.
In "The Civil War in France", Marx wrote: "In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worse sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible unitil such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire ,umber of the state on the scrap heap" ( or in the "museum of antiquities" if you like). "The working class cannot simply lay holld of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes".
And in a prescient sentence: "Imperialism is, (at the same time) the most prostitute form of state power... whose direct antithesis was the Commune".
It's not a question of words (won't get us a "flea hop nearer") but of content. In a letter to Bebel (March 1875), while affirming the proletariat's use of the force of the state against adverseries, Marx says he would rather use the word 'Commune' ("Which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word"). There is much in this short letter which indicates Marx's concern about the contradictions of a 'proletarian state'.
In "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", Engels again affirms the role of the state as an expression of exploitation, class antagaonism and oppressions which "renders itself unecessary" when the whole of society coheres, it becomes superflous and its first act in such a situation becomes its last. "It is not abolished. It dies out". Something that arose, that was "invented" to seal the right of exploitation, class division, oppression, private property, wealth and taxes - the state, cannot be a progressive force.
The Commune showed that the state had to be destroyed and this was an enormous step forward for the working class. The step showed that it wasn't destroyed by abstract moralism, federalism and anti-authoritarianism, but by unity and centralisation.
The question of the state is the question of the period of transition from capitalism to communism and the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks showed the immaturity and weaknesses on this question (not least because they were making a revolution and not writing about it, as Lenin said).
That the state goes on for ever and takes on the mantle of the dominant class is an incorrect position. The state hasn't existed for ever and has represented an economically dominant class, ie one based on exploitation.Is the proletariat to be an economically dominant class, one based on oppression and exploitation?
The state is essentially conservative and backward, always lagging behind developments in society and possible advances, tending to maintain and reinforce divisions because this is its raison d'etre. Even the state of the revolutionary bourgeoisie in the French revolution had to be almost daily cajoled, pushed, threatened, overturned in order to maintain the bourgeois revolution. The advanced German state of Bismark still accomodated the Junkers class into the 20th century. And the "cutting edge" British state still accomodated slavery after Russia abolished serfdom and still today accomodates the landowner, the aristocracy and elements of the monarchy.
And along with "anti-fascism", the "defence of the workers' state" (somtimes "degenerated"), was one of the twin pillars mobilising the working class for imperialist war.
mikus wrote:
Read his 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.Did, long ago. And I don't agree.
You can say you don't agree all you want, but we can see what Marx actually said. Dave C already quoted this so I'm not sure why you're pressing this, since you haven't stated any disagreement that it is basically the same point as Marx made in The Civil War in France.
The separation of the political state from civil society appears as the separation of the deputies from their mandators. From itself, society delegates to its political existence only the elements . . . . The delegates of civil society are a society whose members are connected by the form of instruction or commission with those who commission them. They are formally commissioned, but once they are actual they are no longer commissioned. They are supposed to be delegates, and they are not. (http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch06.htm)
I.e. Marx is supporting a form of democracy in which society only commissions its general functions to certain people (so that they remain commissioned delegates, which representatives in bourgeois democracy don't). I'm not aware of Marx specifically saying in The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right that elected persons should be recallable, but he specifically argues that in a "representative democracy" the elected officials are not delegates. He contrasts this state of affairs with "true democracy":
The modem French have conceived it thus: In true democracy the political state disappears [der politische Staat untergehe]. This is correct inasmuch as qua political state, qua constitution it is no longer equivalent to the whole.
In context Marx is speaking about how in political states the particular interests of the sovereign is treated as if they were the universal interest. This is because the political state forms a separate sphere of social life, which uses general means (the rule of law, police, military, etc.) to enforce the interests of those who wield its power. So in a "true democracy", there is no separate sphere of society which represents its interest as the general interest. In other words, you don't have a separate group of decision-makers at all. He doesn't speak of recallable delegates (that I know of), but the criticism of representative democracy clearly foreshadows that of the vision of the Commune in The Civil War in France. You can speak of new ideas on the state which he developed later on in his life, to some extent, but to say that there is any sort of contradiction here is a great overstatement and simply untrue from the point of view of simple logic.
As for the German Ideology, it could have been written by an anarchist - in large part attacking another anarchist, Stirner, who was just a philosophical anti-social wanker. You seemed to suggest Marx was consistent on the state from then on (which is interesting anyway), but of course this was after the 1843 Critique. What's it to be? Or has he always had a perfect conception of it?
If I had spoken of Marx having a perfect conception of the state (either in his early writings or his later writings), this would be worth responding to. But I didn't, so it isn't.
I only said that Marx did not significantly alter his views on the state between his early writings and his late writings. This doesn't imply anything about perfection or even about whether or not his ideas were correct. There is a difference between having perfect ideas and having consistent ideas, as I'm sure you understand, but for some reason choose to forget when it's convenient for you to try to misrepresent my argument.
There's certainly a lot of cross-overs in his early and late work - almost a resurgence of the spirit of his earliest projects. But there's also contradictions in between. What evidence do you have that proletarian rule was for him was always "direct democracy with recallable delegates, bottom up organization..."?
I dealt with this above. And you have yet to give an example of a contradiction.
mikus wrote:
Marx says nothing that implies that the proletariat abolished all forms of statemikus wrote:
Perhaps you are referring to a passage or two from the First Draft, where he talks about the Commune abolishing the "State as such" (paraphrasing), but it is probable that he was referring to the bourgeois state, given both the context and the capitalization of "State".Which is rather confusing.
Not really. Firstly, I misquoted Marx; he never refers to the "State as such", but rather to the "State itself." In context Marx actually specifies exactly what he mans by the "State" (notice the capitalization) -- "the centralized executive, of which the Second Empire was only the exhausting formula". Which is why he says that the Commune was not an attempt to simply transfer this power into different hands, but to smash that power itself -- the Commune abolished "the centralized executive" which Marx referred to as "the State." This is perfectly clear if you read the whole paragraph.
It should be pointed out that not only were the healthiest features of the Commune already long part of the programme of anarchists, but unlike Marx, anarchists criticized its reactionary parts and its throwbacks to the 'bourgeois State'. For all we know Marx was quite happy to incorporate those elements into his 'proletarian rule'. Words and their meanings are vitally important.
What anarchists advocated the Commune? And even if you could find an abundance of anarchists who advocated something like the Commune (which would be strange as there was not an abundance of anarchists prior to the Commune), it wouldn't change anything as the Commune was not a specifically anarchist idea -- it had long been supported by radical Republicans (and was seen by many Communards as a return back to the ideas of the first French Revolution), so your attempt to make the anarchists out to be the best on the basis of their supposedly having the idea of the Commune first backfires -- by your own criterion radical Republicans would be the most correct. And I already gave an example of Marx supporting something similar to the Commune's attack on parliamentary democracy back in 1843, so it's not exactly like Marx was late to the game.
And give examples of anarchist criticisms of the Commune. My impression is that most anarchists criticized its lack of enactment of socialist principles -- which are the exact same criticisms that Marx held, except that he didn't feel it necessary to air them in a document published only a few days after the fall of the Commune and the mass murder of Communards.
Who then is incorrect? Those who always recognised the class-based nature of the state, and then the 'nation-state' as a fundamentally bourgeois engine - therefore seeking the abolition of all states and principled opposition to its machinery in the present...or those who couldn't even decide what the state was, who opposed and supported it on different occassions, saw it as class-based, but then possible to be used and manipulated and who could get away with interpreting the 'Civil War' a la Lenin?
Since I'm not an orthodox Marxist, I have no interest in defending orthodox Marxists. I think they were very mistaken about many things. If you're trying to make me choose between Bakunin and Lenin, I'd have to say neither. It is well known that Lenin's organizational principles had quite a bit in common with Bakunin's. (It's amusing, by the way, that Anarcho tries to dismiss Bakunin's authoritarianism on the basis of his living under Tsarism, while I can only imagine what kind of response a Leninist apologist would get from Anarcho if s/he tried to dismiss Bolshevik authoritarianism and centralism on the same basis, as they frequently do).
Baboon, first of all you really should read the previous discussion on this thread. I do not think you are approaching this with any "rigour" whatsoever. You attribute not one, but two quotes that are from Engels to Marx, and you wonder about the passage on the "state itself" which I quoted long ago! What you quote as coming from The Civil War in France, is actually from Engels' 1891 postscript (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm). The letter to Bebel that you quote from was written by Engels, not Marx (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm). Both of these quotes are in State and Revolution, but Lenin was well aware of where they came from.
When you actually do quote from The Civil War in France, you cut out the substance of the passage, which does not support your argument at all:
Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form of the state power which nascent middle class society had commenced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the enslavement of labor by capital. The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
As Engels said of The Civil War in France,
This shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a new and really democratic state is described in detail in the third section of The Civil War. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)
Basically, Marx is describing a "new and really democratic state" (i.e. the Commune) as the antithesis of a bourgeois state. If you think that Marx saw this "new and really democratic state" as conservative, you are entirely mistaken. Certainly he did not see this "new and really democratic state" as the end goal of the workers' movement, but he did see it as its necessary and revolutionary form: i.e., as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx did not identify the state in general with the bourgeois state. When he said that the proletariat gives the state a revolutionary form, he was not saying that the state in general is revolutionary, just as he would never say that the state in general is conservative. It simply makes no sense within his framework. Since he defined the state as the organized political power of a class, the dictatorship of the proletariat is by definition a state power. There is no need to torturously justify your theory with reference to Marx. Just acknowledge it as a different theory.
I am not interested in some metaphysical discussion of what "the state" really is. You seem to want to define the state in a different way than Marx, which is fine. Once again, you should actually read this thread before going on about the empirical characteristics of a "state" that you define in a manner different from Marx, while pretending that you are talking about the same thing as Marx. You seem to be using the word "state" in a manner closer to Bakunin in his attacks on Marx.
The state hasn't existed for ever and has represented an economically dominant class, ie one based on exploitation. Is the proletariat to be an economically dominant class, one based on oppression and exploitation?
Compare with Bakunin
If the proletariat is to be the ruling class, it may be asked, then whom will it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will be subject to this new rule, this new state. . . . If there is a state, then necessarily there is domination and consequently slavery. A state without slavery, open or camouflaged, is inconceivable--that is why we are enemies of the state. What does it mean, 'the proletariat raised to a governing class'? (Statism and Anarchy, 177-178)
Marx responded to Bakunin's question in his notes on Bakunin's book:
It means that the proletariat, instead of fighting in individual instances against the economically privileged classes, has gained sufficient strength and organisation to use general means of coercion in its struggle against them; but it can only make use of such economic means as abolish its own character as wage labourer and hence as a class; when its victory is complete, its rule too is therefore at an end, since its class character will have disappeared. (MECW, vol. 24, 519)
This is what Marx means by proletarian state power, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Alf acknowledges. The "autonomy" of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the transitional state makes no sense within the framework of Marx's theory.
It should be pointed out that not only were the healthiest features of the Commune already long part of the programme of anarchists, but unlike Marx, anarchists criticized its reactionary parts and its throwbacks to the 'bourgeois State'. For all we know Marx was quite happy to incorporate those elements into his 'proletarian rule'. Words and their meanings are vitally important.
Well put and essentially the whole point!
Not to mention, of course, that Marx was writting as an official of an organisation which was not Marxist, commenting on a revolt which was not remotely Marxist in inspiration and in an environment where it was best to be as positive as possible about it (as the ruling classes were attacking the commune and the threat it posed). For example, Marx states without comment this:
"Another measure of this class was the surrender to associations of workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded or preferred to strike work."
Compensation for the capitalists? I assume that the ICC and such like also include this into their political programme?
Given the circumstance, Marx's account of the Commune cannot be taken as the final word of his ideas on the matter -- particularly given his subsequent comments on workers in America, Britain and Holland voting to introduce socialism. And, of course, Engels comments which I have provided confirm this.
Unless we simply conclude that Marx forgot the necessity of smashing the state a mere 2 months after the Commune was destroyed, which seems unlikely...
Jesus Christ, Anarcho, go take a logic class or read a book or two about it. It is tiresome to see you keep arguing about things that you obviously know nothing about.
ROTFL! Please, it is you who really seems to be clueless about Marx and Engels. What is tiresome is seeing plain language and quotes from marx and engels simply ignored.
Definitions do not "flow" from analysis! Definitions must precede analysis, or else you are not analyzing anything!
You clearly do not understand the basics of the scientific method, where you study actual facts, generalise conclusions and definitions from them, and then use what you have generated to analysis new facts.
My whole point is that Marx did not use a scientific analysis or definition of the state, he used a metaphysical one. With a scientific analysis of the state (as expounded by Kropotkin in his essay "The State", for example) you would generalise from what the state was and is by studying history. If you definite what the state is before such an analysis then you end up making some pretty stupid mistakes -- like thinking that workers could vote socialism into being. As Marx did. Or thinking that a socialist party elected to power equals rule by the working class. As Marx did.
Do you realize that you are Marx and anarchists used the same word ("state") to talk about two entirely different things, and that your claims are therefore not valid? You keep talking about "the state" but the word is not defined the same way in the two theories. This is why you continue to misunderstand what Marx was saying.
Which is part of my basic point, so I am well aware of this fact. Christ, why do I even bother? I am not misunderstanding what Marx was saying, I'm pointing out how his analysis of the state was flawed and, as a result, produced some extremelt wrong conclusions about social change.
You can see the distinction much more clearly. The words have the same spelling and pronunciation, but not the same meaning any more than "chair[1]" (that you sit on) and "chair[2]" (that "chairs" a meeting), or "football[1]" (as in the ball used in American football) and "football[2]" (as in American football) and "football[3]" (as in what Americans call "soccer"). There are a million examples of this sort of thing in ordinary language, and your inability to understand it is most definitely impressive, but entirely understandable if it is recognized that you are a sectarian wingnut and not a serious theorist.
I really have to wonder why I bother. Now my own basic argument is repeated to me as if I am not aware of what I'm arguing! And the point is that Marx's definition and analysis of the state was wrong, and as such he argued that certain institutions (such as representative government) was equilivant to the working class being in power. This is a state in marx's sense (rule by a class) but in reality it is a state in the anarchist sense (rule by a minority).Hell, for Marx and Engels even a democratic republic could be captured and used to introduce socialism. Which shows how flawed their analysis was!
I should also point out that you again show deep confusion when you say that anarchists "recognise" that the state[1] "evolved certain structures to secure minority rule." You are treating this as if anarchists looked at "the state" and then noticed that it had "evolved certain structures to secure minority rule." But you state elsewhere that the anarchists define the state as an instrument of minority rule. Which is it?
the definition comes from the analysis. As you do not understand the scientific method of induction-deduction I can guess where the problems understanding it come in...
well, what can I say. My attempts to explain my argument have run up against the walls of Marxist metaphysics.... oh, hum.
The point is not that Marx and Engels are against a Republic (Dave repeatedly acknowledged that they were in favor of a Republic, albeit one that was not a bourgeois parliament!), but that there is no logical necessity in their being in favor of a Republic.
Given that Marx and Engels repeatedly argued for a republic (suitable transformed and refashioned, as Dave has repeatedly ignored) then we can say that, for them, a republic (universal suffrage as being the political rule by the working class) was at the core of their ideology. I'm not aware of them advocating party dictatorship, for example, although their advocating of proletarian rule when it was a minority of the working class in most countries is extremely problematic (as problematic as thinking a political revolution could come before a social one, hence the working class is still a proletariat -- as Bakunin argued).
Yes, in theory there is no reason why Marx and Engels would not have supported the soviets if they were alive in 1905. The Mensheviks did, after all, as a means of achieving a republic. What is significant is that they did not draw that conclusion at the time, unlike Bakunin, and spent a lot of time attacking those who did (Bakunin). Rather. they concluded that working class people would best fight for a republic and utilise the political power it gave them to achieve socialism. Until then, both Marx and Engels recommended that workers not take part in any revolts which would give the bourgeoisie an excuse to attack them.
Surely it is significant that Marx and Engels did not draw the conclusions Bakunin did and that it took marxists over 5 decades to finally do so? Is that irrelevant to their analysis of the state? As irrelevant to their notion that the republic could be captured and used to introduce socialism? Does this not flow from a flawed analysis of the state? Or is it just pure coincidence?
The working class has to keep reaffirming and deepening the lessons it's already learnt. Even after the lessons of the Paris Commune, the clarity on the question of the state achieved by Marx and Engels was contradicted by Marx (in the 'Preface to the Gotha Programme'), calling the state "nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". This particular regression the Bolsheviks took up with the idea of the "proletarian state", the contradictory nature of which was almost immediately shown up in practice.
A mere 2 months after the Commune was destroyed, Marx was arguing that working class people could achieve socialism by utilising universal suffrage in a republic (or a close approximation, as in Britain). He made the same point the next year. That would suggest either than Marx forgot the "lessons" he had learned, or perhaps he had learned a different set of lessons.... The former seems extremely unlikely....
In his "Origins... " , Engels clearly analysed the state as the result and expression of irreconcilable class contradictions. Can the state be neutral, attenuating and mediating these contradictions? The oppressed and exploited classes of all of civilisation's historical epochs give a clear and unambiguous answer.
And Engels repeatedly argued that the republic could be seized by the working class, via democratic means, to solve these contradictions....
The state is an organisation of violence and exploitation that today expresses the mainenance of the dictatorship of capital.
According to Marx, "the industrial bourgeoisie applauds with servile bravos the coup d’état of December 2, the annihilation of parliament, the downfall of its own rule, the dictatorship of Bonaparte." He repeats this identification: "Passing of the parliamentary regime and of bourgeois rule. Victory of Bonaparte." Apparently the state can exist under capitalism and not be an expression of "the dictatorship of capital"! Which raises a lot of questions, particularly when Marx argued that the "fundamental contradiction" of a democracy under capitalism is that the classes "whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate" it "puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage." Can we draw a conclusion from this?
The democratic states of the 20th century and the present day, while being a stronger weapon of class rule for the bourgeoisie, express exactly the same fundamental state capitalist tendencies as Fascism and Stalinism.
And yet the democratic states of the 19th century could be used by working class people to introduce socialism! So much for smashing the state, rather than smashing the state machine/power!
Or maybe your bizarre reading of the transitional state power as a "conservative body" is completely alien to Marx's thought before, during, and after the Paris Commune . . . .
Now that is funny, as I have provided more than enough quotes from Marx (and Engels) before, during, and after the Paris Commune to support my argument. These quotes are either ignored or misread...
You should be well aware that Marx called for the workers to seize political power--that is, state power--before the Paris Commune.
And before and after the Commune, he argued that universal suffrage was political power of the working class. And in The Civil War in France he defines "the state power" he thinks should be smashed, namely the "centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature . . . originates from the days of absolute monarchy". In other words, as in his analysis of Bonaparte's coup, it predates the bourgeois regime. Significantly, for proper capitalist states (like America and Britain) he thought that universal suffrage could be used to take power. On mainland Europe, the first task would be to create a republic and smash the pre-capitalist elements of the state machine. In both cases, the republic, once captured, would be refashioned to make it more democratic and accountable.
So Marx was quite clear: when it comes to the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletarian state power is revolutionary, not conservative.
He was also quite clear that this could be achived by means of capturing the republic by means of universal suffrage... Which places the whole notion of smashing the state power into a clear light, a light which shows the inaccuracy of the standard, post-1917, Marxist account.
Here is a simple catalogue of Marx's substantial references to parliament in the drafts and final version of The Civil War in France. I believe it shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Marx did not see the Commune as a parliamentary regime, but rather praised the Commune for being a revolt against both the "executive and parliamentary forms of class domination." Thus Marx's view of the Commune cannot serve as an example of some general theory of using the bourgeois, parliamentary state for the proletarian dictatorship. Perhaps Anarcho will finally admit that here Marx supported the overturning of the parliamentary form. It is a point of substantial importance. Below are Marx's references to parliament (my bold):
Draft 1
It [the Commune] was not one of those dwarfish struggles between the executive and the parliamentary forms of class domination, but a revolt against both these forms, integrating each other, and of which the parliamentary form was only the deceitful bywork of the Executive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm
Parliamentarism in France had come to an end. Its last term and fullest sway was the Parliamentary Republic from May 1848 to the coup d’état. The Empire that killed it, was its own creation. Under the Empire with its Corps législatif and its Senate – in this form it has been reproduced in the military monarchies of Prussia and Austria – it had been a mere farce, a mere bywork of despotism in its crudest form. Parliamentarism then was dead in France and the workmen’s revolution certainly was not to awaken it from this death. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm
The general suffrage, till now abused either for the parliamentary sanction of the Holy State Power, or a play[thing] in the hands of the ruling classes, only employed by the people to sanction (choose the instruments of) parliamentary class rule once in many years, [is] adapted to its real purposes, to choose by the Communes their own functionaries of administration and initiation. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm
As the State machinery and parliamentarism are not the real life of the ruling classes, but only the organized general organs of their dominion, the political guarantees and forms and expressions of the old order of things, so the Commune is not the social movement of the working class and therefore of a general regeneration of mankind, but the organized means of action. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm
Draft 2
The modern bourgeois State is embodied in two great organs, parliament and the government. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch02.htm#D2s1
This was the State power in its ultimate and most prostitute shape, in its supreme and basest reality, which the Paris working class had to overcome, and of which this class alone could rid society. As to parliamentarism, it had been killed by its own [victory] and by the Empire. All the working class had to do was not to revive it. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch02.htm#D2s1
It [the Commune] was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch02.htm#D2s1
Final Draft
However, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois republicans had, from the front, to to the rear of the "Party of Order" — a combination formed by all the rival fractions and factions of the appropriating classes. The proper form of their joint-stock government was the parliamentary republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its president. Theirs was a regime of avowed class terrorism and deliberate insult towards the "vile multitude". http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
mikus wrote:
Definitions do not "flow" from analysis! Definitions must precede analysis, or else you are not analyzing anything!You clearly do not understand the basics of the scientific method, where you study actual facts, generalise conclusions and definitions from them, and then use what you have generated to analysis new facts.
It's amazing that someone as clueless as yourself can talk about how someone else doesn't understand the basics of scientific method. Please give an example of "generalizing" a definition. In any case you can think of you will see that the word already had a meaning. At best you can say that you started to use a word in a different way after analyzing things but that is a different issue. It is well known that definitions are neither true nor false. This was known even before the advent of modern logic. Exactly why you're trying to defend yourself on this issue, I don't know. You're simply wrong. No logician (with the exception of Quine and those who follow him) would say that definitions are propositions. And if they are not propositions, then they are neither true nor false, since only propositions can be true or false. Again, this is so obvious that it's amazing you aren't aware, even without being well-versed in logic or philosophy of science. The fact that you think you have the right to accuse others of not understanding the basics of scientific method is even more amazing, especially as this is not a scientific issue but a grammatical one.
My whole point is that Marx did not use a scientific analysis or definition of the state, he used a metaphysical one. With a scientific analysis of the state (as expounded by Kropotkin in his essay "The State", for example) you would generalise from what the state was and is by studying history. If you definite what the state is before such an analysis then you end up making some pretty stupid mistakes -- like thinking that workers could vote socialism into being. As Marx did. Or thinking that a socialist party elected to power equals rule by the working class. As Marx did.
There is no such thing as a scientific definition. Stipulative definitions are frequently used in science but they are not "scientific" definitions. There is nothing particularly scientific about definitions, and no empirical study is necessary to create a definition. Unless, of course, you think a dictionary is a book of science!
Also, please explain how you generalize a definition of the state from a study of the state? That's like saying "I generalized a definition of car by looking at a bunch of different cars." You would first have to know what a car was before you could study them. You are again supposing that a word can function in a sentence without having any meaning.
mikus wrote:
Do you realize that you are Marx and anarchists used the same word ("state") to talk about two entirely different things, and that your claims are therefore not valid? You keep talking about "the state" but the word is not defined the same way in the two theories. This is why you continue to misunderstand what Marx was saying.Which is part of my basic point, so I am well aware of this fact. Christ, why do I even bother? I am not misunderstanding what Marx was saying, I'm pointing out how his analysis of the state was flawed and, as a result, produced some extremelt wrong conclusions about social change.
Yes, and your point is simply invalid. A definition cannot be wrong, so your criticism of Marx for having a supposedly wrong definition cannot be correct.
mikus wrote:
You can see the distinction much more clearly. The words have the same spelling and pronunciation, but not the same meaning any more than "chair[1]" (that you sit on) and "chair[2]" (that "chairs" a meeting), or "football[1]" (as in the ball used in American football) and "football[2]" (as in American football) and "football[3]" (as in what Americans call "soccer"). There are a million examples of this sort of thing in ordinary language, and your inability to understand it is most definitely impressive, but entirely understandable if it is recognized that you are a sectarian wingnut and not a serious theorist.I really have to wonder why I bother. Now my own basic argument is repeated to me as if I am not aware of what I'm arguing!
So now your claim is that that a form of working class power in which workers elect directly revocable representatives with short terms and no standing army except the armed working class, is a form of minority rule? At least you've made a substantive claim (finally!), but unfortunately it's a false one. By your own criteria a system of worker's councils would also be a form of minority rule, which I doubt you want to argue given how much you've been trying to claim that Bakunin was some sort of councilist before worker's councils even existed.
And the point is that Marx's definition and analysis of the state was wrong, and as such he argued that certain institutions (such as representative government) was equilivant to the working class being in power. This is a state in marx's sense (rule by a class) but in reality it is a state in the anarchist sense (rule by a minority).Hell, for Marx and Engels even a democratic republic could be captured and used to introduce socialism. Which shows how flawed their analysis was!
Again you are on about Marx having a "wrong" definition, which is nonsense.
And you should note, as demonstrated in the quotes from 1843 and from all of the drafts of The Civil War In France that Dave C and myself posted, Marx was not in favor of just any form of representative government, but a specific kind -- a Republic in the sense of the Commune, not a parliamentary republic. He always criticized the parliamentary republic. (And as I mentioned before, this is not any kind of idiosyncrasy on Marx's part, but is a distinction that was familiar to at least some of the Communards themselves!)
Advocating using parliament for certain ends does not necessarily mean thinking that parliament is a form of working class rule. As you yourself have noted repeatedly, Marx's idea was to abolish parliamentary institutions by instituting the right of revocability, shorter terms, abolition of the standing army, etc., once socialists were elected. If you disagree with this, then fine. I certainly don't think it's applicable today, and I think Marx overestimated the plausibility of this even in his own time. But you yourself have noted that this worked at least once in history -- in the Paris Commune! So the dismissiveness with which you treat this idea is not warranted.
mikus wrote:
I should also point out that you again show deep confusion when you say that anarchists "recognise" that the state[1] "evolved certain structures to secure minority rule." You are treating this as if anarchists looked at "the state" and then noticed that it had "evolved certain structures to secure minority rule." But you state elsewhere that the anarchists define the state as an instrument of minority rule. Which is it?the definition comes from the analysis. As you do not understand the scientific method of induction-deduction I can guess where the problems understanding it come in...
well, what can I say. My attempts to explain my argument have run up against the walls of Marxist metaphysics.... oh, hum.
It's precious to be called a metaphysician by someone who thinks that definitions are inductive statements! If that were true then a statement like "Bachelors are unmarried men" would be the same sort of proposition as "All bachelors are over 5' 10" ", and we'd do empirical studies to determine whether or not all bachelors were in fact unmarried men. But as even continental philosophers knew, the former statement is not inductive.
If you knew even the first thing about metaphysics then you'd know that metaphysics tends to creep in when empirical and grammatical statements are confused. Which is exactly why your attempt to find some sort of essence to the state, some "true" definition is nothing but metaphysics.
By the way, have you decided whether or not you want to defend your implication that scientists "leave the door open" to claiming that turtles are snakes? Or are you going to finally admit that there is no way in which arguing that rule of the proletariat as a class is a form of state power justifies party dictatorship, and that your claim to the contrary was based on (like so many of your other claims) extremely defective logic?
Thanks DaveC for correcting my misquotes of Engels and Marx.
I think that the question of what the state is in general is absolutely crucial to this discussion as shown in Marx's position against Hegel (the state as the incarnation of the idea and reason - a position not a million miles away from the "proletarian state"), Marx's Ethnological Notes, parts of the Grundrisse, Capital, Engel's "Origins..." based on the work by L.H. Morgan. These are not diversions, but fundamental texts of the workers' movement. And you dismiss them all out of hand with your disinterest in "some metaphysical discussion of what the state really is".
The analyses of the workers' movement were not, of course, without weaknesses and errors, but in general were not static and developed along with reality, particularly the reality of class struggle. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx saw the taking over of the existing state, whereas after the Commune he saw only the violent destruction of the bourgeois state. The latter analysis itself wasn't so sudden a change but part of the development and refining of previous analyses, not least from the questions raised by the events of 1848. The Commune indeed raised the question of the "semi-state", a question raised at a higher level by the Russian Revolution long after the death of Marx. But after the Commune, the idea within the workers' movement of an equasion between the state, the centralisation of capital and communism were fed by pervading historical conditions.
DaveC, it's an insult to the marxist view of the state enumerated over decades, as an expression of a class divided society, to liken that analysis to some isolated quote of Bakunin whose practice towards the state is well known.
The question the Italian Left asked seventy years ago is the one to be addressed today: How did the 1917 Soviet state, a product of revolution in Russia, turn, just over a decade later into the bedrock of the counter-revolution? How did the "workers' state" turn to revolutionary war, Red Terror, and the violent suppression of authentic expressions of working class autonomy, support the exploitation of the same class, finally ending up supporting Russian imperialism and imperialism in general? How did a genuine proletarian revolution turn against the proletariat, is a question that demands an answer within a marxist framework and is much too important for DaveC's denial or to be left to anarchism to "answer".
One of the first coherent conclusion (Bilan, 1934) following Engels, was the state a "scourge" corresponding perfectly to the interests of exploiting classes but which can have little intrinsic relationship to the revolutionary function of the proletariat. Marx and Engels, I don't have to tell you, weren't around after the defeat of the Russian revolution, but revolutionaries were and used the previous work of their movement in a dynamic way. There is nothing specific in the works of Marx and Engels on the relationship between Party and state and it was down to the Italian Left to point out the irreconcilability of the two, even while it still had weaknesses and contradictions on the party and the state itself.
Engels analysis of the state in "Origins...", summarily dismissed by DaveC above, that the state emerges spontaneously out of class divided society and then represents the interests of an economically dominant class, was validated by the events of the Russian revolution and raised the question of the working class maintaining its independence from and defending its interests from those of the state. A couple of other "metaphysical" points for DaveC on the appearance of the state:
- As the workers' movement (from The Class Struggle in France) noted of the emergence of the American state (which Marx definitely had some illusions in ) that had no nobility, no standing army, no dynasty, no bureaucracy with permanent posts, none of the baggage of Europe, etc, still oozed corruption and became the master of society;
- The barbarians (from Engels) liberated the Roman populations from their own state, appropriated its land, divided it along gentile lines putting to the whole people and the gentes. But the almalgamation of the kinship barbarians (no state) and the people and detrius of the ex-Roman state (ie, different classes) inevitably gave rise to another state, totally contrary to the gentile constitution. A new state had to emerge of Kingships and Kingdoms.
Within the isolation and degeneration of the Russian revolution, the proletarian state engendered its own bureaucracy defending and entrenching its own interests. The elimination of private capital did not at all mean the elimation of capitalism. On the contrary, it strengthened the latter in Russia within the general tendency towards counter-revolution, state capitalism, nationalism and imperialism.
Marx raised the question in the "Critique of the Gotha Programme": "what transformation will the nature of the state undergo in communist society...?" We don't get a "flea hop" nearer with the formulation "workers' state" - in fact we are going away from it.
Baboon, could you actually read the thread before going on about the state here? Much of what you write about has already been discussed on here, yet you don't respond to it in any way.
Hello Mikus, how's the film club going?
I've read this thread, which at times has been a sterile battle of quotes. You can find quotes in the workers' movement to justify almost any position. The question is the marxist method.
The positions I'm expressing are consistent with the debate on the state that's been going on in the workers' movement for one and a half centuries.
The position I defend is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the centralised and unified worker's councils and it is absolutely necessary, based on the lessons of the workers' movement, particularly those of the Russian revolution (that haven't been discussed at any great depth on here at all) ,that their dictatorship is separate from and over and above the state.
Whilst this link isn't related to the more intricate details of this debate in it's later stages I still thought it a useful counterweight to all the emphasis on the differences between 'anarchist' and 'marxist' views on the state and between Marx and Bakunin rather than some of the more fundamental points of convergence between them, though it does rely only on a narrow selection of materials. See what you think:
http://www.geocities.com/icgcikg/english/freepopstate.htm?20083
or just go to the english section of the ICG Web site and look up 'Drafts and Translations'.
Mike, could you put a copy of, or different link to the article you are referring to., please? The ICG site is banned here.
Devrim
Devrim,
My IT skills are not good enough really. Try the John Gray Web Site or perhaps someone else at Lib Com could help??
I believe it shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Marx did not see the Commune as a parliamentary regime, but rather praised the Commune for being a revolt against both the "executive and parliamentary forms of class domination."
Christ, you really have not been paying attention have you? At all times I have stressed that, for Marx and Engels, once the state had been captured then it would be reformed, refashioned (to coin a phrase). One of those changes, as Marx notes in the Civil War in France, was to combine legislative and executive functions in one body (something Proudhon had argued for back in the 1840s, incidentally). To quote from the Second outline:
"But the proletariat cannot, as the ruling classes and their different rival fractions have done in the successive hours of their triumph, simply lay hold on the existent State body and wield this ready-made agency for their own purpose. The first condition for the holding of political power, is to transform its working machinery and destroy it as an instrument of class rule."
What part of "transform its working machinery " is hard to understand? Engels used the term "refashion" and explained what Marx meant in the published version:
"It is simply a question of showing that the victorious proletariat must first refashion the old bureaucratic, administrative centralised state power before it can use it for its own purposes: whereas all bourgeois republicans since 1848 inveighed against this machinery so long as they were in the opposition, but once they were in the government they took it over without altering it and used it partly against the reaction but still more against the proletariat."
Which is pretty clear and consistent with the second draft of the Civil War in France. Not to mention all those other quotes from Marx and Engels discussing how workers could utilise universal suffrage to achieve socialism.
Thus Marx's view of the Commune cannot serve as an example of some general theory of using the bourgeois, parliamentary state for the proletarian dictatorship. Perhaps Anarcho will finally admit that here Marx supported the overturning of the parliamentary form.
As I've stressed repeatedly, Marx and Engels wanted to transform, reform, refashion, the state once the working class had seized it (by electoral means, in places with a proper capitalist state like Britain, America and Holland). In other places, the republic would be created first (which explains why Marx recommended to the French workersnot to revolt against the Prussians but rather to “calmly and resolutely improve the opportunities of republican liberty.”) . To quote Engels from after the Commune:
"With respect to the proletariat the republic differs from the monarchy only in that it is the ready-for-use form for the future rule of the proletariat. You [in France] are at an advantage compared to us in already having it."
He then states the first task of the revolution would be to create a republic, while noting the "baseless illusions" of "entrust[ing] socialist tasks to it while it is dominated by the bourgeoisie." Elsewhere, he argued the British working class had not only to pursue economic struggles "but above all in winning political rights, parliament, through the working class organised into an independent party" (significantly, the original manuscript stated "but in winning parliament, the political power"). He goes on to state that the 1892 general election gave "a tough taste of their power, hitherto unexerted.". In 1891 he argued (after his preface to the 20th anniversay edition of Marx's Civil War in France):
"If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown."
And he was not talking about the Paris Commune, as I proved previously.
Yes, this is Engels and not Marx, but these comments mirror similar ones by Marx. As Engels stated, "Marx and I, for forty years, repeated ad nauseam that for us thedemocratic republic is the only political form in which the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class can first be universalised and then culminate in the decisive victory of the proletariat." To quote from the drafts of the Civil War in France:
"The Revolution of February hoists the colours of the 'Social Republic,' thus proving at its outset that the true meaning of State power is revealed, that its pretence of being the armed force of public welfare, the embodiment of the general interests of societies rising above and keeping in their respective spheres the warring private interests, is exploded, that its secret as an instrument of class despotism is laid open, that the work men do want the Republic, no longer as a political modification of the old system of class rule, but as the revolutionary means of breaking down class rule itself."
So the "work men do want the Republic", that republic being that created in Revolution of February of 1848, but one transformed, reformed, refashioned. This seizure of political power would be used to reform the economy. The Commune was formed, political power was seized, by means of the ballot-box, using republican institutions. As Marx and Engels argued, an insurrection may be needed to create a republic and defend it but where a republic existed, then voting was the means to achieve political power -- an argument made before and after the Commune. Hell, Marx was arguing within 2 months of the defeat of the Commune what workers in Britain could utilise their state institutions to introduce socialism. Apparently he forgot his key lesson of the Paris Commune, as did Engels....
It is a point of substantial importance.
Well done in not understanding my plain words and instead inventing a straw man argument. Now I have presented more than enough quotes from Marx and Engels to show that they thought socialism could be achieved by means of universal suffrage, utilising the "political power" a republic gives the working class. Now, according to some, Marx and Engels advocated smashing the bourgeois state, including the republic. Obviously they did not. They repeatedly argued, before and after the Commune, that universal suffrage (or even close approximations to it, as in Britain) could be used to introduce socialism by capturing political power and refashioning the state. As Engels put it:
"In every struggle of class against class, the next end fought for is political power; the ruling class defends its political supremacy, that is to say its safe majority in the Legislature; the inferior class fights for, first a share, then the whole of that power, in order to become enabled to change existing laws in conformity with their own interests and requirements. Thus the working class of Great Britain for years fought ardently and even violently for the People's Charter [which demanded universal suffrage and yearly general elections], which was to give it that political power."
In America,the workers, Engels argued, "next step towards their deliverance" was "the formation of a political workingmen's party, with a platform of its own, and the conquest of the Capitol and the White House for its goal." As regards Britain, "where the industrial and agricultural working class forms the immense majority of the people, democracy means the dominion of the working class, neither more nor less. Let, then, that working class prepare itself for the task in store for it -- the ruling of this great Empire . . . And the best way to do this is to use the power already in their hands, the actual majority they possess . . . to send to Parliament men of their own order." In case this was not clear enough, he lamented: "Everywhere the labourer struggles for political power, for direct representation of his class in the legislature -- everywhere but in Great Britain."
Again, this is repeating similar arguments by Marx. (which I have provided previously) But apparently Marx and Engels did not actually hold to these positions. In fact, they held to the opposite opinion -- that the bourgeois republic was to be destroyed rather than captured and refashioned. So when Engels talked about conquering the White House or winning parliament he was just forgot the key lessons of Marx's accounts of the Commune, as had Marx himself.
I'm not really sure why I should bother with this. It is like talking to a brick wall. No matter what evidence I present, no matter how much I stress that the republic would be refashioned and reformed once it was captured, it all seems to no avail. I will end by stating that the notion that the bourgeois republic could be captured and reformed is a mistake that flows from the Marxist theory of the state, as I originally noted.
It's amazing that someone as clueless as yourself can talk about how someone else doesn't understand the basics of scientific method.
ROTFL! Please, I'm well aware of Marx and Engels, their theories and their limitations. As I have proven time and time again here. I'm not the one ignoring all those awkward quotes which both refute the standard Marxist account of their theory of the state and point to the limitations of said theory...
Please give an example of "generalizing" a definition.
How about studying the state, its structure, how it changed and evolved over time, looking into its role (as shown by its actions) and then coming up with a definition of the state based on a generalisation of the data you studied? Rather than, say, asserting that "the state" is an instrument of "class rule" (so opening the door to the door to party dictatorship as being a form of the "class rule" of the working class).
There is no such thing as a scientific definition.
So definitions are mere assertions, invented with no concern for facts or empirical evidence?
Also, please explain how you generalize a definition of the state from a study of the state?
As I said, you look at social institutions as they evolve and change over time, grouping those which share similar structures and roles together. Thus, for example, a republic is a state as it shares the same delegation of power into the hands of a few as a monarchy, as well as serving the interests of a ruling elite. A federation of communes is not a state as it does not share those features, based as it is on mass participation and decision making from the bottom-up.
Yes, and your point is simply invalid. A definition cannot be wrong, so your criticism of Marx for having a supposedly wrong definition cannot be correct.
In that case, can we define the state as "a social organisation" and so there will be a state under Marxist communism? Maybe that definition could be, what is the word? Wrong? Confused? What do you think?
So now your claim is that that a form of working class power in which workers elect directly revocable representatives with short terms and no standing army except the armed working class, is a form of minority rule?
Except, of course, the representatives had the power, they were the government. That was minority rule. That group has a separate and special interest separate from those who elected them. In the Commune, the representatives (as well as being bogged down by red-tape) also decreed themselves dictatorial power (the committee of public safety)/. In Russia, the Bolsheviks happily gerrymandered and disbanded soviets which were elected with non-Bolshevik majorities.
So, yes, the notion that working class power exists in a state, even a reformed republic, is flawed -- as history shows. The representatives, as well as the (new) state machine, do develop interests opposed to the electorate. As anarchists argued. To quote Murray Bookchin:
"Anarchist critics of Marx pointed out with considerable effect that any system of representation would become a statist interest in its own right, one that at best would work against the interests of the working classes (including the peasantry), and that at worst would be a dictatorial power as vicious as the worst bourgeois state machines. Indeed, with political power reinforced by economic power in the form of a nationalised economy, a 'workers' republic' might well prove to be a despotism (to use one of Bakunin's more favourite terms) of unparalleled oppression . . .""Republican institutions, however much they are intended to express the interests of the workers, necessarily place policy-making in the hands of deputies and categorically do not constitute a 'proletariat organised as a ruling class.' If public policy, as distinguished from administrative activities, is not made by the people mobilised into assemblies and confederally co-ordinated by agents on a local, regional, and national basis, then a democracy in the precise sense of the term does not exist. The powers that people enjoy under such circumstances can be usurped without difficulty . . . [I]f the people are to acquire real power over their lives and society, they must establish -- and in the past they have, for brief periods of time established -- well-ordered institutions in which they themselves directly formulate the policies of their communities and, in the case of their regions, elect confederal functionaries, revocable and strictly controllable, who will execute them. Only in this sense can a class, especially one committed to the abolition of classes, be mobilised as a class to manage society."
["The Communist Manifesto: Insights and Problems", pp. 14-17, Black Flag, no. 226, pp. 16-7]
That was a key part of Bakunin's critique, representative democracy creates new forms of class oppression simply because it empowers the few rather than the many. Thus the aim is to smash the state and replace it with a federation of workplace and community assemblies:
"the Alliance of all labour associations . . . will constitute the Commune . . . there will be a standing federation of the barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council . . . [made up of] delegates . . . invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times . . . all provinces, communes and associations . . . [will] delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all . . . invested with binding mandated and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . and to organise a revolutionary force with the capacity of defeating the reaction . . . it is through the very act of extrapolation and organisation of the Revolution with an eye to the mutual defences of insurgent areas that the universality of the Revolution . . . will emerge triumphant."
Power would not be delegated, so it is not a state.
At least you've made a substantive claim (finally!), but unfortunately it's a false one. By your own criteria a system of worker's councils would also be a form of minority rule, which I doubt you want to argue given how much you've been trying to claim that Bakunin was some sort of councilist before worker's councils even existed.
So any form of social organisation, no matter how organised or decisions are made, becomes a state? And Bakunin was a supporter of workers' councils, as the quote above proves. As Paul Avrich summarises: "As early as the 1860's and 1870's, the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International were proposing the formation of workers' councils designed both as a weapon of class struggle against capitalists and as the structural basis of the future libertarian society." [The Russian Anarchists, p. 73]
The Russian anarchists, unsurprisingly, easily integrated the soviets into their ideas in 1905 (unlike the Marxists). Thus they "regarded the soviets . . . as admirable versions of the bourses du travail, but with a revolutionary function added to suit Russian conditions. Open to all leftist workers regardless of specific political affiliation, the soviets were to act as nonpartisan labour councils improvised 'from below' . . . with the aim of bringing down the old regime." The anarchists of Khleb i Volia "also likened the 1905 Petersburg Soviet -- as a non-party mass organisation -- to the central committee of the Paris Commune of 1871." [Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, pp. 80-1]
Which is, of course, extremely significant and shows the correctness of anarchism.
And you should note, as demonstrated in the quotes from 1843 and from all of the drafts of The Civil War In France that Dave C and myself posted, Marx was not in favor of just any form of representative government, but a specific kind -- a Republic in the sense of the Commune, not a parliamentary republic.
And I have shown that Marx thought that the republic could be captured and refashioned to create a new kind of state machinery. Which only could happen with a flawed analysis of the state. Anarchists did not habour such illusions.
Advocating using parliament for certain ends does not necessarily mean thinking that parliament is a form of working class rule. As you yourself have noted repeatedly, Marx's idea was to abolish parliamentary institutions by instituting the right of revocability, shorter terms, abolition of the standing army, etc., once socialists were elected. If you disagree with this, then fine.
But it does mean that universal suffrage is seen as a form of working class rule, which confuses the ability to elect someone into positions of power over you with self-rule and working class power. Thus you equate the coming to power of a socialist party (more correctly, the party leaders) with the coming to power of the working class. This confusion proved fatal in the Russian revolution and in the Commune.
It also means that notions that Marx thought the bourgeois state had to be smashed as simply wrong. It shows that he thought the state machinery had to be smashed, the state refashioned, as I've argued all along here. Thanks for confirming my analysis!
I certainly don't think it's applicable today, and I think Marx overestimated the plausibility of this even in his own time. But you yourself have noted that this worked at least once in history -- in the Paris Commune! So the dismissiveness with which you treat this idea is not warranted.
Given that Dave C has repeatedly denied that this was the case, I guess this acknowledgement of the correctness of my analysis should be welcomed! And as my essay on the Commune discusses, a key problem with the commune was that this refashioning of the state simply was not up to the task:
The Paris Commune, Marxism and Anarchism
Post-Commune both Marx and Engels kept repeating that workers should organise to capture the republic. The anarchists argued that it had to be smashed. Marxists only came to acknowledge this in 1917, and then then only partly as they still argued for representative government -- with the same results as happened in the Commune, but on a even greater scale.
If you knew even the first thing about metaphysics then you'd know that metaphysics tends to creep in when empirical and grammatical statements are confused. Which is exactly why your attempt to find some sort of essence to the state, some "true" definition is nothing but metaphysics.
ROTFL! Unlike Marx's "essence" of the state as an instrument of class rule!
Or are you going to finally admit that there is no way in which arguing that rule of the proletariat as a class is a form of state power justifies party dictatorship, and that your claim to the contrary was based on (like so many of your other claims) extremely defective logic?
I hate to point this out (again!) that it was leading marxists like Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin who all argued that proletarian dictatorship was completely compatible with party dictatorship. For example, Zinoviev proclaimed the following at the Comintern:
"Today, people like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia you do not have the dictatorship of the working class but the dictatorship of the party. They think this is a reproach against us. Not in the least! We have a dictatorship of the working class and that is precisely why we also have a dictatorship of the Communist Party. The dictatorship of the Communist Party is only a function, an attribute, an expression of the dictatorship of the working class . . . [T]he dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of the Communist Party."
I wonder how he could rationalise that? Perhaps because the soviet regime was a "form of state power"? It was a state, after all, in which a (one-time relatively democratically elected) workers party held power. That the workers had no say in anything did not stop him arguing it was the dictatorship of a class.
Then there is Trotsky (from 1939, echoing similar comments from 1920/1):
"The very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses themselves . . . if the dictatorship of the proletariat means anything at all, then it means that the vanguard of the proletariat is armed with the resources of the state in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from the backward layers of the proletariat itself."
He seemed able and willing to open the door to having a workers' "state power" with party rule. In fact, party dictatorship:
"The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory. The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history. . . The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution . . . Abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the moral development of the masses."
So, apparently for Marxists it is extremely easy to argue that "rule of the proletariat as a class is a form of state power justifies party dictatorship". That you do not seem to know this is somewhat worrying. Still, I think most people would concur that such statements show that the Marxist theory of the state is flawed in the extreme. It appears to allow party dictatorship to coincide with a working class "state power."
Still, I guess it could be argued that Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin did not really understand Marx and Engels...
edit
right on
right on
Since when are you into Marx, anarchyjordan? Why would you say "right on" to dave c's post? I'm pretty sure you didn't actually read this post let alone this thread.
well, i'm not into marx, but i said right on not to the most recent post but to
"So, apparently for Marxists it is extremely easy to argue that "rule of the proletariat as a class is a form of state power justifies party dictatorship". That you do not seem to know this is somewhat worrying. Still, I think most people would concur that such statements show that the Marxist theory of the state is flawed in the extreme. It appears to allow party dictatorship to coincide with a working class "state power."
Still, I guess it could be argued that Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin did not really understand Marx and Engels..."
i think they understood that totalitarian shit just fine
it is well known (and also true) that for leninist marxism party dictatorship "realise " class dictatorship.
but it's impossible to find that "totalitarian shit" in Marx and Engels, because it really is alien to their conception of the proletarian revolution and communism.
but of course to know that you need to know a minimum about Marx and Engels...
In less than two weeks time hundreds of neo-Nazis and racists will descend on the coastal town of Dover calling for Britain to “close the border”. It is vital that anti-fascists and anti-racists...
A short biography of Séraphine Pajaud, French anarchist and champion of atheism, anti-militarism and women's liberation
An article by Staughton Lynd reinterprets the concept of union democracy to include workers of all kinds (unionized workers, nonunion workers, and farmers); protection of the rights to strike,...
Please read the posting guidelines before posting. If you see anything which falls outside them please use the down' button on the offending post to flag it for the moderators' attention, or in the case of spam, click the 'spam' button. Site admins are listed here, and feedback can be posted in the feedback forum.
Click here to register now. Logged in users:
Can comment on articles and discussions
Get 'recent posts' refreshed more regularly
Bookmark articles to your own reading list
Use the site private messaging system
Start forum discussions, submit articles, and more...
Hi there
Just for the record and the original question of this thread:
Alf just wrote:
"There is a consistent line arguing for the identification between the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marx's writings. The explicit critique of this identification doesn't come about till the Italian left and its reflections on the defeat of the Russian revolution in the 1930s."
As for the first sentence I think that this reading of Marx has been questioned several times in the past. For just one example you should consult Maximillian Rubels writings. As you are about to argue yourself Marx actually did quite some reservations about this 'traditional' identification of state and dictatorship of the proletariat in his notes about the Paris Commune.
As for the second sentence here this is historically not the case. The German/Dutch Left or socalled Council Communism did this critique as part of their founding development already in the first half of the 1920s. - There are no reasons for praising the Italian Left in this question. They were hopelessly pro-bolshevic and pro-III-International all too long.
Cheers
J.
www.kurasje.org