It’s worth looking into the context of Marx’s oft-quoted remark “I’m not a Marxist” , which is often used by people who like their Marx but are not so sure about some of his followers, especially during the period of the rise of the European social democratic parties. Very often the implication is that Marx made his remark as a means of distancing himself from some of the most overtly opportunistic currents in social democracy, people who already in his day were busying themselves with “state socialist” schemes and looking for ways to ally themselves with the likes of Bismarck in order to reform capitalism into socialism.
Of course, Marx spent a good part of his latter years combating these people. But the remark in question was not so much directed against the deviations from the right of the party, but against something which Marx would probably have called a form of “sectarianism”, a refusal to get involved in practical struggles.
The following passage is from the introduction to the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier on www.marxists.org:
“This document was drawn up in May 1880, when French workers' leader Jules Guesde came to visit Marx in London. The Preamble was dictated by Marx himself, while the other two parts of minimum political and economic demands were formulated by Marx and Guesde, with assistance from Engels and Paul Lafargue, who with Guesde was to become a leading figure in the Marxist wing of French socialism. The programme was adopted, with certain amendments, by the founding congress of the Parti Ouvrier (PO) at Le Havre in November 1880.
Concerning the programme Marx wrote: “this very brief document in its economic section consists solely of demands that actually have spontaneously arisen out of the labour movement itself. There is in addition an introductory passage where the communist goal is defined in a few lines.” [1] Engels described the first, maximum section, as “a masterpiece of cogent argumentation rarely encountered, clearly and succinctly written for the masses; I myself was astonished by this concise formulation” and he later recommended the economic section to the German social democrats in his critique of the draft of the 1891 Erfurt Programme.
After the programme was agreed, however, a clash arose between Marx and his French supporters arose over the purpose of the minimum section. Whereas Marx saw this as a practical means of agitation around demands that were achievable within the framework of capitalism, Guesde took a very different view: “Discounting the possibility of obtaining these reforms from the bourgeoisie, Guesde regarded them not as a practical programme of struggle, but simply ... as bait with which to lure the workers from Radicalism.” The rejection of these reforms would, Guesde believed, “free the proletariat of its last reformist illusions and convince it of the impossibility of avoiding a workers ’89.” [4] Accusing Guesde and Lafargue of “revolutionary phrase-mongering” and of denying the value of reformist struggles, Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist” (a remark cited by Engels in his letter to Bernstein of 2-3 November 1882).
If you look at the programme of the Parti Ouvrier, it includes a number of demands which raise the eyebrows today. Some of the economic demands indeed look like realisable goals within the framework of a capitalist society which was still in its ascendant phase and capable of granting real reforms to the working class: legal minimum wage, legal rest day each week, equal pay for men and women, bosses’ responsibility for compensating industrial accidents, etc. But some of the more political demands are more open to question – such as “abolition of the standing army and the general arming of the people”, or “the Commune to be master of its administration and its police”. These demands – which do indeed seem unrealisable within the framework of capitalism - were intimately linked to the notion, enshrined in the document, that the working class could use universal suffrage and the democratic republic as a means for taking political power.
The programme of the Parti Ouvrier thus states that universal suffrage could be “transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation”. In his critique of German social democracy’s Erfurt programme in 1891, Engels refers to the programme of the French party as a model for the Germans to follow. Here he is even more explicit that the democratic republic could, at least in the countries with a functioning parliamentary system, become an instrument for the political emancipation of the working class:
“One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people. But in Germany where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to advocate such a thing in Germany, when, moreover, there is no need to do so, means removing the fig-leaf from absolutism and becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness”.
These lines were written, it should be recalled, after the Paris Commune, whose principal lesson, according to Marx and Engels, had been that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the existing state machine but has to smash it and create an entirely new apparatus. Evidently the implications of the lessons they themselves drew from this experience had not been taken to their conclusion. As it happens, it was Lenin, in State and Revolution, a work often dismissed as doing no more than dig up old quotes from Marx and Engels, who concluded that in the epoch of the imperialist, militarist state announced by the first world war, the epoch of proletarian revolution announced by the social upheavals in Russia, the necessity for the violent destruction of the bourgeois state clearly held for all countries in the world.
So Marx, on this point at least, reckoned he was “not a Marxist” not because his teachings had been distorted by openly opportunist currents, but because he did not agree with those who were ready to ditch the “minimum” programme and substituted revolutionary phrases for the patient work of building the class party – a position most obviously crystallised in the anarchist current for whom Marx was rarely seen as something more than the spokesman of an oppressive form of statism and reformism.
There can be no doubt that in carrying out this difficult struggle on two fronts, both Marx and Engels made some substantial errors. Engels in particular was pulled towards the notion of the social democratic party gradually conquering material positions within the old society as a prelude to revolution, a perspective which turned out to be pure illusion, since it was capitalist society which was gradually ‘conquering’ the social democratic parties for its own interests, as the watershed of 1914 finally brought home.
The point remains: however much we can criticise the weaknesses of the social democratic parties and their theorists during the latter part of the 19th century, however much we may point to the huge gulf between Marx’s work and their interpretation of it, it is meaningless to draw a class line between Marx, Engels and the social democratic parties. They were all expressions of the “real movement” of the proletariat; and thus subject to all kinds of mistakes and inevitably limited by the conditions of their times.
...and neither am I.
sorry for being lazy, but is it possible to do a couple-of-sentence summary of the point being made here?
nastyned
I'm a close relative.
john
The point is that Marx was a social democrat
oh, ok, what about his Critique of the Gotha Programme?
john
Similar to my own.
My main point is that the "I'm not a marxist" quote is often taken out of context, often by people who try to argue that there is a complete break between Marx and the parties of the Second International; that while Marx is acceptable as a proletarian theoretician, social democracy was a bourgeois dead-end. This idea is even applied to Engels in relation to Marx. In reality there was no such break, even if there were many areas in which the social democratic parties did regress from Marx's clarity. The Critique of the Gotha programme (written by Marx and published by Engels some time later to counter what he saw as a growth of opportunism in these parties)is a case in point. Marx never stopped combatting what he considered to be bourgeois influences in the social democratic parties, but he supported their formation because he saw it as a step forward for the proletarian movement.
Alf - I agree with this, but what are the implications of it? That we should reject Marx if we reject social democracy (I'm sure you don't think this, by the way)?
It seems to me Marx had a pretty good critique of a lot of the processes involved in reproducing capitalism, but not quite such an interesting idea about how to overturn it. He basically seemed to rely on his belief in concentration and centralization to produce a coherent labour movement that would overturn capitalism (this pretty simplistic analysis still seems to be the dominant one even by the time he was writing Capital).
Personally, I'm much happier to take a number of Marx's critiques of capitalism, and rely on historical developments since then (mainly the abject failure of both Leninist/Stalinist communism and social democracy) to point towards alternative forms of movements seeking alternatives to capitalism.
I'm aware of the misunderstanding often attached to the phrase and, I agree, much (if not the majority) of Marx's take on actual political activity was awful - sorry to twist things! However, I'd be interested comrade, if you'd expand on this;
Alf
So, what of all those who in one form or another rejected social democracy and state representation from the very start? Were they not likewise an expression of the 'real movement'? Weren't they not also influenced by historical conditions? And...were they 'wrong' in comparison to the social democratic current?
You're not a Marxist, Alf, I want you to hand over your cap, your badge and your gun - and most importantly, you're off the class struggle case, ok?
I'm not a marxist?
Hi
Felix Frost
Address this Alf. Marx's positions sit to the Right of the current working class.
Love
LR
I thought I did a post which took up points raised by john and volin last night, but it seems to have vanished. I will try to reconstruct it and respond to LR later
john wrote:
"He basically seemed to rely on his belief in concentration and centralization to produce a coherent labour movement that would overturn capitalism (this pretty simplistic analysis still seems to be the dominant one even by the time he was writing Capital)".
Isn't our main disagreement here about the "coherent labour movement that would overturn capitalism". ? I still think that a "coherent labour movement" (i.e a conscious and unified working class) is needed to overturn capitalism. The big change since Marx's day is that the perspective of gradually building up mass organisations inside the old system has been proved untenable as a means of overthrowing the system
Volin wrote:
"So, what of all those who in one form or another rejected social democracy and state representation from the very start? Were they not likewise an expression of the 'real movement'? Weren't they not also influenced by historical conditions? And...were they 'wrong' in comparison to the social democratic current?"
I think this is a very important line of inquiry and discussion and won't try to do it justice here. I do agree it's necesary to make a serious study of the oppositional trends during the period of the Second International, many of whom were anarchists. We have begun this work with our articles on anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary unionism in the International Review, but there is much more to be done. I have no doubt that the anarcho-syndialists, for example, were part of the real movement - a class response to the growth of opportunism, reformism and statism in the social democratic parties. The question however is whether these currents were able to develop an analysis of the degeneration of social democracy, and of the new period opened up by the mass strikes of 1905, as lucid and coherent as that elaborated by the marxist left inside the social democratic parties - such as Luxemburg, Bukharin, Pannekoek...and Lenin.
LR wrote:
"Address this Alf. Marx's positions sit to the Right of the current working class".
The problem with answering this is that, from your point of view, the same applies to virtually everyone today as well: you've said many times that the working class is to the left of the ultra-ultra left as well, although I don't know what your geometry is based on.
i think its probably based on fractals ;)
Alf
The problem with Left Communism is its highly restrictive programmatic take, ironically borrowed from Kautsky himself:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/686/programme.htm
Also:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/640/macnair.htm
However, I can understand if non-dogmatic left-communists start to consider their maximum program to be communism itself and their minimum program as being nothing but the numerous political demands for the DOTP (as opposed to the singular "maximum programme of revolution") - like the DeLeonists (some of whom I've had the pleasure of conversing with) - given their common hostility to "economic" demands in the minimum programme.
have you been reading through all the posts from the beginning or did you find this through searching for something? It is over two years old. oh and I am not a Marxist. :mrt:
I'm glad someone bumped this thread; I always wondered about the historical context of that quote. I guess I agree with Marx in that light, and I don't think it's fair to just dismiss him as a "social democrat" (see above) because he thought that implementing reforms like legal minimum wage, legal rest day each week etc., within the capitalist framework, seemed like something worthwhile at the time. Of course as Alf mentions, many of the other demands (abolition of the standing army, communal administration etc.) were, and remain, unachievable in capitalism, pointing to the utter failure of social democratic models, something which Marx, had he been alive today, would be quite aware of, imo.
Careful, though. "Unachievable under bourgeois capitalism" would be more accurate, especially if capitalism is thought of as being the money-commodities-money process. The political section of the Parti Ouvrier's minimum program is naturally compatible with the continued existence of M-C-M, even if socially controlled.
"In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate." (Capital, Volume II)
sorry, Jacob, but I don't think I'm following you. Are you saying that the PO program supported state capitalism? Even so, I think it's obvious that those eyebrow-raising demands, as Alf puts it, are not achievable under any kind of capitalism, and the fact that the PO thought they were, speaks to the failure of the social-democratic agenda. That is not to say that Guesde was right; he was just being doctrinaire, and Marx was right to criticize him for that.
Strangely enough, I more or less agree with Alf's points, minus the ones about decadence.
I'm not really sure what the whole thing has to do with social democracy, though. I do think that people are a extremely flippant when talking about the second international, and I probably am not in a lot of disagreement with Alf, but I'm not sure how his post relates to this issue.
(As an aside, you could view Marx's comments as a critique of Trotskyist transitional demands, or something like them.)
Re: the issue of the standing army. I don't think it's nearly as utopian as you seem to. The Paris Commune was preceded by precisely that arming of the mass of the population (largely workers) that you declare to be impossible within capitalism.
Certainly today that demand would be basically impossible given the huge development of the military, but that doesn't mean it was an impossible demand at the time.
Not many people know this quote from the ghost of Karl Marx: "One thing I know is that I am not a Left Bolshevik".
mikus
You're right, the PC did achieve that under capitalism, for a short while, but I don't think that the PO was trying to emulate the PC's methods, given that the PC had failed; it has to do with social democracy as a method (not necessarily a goal) because of the belief that "that the working class could use universal suffrage and the democratic republic as a means for taking political power." In the end that line of thought proved as inefficient as the PC's insurrectionalism, but Marx had no way of knowing that at the time, and he was right to defend the PO's demands as something which would have improved the lives of workers without necessarily making them oblivious to the disasters of capital.
So yeah, you're right, they didn't seem utopian at the time, but they were in fact, and are so today (as part of the capitalist framework that is); that's what I meant by my previous comment.
No, I'm talking about before the Paris Commune. The mass of the male population was armed (I can't remember if this was by the provisional government or before that, even). If I remember correctly, a lot of the population was armed in 1848 as well. There was actually something of a French tradition (it might have extended beyond France, too, but I'm not sure) of the arming of the population in the 19th century.
So again, I don't think it was a utopian demand.
The bourgeois republic is a different and more complex issue that I don't have time to get involved with.
mikus
It certainly is if you are a Leninist
Vladimir Lenin’s, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, "Left-Wing" Communism in Great Britian
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm
Did you have an abusive Leninist father as a child or something?
I'm not even close to a Leninist. We've gone through this before.
When I recall more precisely what made me start ths thread, I will come back on some of the points that have been made
Alf
I think you were trying to defend trade unionism, entryism into Social Democratic parties, participation in elections and participation in parliament to get reforms as valid tactics . . . until 1914.
I'm a groucho-marxist, yes indeed.
That said, I always thought London Solidarity had a good sense of small m marxism.
capricorn
"Entryism"? If anything else it was the Marxists who formed most of the Social-Democratic parties. In the German case, the Marxist Eisenachers formed the international proletariat's first vanguard party and struggled with the Lassalleans for "hegemony" in the growing worker movement.
While Marx had very little else besides a lot of scorn for the Gotha program in 1875, keep in mind that Liebknecht, an original Eisenacher, used Lassallean overtones to accommodate a practically defeated Lassallean minority (defeated in the sense that the General Association of German Workers would've accepted unity on any terms).
I was thinking of a later period, say, between 1900 and 1914 when those who were to become "Left Communists" or their equivalent had a wider choice of parties and groups to join, not just the major Social Democratic organisation in their country (which I believe Alf favoured them joining).
And I don't think that the "Eisenach" forerunner of the German Social Democratic Party can be described, or described itself, as a vanguard party
Jacob Richter
.
Fixed
" I think you were trying to defend trade unionism, entryism into Social Democratic parties, participation in elections and participation in parliament to get reforms as valid tactics . . . until 1914".(Capricorn)
I would actually express it rather differently - that these tactics had begun to show that they were exhausting themselves some time before 1914. Hence, for example, the appearance of independent strike committees in western European struggles analysed by Pannekoek before 1914, the appearance of the soviets in Russia in 1905, the growing proletarian reaction against the opportunism of social democracy's parliamentary fractions (eg by the 'Jungen' in Germany and also by the anarcho-syndicalists).....1914, and 1917-23, set the seal on tendencies which had been in motion some time previously.
But I would also add that the efforts of the left to work inside social democracy prior to 1914 had nothing in common with Trotskyist entryism into the 'socialist' parties in the 1930s. Trotsky's tactic was geared towards a party which had already clearly betrayed the working class in the face of war and revolution, and was thus a dangerously opportunist tactic and a sign of Trotskyism's degeneration. The left fractions before the first world war had every reason to consider that the social democratic parties were still proletarian organisations.
I'm not one rushing to dismiss Trotsky's entryism tactic back in the day, even in light of the social-democratic betrayal (both of which also signalled working-class immaturity). The rank and file were more susceptible to militancy.
Nowadays, however, the Grantite caricaturization of this tactic speaks for itself.
Jason, why "fixed"? There clearly was a worker movement that was growing.
Class-Strugglist Assembly and Association: Self-Directional Demands (excerpt)
“The original organizations of the proletariat were modeled after those of the medieval apprentices. In like manner the first weapons of the modern labor movement were those inherited from a previous age, the strike and the boycott. But these methods are insufficient for the modern proletariat. The more completely the various divisions of which it is made up unite into a single working-class movement, the more must its struggles take on a political character. Every class-struggle is a political struggle. Even the bare requirements of the industrial struggle force the workers to make political demands. We have seen that the modern state regards it as its principal function to make the effective organization of labor impossible. Secret organizations are inefficient substitutes for open ones. The more the proletariat develops, the more it needs freedom to organize.” (Karl Kautsky)
In the first chapter, a modern approach to programming class struggle and social revolution was outlined, based broadly on the game theory concepts of maximax and maximin, with the latter entailing immediate, intermediate, and threshold demands. Explained earlier in this chapter was the historical and long-term necessity of ensuring that the immediate and intermediate demands being raised “make further progress more likely and facilitate other progressive changes” (Robin Hahnel) as well as enable the basic principles to be, through the emphasis on transnational “ pressure” (class struggle) for legislative implementation, “kept consciously in view” (Karl Kautsky) – thus being consistent with the maximin concept. Nevertheless, in between the maximax and the maximin are demands of a “directional” (as opposed to pseudo-“transitional”) nature which, either individually or combined, would necessitate a revolutionary departure from bourgeois-capitalist social relations specifically (as opposed to coordinator-capitalist, petty-capitalist, and even perceived “socialist” social relations) or from all forms of capitalist social relations altogether. In the case of the latter, at least one demand that is seemingly peripheral but is crucial for the departure was examined in Chapter 2.
One more detail completes this modern approach to programming class struggle and social revolution: some demands are, in the broad sense, “self-directional.” With this particular type of demand, some aspects of it pose immediate concerns, other aspects intermediate ones, still other aspects threshold ones, leaving the remainder to pose directional concerns. The freedom of specifically class-strugglist assembly and association, free from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement – as opposed to the liberal hollowness of “freedom of assembly and association” – is one such “self-directional” demand [...]
see a positive relationship between reforms which benefit the working class and the ultimate strategic goal of the working class, common ownership and democratic control over the collective product of labour aka communism. We do not now have the organised political or industrial power as a class to establish social ownership over the means of producing wealth. However, as we gain in organisational strength, we should attempt to lop off as much of our collective product as we can and have that returned to us via our social wage (free healthcare etc.), increasing our real wages via being in class conscious union and our working conditions e.g. shorter work time with no cut in pay. All of these sorts of reform would add strength to our arm and be compatible with our strategic goal. When the immense majority of us decide to make the revolutionary change to the mode of producing wealth from commodity production and wage labour to production for use and need, we will have, at the same time, laid the foundations for equal political power between all men and women.
Once more, I shall attempt to clear up some confusion with regard to the conceptual framework within which Marx, Engels and indeed, many communists were working in the 19tfh century.
Neither Marx nor Engels ever used the term "socialist State". Socialism yes. But socialism for Marx and Engels meant a classless democracy and the political State was always meant to describe class ruled government. Included in this description is a workers' State. A workers' State would not be socialism. It would be class rule by the overwhelming majority a proletarian democracy. Marx and Engels used the word State to indicate the governing structure of class rule.
A political State controlled by workers would include other classes. For instance, if the workers as a class controlled the State, they could get legislation passed which would tax the wealth of the capitalists and landlords in order to use that revenue to benefit people who had to work for wages in order to make a living. An example might be something like free healthcare paid for by the government using the aforementioned revenue. A proletarian democracy would be run in the class interests of the useful producers.
A worker controlled democratic republic is what Marx and Engels are proposing in section II of the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. The reforms listed at the end of this section are general proposals which a workers' State might implement in 1848:
"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
"These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
"Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
Further, it should be noted that even after the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx and Engels would speak in terms which many think they renounced after that workers' revolt. On September 8, 1872 more than a year after the Paris Commune was drowned in the blood of the proletariat, Marx said:
"But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.
"You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to which we must some day appeal in order to erect the rule of labor."
As for the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", it was never Marx's or Engels' intention that it would be Lenin's dictatorship of a party. In fact, that's just what they were arguing with the anarchists about in terms of the interpretation of the concept. If there has been any doubt as to whether the USSR was a dictatorship of the party, as opposed to being a proletarian democracy after the 10th Party Congress of the CPSU (B) in 1921, then I would suggest reading the well documented work by Maurice Brinton titled, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control .
The point of writing all this is to get people who "know" what Marx and Engels wrote, without reading what they wrote, to grasp that they might be taking off from a conceptual base which does not correspond to the conceptual base Marx and Engels were taking off from. So, to reiterate:
1. A workers' State is controlled democratically by the workers. It is not common ownership and democratic control of the collective product of labour after the wage system has been abolished i.e. it is not the lower stage of communism/socialism. It is not a classless democracy. It is, like all political States, the dictatorship of a class, in this case, the still existing working class. Commodity production for sale can still exist in a such a proletarian democracy. A wage system can still exist. Under the wage system, labour power is a commodity.
2. Communism or socialism, if you will, signals a change in the mode of producing wealth from the capitalist mode which depends on wage labour and commodity production to the communist mode in which a free, classless association of producers democratically decide how to distribute the collective product of their labour. Socialism/communism means that commodity production for sale with a view to profit no longer exists, whether in its initial stages or in its more advanced stage. You can begin to see the outlines of this in various writings of Marx and Engels. Wobbly times number 88 contains some quoted examples.
"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves...the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule." - Marx, 1864
Y, you're seven years late to this discussion. ;)