Education For SocialiStS

4 The STaTe and revoluTion

Education for Socialists

How tHey Rule uS John MolynEux How can Society be cHanged? chriS harMan wHat iS a Revolution? John MolynEux leninS State and Revolution tony cliFF

3-5 6-16 17-20 21-35

the State and revolution

How tHey Rule uS

John MolynEux From johnmolyneux.blogspot.com (2006)

Capitalism is a class-divided society based on exploitation. Under capitalism a tiny, highly privileged minority rules over the large majority and lives off their labour. How do they get away with it? the answer, as the italian marxist antonio Gramsci pointed out, is by a combination of force and consent. the element of force is primarily exercised by the state, that network of interlocking institutionsarmed forces, police, judiciary, prisons, government bureaucracies, etcwhich stands over society and claims general authority, including a monopoly of legitimate force. this state apparatus claims, at every level of its operation, to represent society as a wholethe so-called national or public interest. Hence the perennial assertion by police, judges, generals and so on that they are politically neutral. But the idea of a common national or public interest is a myth. the nation consists of classes, exploiters and exploited with opposed interests, and the society which the state represents is not society as such but specifically capitalist society, based on capitalist property relations and capitalist relations of production. the first duty of the state is to secure the preservation of this capitalist order and, since this order embodies the supremacy of the capitalist class, the state is, in the words of Karl marx, but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. the class character of the state is reflected in its composition. the upper ranks of the military, the police, the judiciary and the civil service are drawn overwhelmingly from the bourgeoisie and retain economic, family and social ties with that class. But the intrusion into this milieu of the occasional individual from the lower orders

Education for Socialists

changes nothing. On the one hand, the actual class position of such an individual is changed by the fact of their promotion and their outlook will tend to change accordingly. On the other hand, acceptance of the capitalist mode of operation of the state is the condition for such promotion. the consequence of the capitalist nature of the state is that force, or the threat of force, underpins almost every aspect of daily life. Consider some examples. a worker goes to work and makes some products. at the end of the day he or she tries to take all or some of them home. the worker will, of course, be forcibly arrested and detained in a police cell. Or say the workers at a factory decide to go on strike, but only 90 percent of them come out while 10 percent try to continue working. the law, in the shape of a substantial number of police, will immediately arrive at the factory to ensure the scabs right to work. But if the bosses decide to close down the factory and make the whole workforce redundant, the police will also arrive, this time to ensure that everyone goes home and no amount of appeals to the right to work will move them in the slightest. in all these cases the police will say they are only doing their job, but that is the pointtheir job is the enforcement of capitalist exploitation. the examples i have given may seem slightly strange precisely because they are so obvious, so taken for granted, but that is also the point. Capitalist exploitation would not last five minutes without state law, backed by state force, to sustain it. most of the time state force remains as far as possible low-key and in the background but it comes to the fore the moment there is a real challenge to the interests of the capitalist class. if the challenge comes from abroad, this takes the form of war; if the challenge is internal, it is met with repression. if the challenge comes from an elected government it can take the form of organising a military or fascist coup, as happened, for example, with General pinochet in Chile in 1973 or as has been attempted more recently against the Chavez government in Venezuela. this last pointthe potential use of state power on behalf of the bourgeoisie and against the government of the dayis important. First, it completely undermines the official constitutional view (and

the State and revolution

the view promulgated by political science and taught in the education system) that the state apparatus is subordinate to the elected government. second, it raises a key issue in marxist theory, which was ignored or distorted by most supposedly socialist or marxist parties in the 20th century. the strategy of these organisations, beginning with German social Democracy before the First World War, was to win power by means of parliamentary elections, thus acquiring control of the state apparatus which would then be used to construct socialism. But marx, on the basis of the experience of the 1871 paris Commune, had argued that it was not possible for the working class to take over the existing state machine and use it for its own purposes. the existing state was organically tied to the bourgeoisie and could not be used for socialism; rather it had to be broken upsmashedand replaced by a new state apparatus created by the working class. marxs genuine theory of the state was rediscovered and vigorously reasserted by lenin in his great book, The State and Revolution. more than that, it was put into practice in the Russian Revolution by means of soviet power, i.e. the power of workers councils. later, however, the international Communist movement, under the direction of stalinism, reverted to the idea of a parliamentary road to socialism and taking over the existing state apparatus. an objection often raised to the tradition of marx and lenin is that the modern state, with its armies, tanks, bombs, planes, etc, is too powerful to be smashed, even by the largest mass movement of the working class. this, however, leaves out of the equation the crucial weakness of the state and of all the power of the ruling class, which is the fact that for all its operations it depends on the collaboration of a section of the working class. Every gun needs a soldier to carry it, every tank a driver, every plane a team of mechanics. almost the entire apparatus of the state is staffed at its lower levels by workers. What happens in a mass revolution is that the pressure of the working class struggle leads to many or most of these workers breaking from their officers and joining the people. this is how the state is broken.

Education for Socialists

How can Society be cHanged?

chriS harMan From How Marxism Works (1979)

in BRitain the overwhelming majority of socialists and trade unionists have generally argued that society can be transformed without violent revolution. all that is needed, they say, is for socialists to win enough popular support to gain control of the traditional political institutionsparliament and the local councils. then socialists will be in a position to change society by getting the existing statethe civil service, the judiciary, the police, the armed forcesto enforce laws to curtail the power of the employing class. in this way, it has been claimed, socialism can be introduced gradually and without violence, by reforming the present set-up. this view is usually referred to as reformism, although occasionally you will hear it referred to as revisionism (because it involves revising marxs ideas completely), social democracy (although until 1914 that meant revolutionary socialism) or Fabianism (after the Fabian society long propagated the reformist view in Britain). it is a view accepted by the left as well as the right of the labour party. Reformism seems, at first sight, very plausible. it fits with what we are told at school, in the papers and on televisionthat parliament runs the country and that parliament is elected according to the democratic wishes of the people. Yet despite that, every attempt to introduce socialism through parliament has ended in failure. thus there were three majority labour governments in Britain between

the State and revolution

1945 and 1979with massive majorities in 1945 and 1966yet we are no nearer socialism than in 1945. the experience abroad is the same. in Chile in 1970, the socialist salvador allende was elected president. people claimed that this was a new way to move to socialism. three years later the generals who had been asked to join the government overthrew allende and the Chilean working class movement was destroyed. there are three interconnected reasons why reformism must always fail. First, while socialist majorities in parliaments are gradually introducing socialist measures, real economic power continues to lie in the hands of the old ruling class. they can use this economic power to shut down whole sections of industry, to create unemployment, to force up prices through speculation and hoarding, to send money abroad so creating a balance of payments crisis, and to launch press campaigns blaming all this on the socialist government. thus Harold Wilsons labour government was forced in 1964 and again in 1966 to drop measures which would have benefited workersby the wholesale movement of money abroad by wealthy individuals and companies. Wilson himself describes in his memoirs how:
We had now reached the situation where a newly elected government was being told by international speculators that the policy on which we had fought the election could not be implemented... the queens first minister was being asked to bring down the curtain on parliamentary democracy by accepting the doctrine that an election in Britain was a farce, that the British people could not make a choice between policies.

it only needs to be added that, despite Wilsons alleged indignation, for the next six years he did indeed follow the sort of policies demanded by the speculators. the same deliberate creation of balance of payments crises forced the labour government elected in 1974 to introduce three consecutive sets of cuts in public spending in hospitals, schools and social services.

Education for Socialists

allendes government in Chile faced even greater disruption at the hands of big business. twice, whole sections of industry were shut down by bosses strikes, as speculation increased prices to an enormous level and hoarding of goods by businessmen caused queuing for the necessities of life. the second reason capitalism cannot be reformed is that the existing state machine is not neutral, but designed, from top to bottom, to preserve capitalist society. the state controls nearly all the means of exercising physical force, the means of violence. if the organisations of the state were neutral, and did whatever any particular government told them, whether capitalist or socialist, then the state could be used to stop sabotage of the economy by big business. But look at the way the state machine operates and who really gives the orders, and you can see it is not neutral. the state machine is not simply the government. it is a vast organisation with many different branchesthe police, the army, the judiciary, the civil service, the people who run the nationalised industries and so on. many of the people who work in these different branches of the state come from the working classthey live and get paid like workers. But it is not these people who make the decisions. the rank and file soldiers dont decide where wars are going to be fought or whether strikes are going to be broken; the counter clerk in the social security office does not decide how much dole will be paid out. the whole state machine is based on the principle that people on one rung of the ladder obey those on the rung above. this is essentially the case in the sections of the state machine that exercise physical forcearmy, navy, air force, police. the first thing soldiers are taught when they enlistlong before they are allowed to touch weaponsis to obey orders, regardless of their personal opinions of those orders. that is why they are taught to do absurd drills. if they will follow lunatic commands on the parade ground without thinking about it, it is reckoned they will shoot when ordered to without thinking about that either. the most heinous crime in any army is a refusal to obey orders mutiny. so seriously is the offence regarded, that mutiny during

the State and revolution

time of war is still punishable by execution in Britain. Who gives the orders? if you look at the chain of command in the British army (and other armies are no different) it goes: generalbrigadiercolonellieutenantnCOprivate. at no stage in that chain of command do elected representativesmps or local councillorsget a look in. it is just as much an act of mutiny for a group of privates to obey their local mp rather than the officer. the army is a massive killing machine. the people who run itand have the power to promote other soldiers into commanding positionsare the generals. Of course, in theory the generals are responsible to the elected government. But soldiers are trained to obey generals, not politicians. if generals choose to give orders to their soldiers which are at variance with the wishes of an elected government, the government cannot countermand those orders. it can only try to persuade the generals to change their minds (if the government knows the sorts of orders that are being givenbecause military affairs are invariably secret, it is very easy for generals to hide what they are doing from governments they dont like). that doesnt always mean that generals always, or even usually, ignore what governments say to them. Usually in Britain they have found it convenient to go along with most of what the government suggests. But in a life and death situation the generals are able to put their killing machine into operation without listening at all to the government, and there is little the government can do about it. this is what the generals eventually did in Chile when allende was overthrown. so the question, Who runs the army? is really, Who are the generals? in Britain about 80 percent of the senior officers went to fee-paying public schoolsthe same proportion as 50 years ago. they are related to the owners of big business, belong to the same posh clubs, mix at the same social functions, share the same ideas (if you doubt this, look at the letters column in virtually any copy of the Daily Telegraph). the same goes for the heads of the civil service, the judges, the chief constables.

10

Education for Socialists

Do you think these people are going to obey government orders to take economic power away from their friends and relatives in big business just because 330 people walk into a lobby in the House of Commons? Would they not be much more likely to copy the example of the Chilean generals, judges and senior civil servants, who sabotaged the governments orders for three years and then, when the time was ripe, overthrew it? in practice the particular constitution we have in Britain means that those who control the state machine would be able to thwart the will of an elected left-wing government far short of physically overthrowing it. if such a government were elected, it would be faced with massive economic sabotage by the employing class (factory closures, flights of money abroad, hoarding of necessities, inflationary price rises). if the government attempted to deal with such sabotage using constitutional meansby passing lawsit would find its hands tied behind its back. the House of lords would certainly refuse to ratify any such lawdelaying it for nine months at a minimum. the judges would interpret any law passed in such a way as to curtail its powers. the civil service chiefs, the generals and the police chiefs would use the decisions of the judges and the House of lords to justify their own unwillingness to do what ministers told them. they would be backed by virtually the whole press, which would scream that the government was behaving illegally and unconstitutionally. the generals would then use such language to justify preparations to overthrow an illegal government. the government would be powerless to deal with the economic chaosunless it really did act unconstitutionally and called upon rank and file civil servants, police and soldiers to turn against their superiors. lest anyone thinks this is all wild fantasy, it should be added that there have been at least two occasions in recent British history when generals have sabotaged government decisions they did not like. in 1912 the House of Commons passed a bill providing for a Home Rule parliament to run a united ireland. the tory leader, Bonar law, immediately denounced the (liberal!) government as

the State and revolution

11

an illegal junta who had sold the constitution. the House of lords naturally delayed the law as long as it could (two years then), while former tory minister Edward Carson organised a paramilitary force in the north of ireland to resist the law. When the generals who commanded the British army in ireland were told to move their troops northwards to deal with this force, they refused and threatened to resign their commissions. it was because of this action, usually called the Curragh mutiny, that ireland north and south didnt get a single parliament in 1914, and remains a divided nation even today. in 1974 there was a rerun of the events of 1912 in miniature. the right-wing sectarian loyalists of northern ireland organised a general stoppage of industry, using barricades to prevent people going to work, against being forced to accept a joint protestant-Catholic government in northern ireland. British ministers called on the British army and the northern ireland police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, to dismantle the barricades and end the strike. the senior army officers and the police commanders told the government that this would be inadvisable, and neither soldiers nor police moved against the loyalists. the joint protestant-Catholic government was forced to resign, the views of army officers proving more powerful than the views of the British government. if that could happen in 1914 and 1974 with middle-of-the-road governments trying to push through mild measures, imagine what would happen if a militant socialist government was elected. any serious reformist majority in parliament would soon be forced to make a choice: either abandon reforms in order to placate those who own industry and control the key positions in the state, or prepare for an all-out conflict, which will inevitably mean the use of some kind of force, against those who control those positions. the third reason why reformism is a dead end is that parliamentary democracy contains in-built mechanisms for preventing any revolutionary movement finding expression through it. some reformists argue that the best way to take on the power of those who control the key positions in the state machine is for the left to obtain a majority in parliament first. this argument falls

12

Education for Socialists

because parliaments always understate the level of revolutionary consciousness of the mass of the population. the mass of the people will only believe that they themselves can run society when they begin in practice to change society through struggle. it is when millions of people are occupying their factories or taking part in a general strike that ideas of revolutionary socialism suddenly seem realistic. But such a level of struggle cannot be maintained indefinitely unless the old ruling class is removed from power. if it hangs on, it will wait until the occupations or strikes decline, then use its control over the army and police to break the struggle. and once the strikes or occupations begin to falter, the feeling of unity and confidence among the workers begins to wane. Demoralisation and bitterness set in. Even the best begin to feel that changing society was just a wild dream. that is why employers always prefer strike votes to be taken when workers are at home by themselves, getting their ideas from the television and the newspapers, not when they are united at mass meetings, able to hear other workers arguments. that is also why anti-union laws nearly always include a clause forcing workers to call off strikes while secret, postal ballots are taken. such clauses are accurately called cooling off periodsthey are designed to pour cold water on the confidence and unity of workers. the parliamentary electoral system contains built-in secret ballots and cooling off periods. For instance, if a government is brought to its knees by a massive strike, it is likely to say, OK, wait three weeks until a general election can resolve the question democratically. it hopes that in the interim the strike will be called off. the workers confidence and unity will then fade. Employers may well be able to blacklist militants. the capitalist press and the television can begin functioning normally again, hammering home pro-government ideas. the police can arrest troublemakers. then when the election finally takes place, the vote will not reflect the high point of the workers struggles but the low point after the strike. in France in 1968 the government of General de Gaulle used elections in precisely this way. the reformist workers parties and

the State and revolution

13

unions told workers to end their strikes, and de Gaulle won the election. the British prime minister, Edward Heath, tried the same trick when faced with a massively successful miners strike in 1974. But this time the miners were not conned. they kept their strike upand Heath lost the election. if workers wait for elections to decide the key issues in the class struggle, they will never reach that high point.

the workers state

marx, in his pamphlet The Civil War in France, and lenin in The State and Revolution outlined a completely different view of how socialism can be won. neither simply pulled these ideas out of thin air: both developed their views by seeing the working class in actionmarx saw the paris Commune, lenin the Russian soviets (workers councils) of 1905 and 1917. Both marx and lenin insisted that the working class could not begin to construct socialism until it had, first, destroyed the old state based on bureaucratic chains of command and, second, created a new state based on entirely new principles. lenin underlined how completely different this state had to be from the old by calling it a commune state, a state which is not a state. a new state, marx and lenin said, was necessary if the working class was to impose its dictates on the remnants of the old ruling and middle classes. that was why they called it the dictatorship of the proletariatthe working class had to dictate how society was to be run. it also had to defend its revolution against attacks from ruling classes elsewhere in the world. to do these two jobs it had to have armed forces of its own, some form of policing of society, courts, even prisons. But if this new army, police and legal system was to be controlled by the workers, and never turn against their interests, it had to be based on completely different principles from the capitalist state. it had to be the means by which the working class as a majority dictated to the rest of society, not a dictatorship directed against the majority of the working class. the main differences are these. the capitalist state serves the interests of a small minority of society. the workers state has to

14

Education for Socialists

serve the interests of the overwhelming majority. Force in the capitalist state is exercised by a minority of hired killers, cut off from the rest of society and trained to obey upper class officers. But in a workers state, force would be needed only so the majority could protect themselves against anti-social acts by the remnants of the old privileged classes. soldiering and policing in a workers state can be done by ordinary workers, who mix freely with their fellow workers, share the same ideas and lead the same lives. indeed, to make sure that groups of soldiers and police never develop separated from the mass of workers, the soldiers and police should be ordinary factory and office workers who take it in turns, on a rota system, to carry out these functions. instead of the armed forces and police being run by a small group of officers, they would be run by directly elected representatives of the mass of workers. parliamentary representatives in a capitalist state pass laws but leave it to full-time bureaucrats, police chiefs and judges to implement them. this means that mps and councillors can always hide behind a million excuses when their promises are not implemented. the workers representatives in a workers state would have to see their laws put into action. they, not an elite of top bureaucrats, would have to explain to the workers of the civil service, the army and so on how things should be done. again elected workers representatives would have to interpret the laws in courts. parliamentary representatives in a capitalist state are cut off from those who elect them by high salaries. in a workers state the representatives would get no more than the average workers wage. the same goes for those who work full time in key posts implementing the decisions of the workers representatives (the equivalent of present-day civil servants). Workers representatives, and all those concerned with implementing workers decisions, would not be, as mps are, immune to removal from office for five years (or for life in the case of senior civil servants). they would be subject to at least annual elections,

the State and revolution

15

and to immediate recall by those who elected them if they did not implement their wishes. parliamentary representatives are elected by all the people living in a certain localityupper class, middle class and working class, slum landlords as well as tenants, stockbrokers as well as labourers. in a workers state election would be by those who work only, with voting only after open discussion on the issues concerned. so the core of the workers state would be workers councils based on the factories, mines, docks, big offices, with groups such as housewives, pensioners, school students and students having their own representatives. in this way, each section of the working class would have its own representative and be able directly to judge whether he or she was following their interests. in these ways, the new state cannot become a force separate from and against the majority working classas it was in Eastern Bloc countries which called themselves Communist. at the same time, the workers council system provides a means by which workers can coordinate their efforts in running industry according to a democratically decided national plan, and not end up running their factories in competition with each other. it is easy to see how modern technology would enable all workers to be given information on the various economic options open to society, and to direct their representatives to choose what the majority of workers thought the best set of optionsfor example, whether to spend resources on Concorde or on a cheap and reliable public transport system, whether to build nuclear bombs or kidney machines, and so on.

the withering away of the state

Because state power would not be something separate from the mass of the workers, it would be much less a matter of coercion than under capitalism. as the remnants of the old society against which it was directed became resigned to the success of the revolution, and as revolutions removed foreign ruling classes, there would be less and less need for coercion, until eventually workers need never take time off from work to staff the police and the army. this is what marx and lenin meant when they said the state would wither away. instead of coercion against people, the state

16

Education for Socialists

would become merely a mechanism of workers councils to decide how to produce and allocate goods. Workers councils have come into being in one form or another whenever the struggle between the classes within capitalism has reached a really high level. soviet is the word the Russians used for workers councils in 1905 and 1917. in 1918 in Germany workers councils were, briefly, the only power in the country. in spain in 1936 the various workers parties and unions were united by militia committees which ran the localities and were very much like workers councils. in Hungary in 1956 the workers elected councils to run the factories and the localities as they fought Russian troops. in Chile in 1972-3 the workers began to build cordonesworkers committees that linked the big factories. the workers council begins life as a body workers use to coordinate their struggle against capitalism. it may start with modest functions, raising strike funds maybe, but because these bodies are based on direct election from the workers, with workers representatives subject to recall, they can at the highest points in the struggle coordinate the efforts of the whole working class. they can lay the basis for workers power.

the State and revolution

17

wHat iS a Revolution?
John MolynEux From johnmolyneux.blogspot.com (2011)

ThaWRa, ThaWRa, hatt an-Nasr! this chant, the arabic for Revolution, RevolutionUntil Victory!, has been heard repeatedly on the streets of Dublin in recent weeks.1 it comes straight from tahrir square in Cairo and is one of many slogans from Egypt chanted outside the Egyptian Embassy and at the spire in OConnell street as groups of Egyptians, libyans and others gathered in solidarity with various phases of the great wave of revolt that has swept north africa and the arab world. One thing is already clear: that anyone who wants to know what a revolution is need only look at events in tunisia and Egypt. Equally, anyone who has ever read the great writers on revolutionKarl marx, Frederick Engels, lenin, leon trotsky, Rosa luxemburg, etchas been able to see their words coming to life on the streets of tunis and Cairo.

the role of the masses

the most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. in ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, and history

1: this column, which appears here in edited form, was written by Dublin-based socialist John molyneux shortly after the Egyptian Revolution of early 2011 overthrew the dictator Hosni mubarakeditors note.

18

Education for Socialists

is made by specialists in that line of businesskings, ministers, bureaucrats... But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime.

these lines are taken from the greatest account of a revolution ever written, trotskys history of the Russian Revolution, and stand as exact description of what occurred in Egypt on 25 January 2011 and the 17 days that followed culminating in the fall of mubarak on 11 February. For revolution, lenin wrote, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers, or at least of the...politically active workers, should be willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Over 300 people were martyred in the struggle against with mubaraks cops and his paid thug supporters but it was precisely this readiness to die that made victory in the battle of the streets possible. secondly, says lenin:
the ruling class should be passing through a governmental crisis that draws even the most backward masses into politics a symptom of every real revolution is a rapid, hundred-fold increase in the number of members of the toiling and oppressed masseshitherto apatheticwho are capable of waging the political struggle.

again, what an apt description of the gigantic popular mobilisations in Cairo, suez, alexandria and so on, which continually reinforced the anti-mubarak struggle and secured its triumph. socialism must be created by the masses, must be made by every worker. Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there must they be broken, declared Rosa luxemburg in the midst of the German Revolution of 1918-9. the chains of capitalism are forged in its workplaces where workers are exploited and profits are made. therefore, luxemburg argued, mass strikes play a crucial role in revolutions. it is at work that working people are organised as

the State and revolution

19

collectives, have the greatest power of resistance, can most effectively inflict blows on the profits of the big companies that stand behind the government, and can challenge for control of the economy by occupations and the like. in tunisia the trade union federation, the UGtt, which had in recent history been moderate and collaborationist, played a key role in mobilising the movement against the dictator Ben ali. in Egypt it was when mass strikes and occupations started to gain momentum that mubarak was finally forced out. and since the fall of mubarak the workers strike movement has been one of the main ways the revolution has continued and begun to enter a new stage. all the quotations from trotsky, lenin and luxemburg are developments of marxs fundamental principle that the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself . and it is the demonstration in practice that the mass of ordinary people are indeed capable of this that is the principal lesson to be drawn from the tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.

the question of the state.

ash-sharb Yireed Iskuk an-Nidam!the people Want to Bring Down the Regime!is another slogan that made the journey from tahrir square to Dublin. it reflected the understanding among the core of the movement that they needed to remove not only the person of mubarak but also his whole system of rule, including the hated Emergency law, systematic torture and the equally hated security police. this in turn found expression in the heroic struggle over several days and nights against the police which forced their withdrawal from the streets. in other words, the Egyptian masses came face to face with what marx and lenin (and all the other great marxists) regarded as the central issue in any real peoples revolutionthe question of the state. in his key book The State and Revolution lenin, following marx, argued (1) the state, i.e. the army, judiciary, police, etc, does not represent, as it claims, the nation but is an instrument of capitalist class rule; (2) the central aim of the workers struggle and of the revolution is the winning of state power; (3) the existing state

20

Education for Socialists

machine cannot simply be taken over and used by the workers but has to be smashed or broken up and replaced by a new state geared to the workers needs, i.e. a state based on workers councils. the way this can be done, as the Russian Revolution and many subsequent revolutions have shown, is not through defeating the ruling class army in a set-piece battle but by winning over rank and file soldiers and breaking them from their officers in the course of the revolutionary struggles in the streets. On this question, the Egyptian Revolution and the tunisian Revolution went further than any other mass struggle of recent years, but nevertheless stopped halfway. On the one hand, there existed among some of the masses illusions in the neutrality and decency of the armydespite the fact that the generals had been hand in glove with mubarak. On the other hand, the Egyptian generals did not directly use the army against the protesters. this enabled them to keep it intact until the movement had lost some of its momentum; consequently the state held on and the revolution is not yet complete, but at the same time it is not yet over.

From democratic to socialist revolution

the issue of the state is linked to question of turning the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. Only if the movement is able to go beyond demands for democracy, necessary as those are, to challenging capitalism and the economic power of the capitalist class, will the needs of the mass of ordinary Egyptians be addressed. the same applies to every other revolution in the modern world. inequality, poverty, exploitation and unemployment exist everywhere and are caused by international capitalism, not just individual dictators. this in turn leads to the question of socialist organisation. the tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, like revolutions in general, began spontaneously, but they do not end spontaneously. to unify and focus the power of the masses, to combat the power of capitalist ideas, and to defeat the highly centralised power of the capitalist state, the leadership of a revolutionary workers party is necessary.

the State and revolution

21

leninS State and Revolution

tony cliFF an extract from lenin: all Power to the Soviets (1976)

tHE CEntRal problem of all revolutions is that of state power. Which class is to hold it? there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theoryas lenin many times reiteratedso it is not surprising that he spent the months of august and september 1917, while in hiding, preparing a work on the subject of the state and revolution. He had been studying the subject systematically during the last few months of 1916. On 17 February 1917, while still in switzerland, he wrote to alexandra Kollontai, i am preparing (have almost got the material ready) an article on the question of the attitude of marxism to the state. lenin left this manuscript in stockholm on his way to Russia. apparently it was practically ready for publication, as can be deduced from his letter to Kamenev, written between 5 July and 7 July:
Entre nous [just between us]: if they do me in, i ask you to publish my notebook: marxism on the state (it got left behind in stockholm). its bound in a blue cover. it contains a collection of all the quotations from marx and Engels, likewise from Kautsky against pannekoek. there are a number of remarks and notes, and formulations. i think it could be published after

22

Education for Socialists

a weeks work. i believe it to be important... the condition: all this is absolutely entre nous!

it is clear from this, first, that the work was practically ready even before the February Revolution1 and, second, that lenin thought it to be of paramount importance. and there is no doubt that this work, the final draft of which was written a couple of months before the October insurrection2 and published under the title State and Revolution, has proved to be among his most significant. it addresses itself to some of the most momentous questions of theory and practice facing the revolutionary movement, questions that have certainly not lost their importance over time, but rather the contrary.

Reviving the Marxist theory of the state

the marxists of the second international,3 including their chief theoretician, Kautsky, castrated and vulgarised the marxist theory of the state. lenin wrote:
What is now happening to marxs theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. after their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons,
1: the 1917 Revolution began with the mass explosion of struggle by workers in February of that year, which led to the creation of the soviets (workers councils)editors note. 2: the October insurrection was the point at which the soviets, now led by lenins Bolshevik party, moved against the old state to establish a workers government based on soviet ruleeditors note. 3: this was the old grouping of socialist organisations which split under the impact of the First World War when many of these parties supported their own government. the split represented a more general division between reformist and revolutionary organisationseditors note.

the State and revolution

23

to canonise them, so to say...while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge, and vulgarising it. today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labour movement concur in this doctoring of marxism. they omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul.

the reformists distorted marxism in general, but especially the marxist concept of the state. the marxism of Kautsky was mechanical, fatalistic. it was passive and non-revolutionary. a long period of purely evolutionary, reformist activity had led Kautsky to adopt a critical position on various individual aspects of the capitalist state, but not to oppose it totally. Reform of aspects of the capitalist state, not its overthrow, became the leitmotiv. For Kautsky, marxism was a theory of the class struggle. But for marx himself, it was the development of the class struggle to the dictatorship of the proletariat. thus in a letter to Weydemeyer dated march 5, 1852, marx stated:
and now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of the classes. What i did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

thus, according to marx, an acceptance of the concept of the class struggle does not go beyond bourgeois limits; the dictatorship of the proletariat does. For Kautsky and his associates, the capitalist state was taken as given, to be adapted, even while fighting particular aspects of it. in the 1891 Erfurt Programme, Kautsky wrote:

24

Education for Socialists

this revolution (i.e. the seizure of political power by the proletariat) may take the most diverse forms, depending on the conditions in which it occurs. It is in no way inseparable from violence and bloodshed. We have already seen cases, in the history of the world, of ruling classes who were intelligent enough, weak enough, or cowardly enough to surrender voluntarily in the face of necessity.

Kautskys theory bore fruit in the years after the First World War. in a work published in 1922, he wrote:
in his famous article criticising the social Democratic partys programme, marx says, Between capitalist and communist society, there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is a period of political transition in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Given our experiences over the last few years, we can now alter this passage on the kind of government we want, and say, Between the period of a purely bourgeois state and a purely proletarian state, there lies a period of the transformation of one into the other. Corresponding to this there is also a period of political transition, in which the state will usually take the form of a coalition government.

in a later book, The Materialist Concept of history, Kautsky went so far as to completely deny the need for armed struggle in the revolution:
When you have a democratic state (the existing bourgeois state), a consolidated democracy, armed struggle no longer plays any role in the solution of social conflicts. these conflicts are resolved by peaceful means, by propaganda and the vote. Even the mass strike, as a means of pressure by the working class, is of decreasing utility.

the State and revolution

25

the state, he claimed, is a neutral body:

the modern democratic state differs from preceding types in that utilisation of the government apparatus by the exploiting classes is no longer an essential feature of it, no longer inseparable from it. On the contrary, the democratic state tends not to be the organ of a minority, as was the case in previous regimes, but rather that of the majority of the population, in other words of the toiling classes. Where it is, however, the organ of a minority of exploiters, the reason for this does not lie in its own nature; it is rather that the toiling classes themselves lack unity, knowledge, independence or fighting abilityall qualities which in their turn are a result of the conditions in which they live. Democracy offers the possibility of cancelling the political power of the exploiters, and today, with the constant increase in the number of workers, this in fact happens more and more frequently. the more this is the case, the more the democratic state ceases to be a simple instrument in the hands of the exploiting classes. the government apparatus is already beginning, in certain conditions, to turn against the latterin other words to work in the opposite direction to that in which it used to work in the past. From being an instrument of oppression, it is beginning to change into an instrument of emancipation for the workers.

Kautsky was, of course, not as openly anti-revolutionary before 1917, but the basic characteristic of reformist adaptation to the state, never raising the question of the need to smash it by revolution, was already detectable in his thinking.

Smashing the capitalist state

in State and Revolution lenin starts by making it clear that the question of the state is the central question for war and revolution. First, Our prime task is to re-establish what marx really taught on the subject of the state:

26

Education for Socialists

the state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. the state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. and, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable. the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.

in October-november 1918, in his book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, lenin underlined even more heavily the class nature of parliamentary democracy:
Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor... Deceit, violence, corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy and oppression of the poor is hidden beneath the civilised, polished and perfumed exterior of modern bourgeois democracy.

Kautskys distortion of marxism was subtle:

theoretically, it is not denied that the state is an organ of class rule, or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or glossed over is this: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and alienating itself more and more from it, it is obvious that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class...it is this conclusion which Kautsky has forgotten and distorted... all previous revolutions perfected the state machine, whereas it must be broken, smashed.

the State and revolution

27

this conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the marxist theory of the state. and it is precisely this fundamental point which has been completely ignored by the dominant official social Democratic parties and, indeed, distorted (as we shall see later) by the foremost theoretician of the second international, Karl Kautsky.

the dictatorship of the proletariat

the smashing of the capitalist state apparatus and the crushing of the bourgeoisie are necessary, because the bourgeoisie will never give up its effort to re-establish its economic and political dominance:
the theory of the class struggle, applied by marx to the question of the state and the socialist revolution, leads as a matter of course to the recognition of the political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i.e. of undivided power directly backed by the armed force of the people. the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organising all the working and exploited people for the new economic system. the proletariat needs state power, a centralised organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletariansin the work of organising a socialist economy... to confine marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. a marxist is solely someone who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

On the basis of the experience of the paris Commune of 1871, marx and Engels had drawn clear conclusions about what kind of

28

Education for Socialists

state should replace the capitalist state, what form the dictatorship of the proletariat should take. in marxs words:
the first decree of the Commune...was the suppression of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people... the Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of paris, responsible and revocable at any time. the majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class... the police, which until then had been the instrument of the government, was at once stripped of its political attributes and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable instrument of the Commune. so were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, public service had to be done at workmens wages. the privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the dignitaries themselves... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of the physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests... the judicial functionaries lost that sham independence...they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible and revocable.

lenin quotes these words and concludes:

the Commune...appears to have replaced the smashed state machine only by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this only signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type...the abolition of all representation allowances and of all monetary privileges to officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of workmens wages.

the State and revolution

29

Under capitalism, the executive (civil servants, etc) hides behind the parliamentary facade.
the Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. a working, not a parliamentary, bodythis is a blow straight from the shoulder at the present-day parliamentarians and parliamentary lap dogs of social Democracy! take any parliamentary country, from america to switzerland, from France to Britain, norway and so forthin these countries the real business of state is performed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and general staffs. parliament is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the common people.

Bolshevik policy was a practical policy:

We are not utopians, we do not dream of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. these anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. no, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control and foremen and accountants. the subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working people, i.e., to the proletariat. a beginning can and must be made at once, overnight, to replace the specific bossing of state officials by the simple functions of foremen and accountants, functions which are already fully within the ability of the average town dweller and can well be performed for workmens wages. We, the workers, shall organise large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created, relying on our own experience as workers, establishing strict, iron discipline backed

30

Education for Socialists

up by the state power of the armed workers. We shall reduce the role of state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, modestly paid foremen and accountants (of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types, and degrees). this is our proletarian task, this is what we can and must start with in accomplishing the proletarian revolution. such a beginning, on the basis of large-scale production, will of itself lead to the gradual withering away of all bureaucracy, to the gradual creation of an orderan order without inverted commas, an order bearing no similarity to wage slaveryan order under which the functions of control and accounting, becoming more and more simple, will be performed by each in turn, will then become a habit and will finally die out as the special functions of a special section of the population.

the transition from capitalism to communism

in lenins writings, as in those of marx before him, there is very little about the future socialist society. neither marx nor lenin were utopian socialists and they believed that socialism could be achieved only through the practical struggle of humanity. to postulate the features of socialism before it was achieved would be dogmatic, empty playacting. But both were quite explicit on the process of the class struggle against capitalism for socialism.
During the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. a special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the state, is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state. it is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage-labourers, and it will cost mankind far less. and it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for

the State and revolution

31

a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple machine, almost without a machine, without a special apparatus, by the simple organisation of the armed people (such as the soviets of Workers and soldiers Deputies, we would remark, running ahead)... Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the peoplethis is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism. Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely crushed, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e. when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then the state...ceases to exist, and it becomes possible to speak of freedom... lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressednobody in the sense of a class; of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. in the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this; this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilised people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. and, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want, and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will

32

Education for Socialists

inevitably begin to wither away. We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away.

For lenin the question of the transition from capitalism to communism on the economic level was also a political question. Here again he was practical, realistic to the end, trying to gauge the combination of elements of the past and the futureof capitalism and communism in the transition period. in the immediate post-revolutionary society, there would be a combination of elements of the old and the new:
the means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. the means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. and with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. after a deduction is made of the amount of labour which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it. Equality apparently reigns supreme.

However, there is no real equality:

Equal right, says marx, we certainly do have here; but it is still a bourgeois right, which, like every right, implies inequality. Every right is an application of an equal measure to different people who in fact are not alike, are not equal to one another. that is why equal right is a violation of equality and an injustice. in fact, everyone, having performed as much social labour as another, receives an equal share of the social product (after the above-mentioned deductions). But people are not alike: one is strong, another is weak; one is married, another is not; one has more children, another has less, and so on. and the conclusion marx draws is: With an equal

the State and revolution

33

performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. to avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal. the first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality: differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible... and so, in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism) bourgeois right is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e. only in respect of the means of production. Bourgeois right recognises them as the private property of individuals. socialism converts them into common property. to that extentand to that extent alonebourgeois right disappears. However, it persists as far as its other part is concerned; it persists in the capacity of regulator (determining factor) in the distribution of products and the allotment of labour among the members of society. the socialist principle, He who does not work shall not eat, is already realised; the other socialist principle, an equal amount of products for an equal amount of labour, is also already realised. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish bourgeois right, which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labour, equal amounts of products.

to the extent that bourgeois rights remain:

there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labour and in the distribution of products. the state withers away insofar as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class can be

34

Education for Socialists

suppressed. But the state has not yet completely withered away, since there still remains the safeguarding of bourgeois right, which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.

Even though the workers differ from one another in skill, in their needs and those of their families, etc, in one thing they must be absolutely equal in order that the same amount of labour that every worker gives to society in one form be received back in another: in the ownership of the means of production. the growth of production, the increase of the amount of means of production belonging to society, i.e. owned equally by all the workers, will progressively undermine equal rights in the distribution of the products. this in turn will progressively increase equality among the people. and thus does the bourgeois right of the transition period include its own negation. Bourgeois right in the transition period, while it lays down that every worker will receive means of consumption from society according to the labour he gives it, is based on social equality as regards the means of production, and thereby will wither away of itself. the dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of private property of the means of production are not enough, according to marx and lenin, to overcome bourgeois law and the bourgeois state inherited from a barbarous class society. a whole period of progress of the productive forces, plus intellectual and moral transformation of the most important productive forcethe working peopleare necessary for the transition to real human freedom. the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat will be a long one of very hard class struggle, in which the proletariat will have to fight on the economic, cultural and political fronts against the powers of the past, above all the habits and traditions of capitalism that have burdened the consciousness of the masses. the seizure of political power by the proletariat is only the first step towards the economic construction and cultural revolution that are necessary to achieve real communism.

the State and revolution

35

in conclusion
throughout history, the ruling classes have created a mystique around the state, describing it as supreme and omnipotent, so that the oppressed classes should accept their inferiority in face of it. lenins task was to remove all mystification and to reveal the class nature of the state. the intimate relation between his theory and practice is most clearly shown in the few words from his postscript to State and Revolution written on 30 november 1917:
the writing of the second part of the pamphlet (the Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917) will probably have to be put off for a long time. it is more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it.

While attributing to his work the very modest goal of reviving the genuine teaching of marx about the state in the light of the actual experience and needs of the revolution, lenin in fact gave marxs ideas a new concreteness and hence a new development. the whole of lenins teaching is in State and Revolution, above all his complete confidence in the creative potential of the massesa confidence that was the theme of all his work and struggles.

36

Education for Socialists

Sample questions for discussion

lenin was an enemy of democracyhis vision of socialism, and in particular the dictatorship of the proletariat, means tyranny and the rule of a new elite. How would you respond to this common claim? to what extent is Britain today moving towards a police state? Would the withering away of the state be a faster process in Britain after a revolution than envisaged by lenin, or slower? if someone asked you to describe what a revolution in Britain, and the smashing of the existing state apparatus, might look like, how would you reply?

Further reading
the classic work on this subject is lenins State and Revolution, which is available in many editions and on the marxist internet archive (www.marxists.org). this website also contains Karl marxs The Civil War in France and the full text of tony Cliff s Lenin: all Power to the Soviets. Donny Gluckstein has recently written an account of the 1871 revolution by French workers, The Paris Comune: a Revolutionary Democracy (Bookmarks). On the dynamic of workers revolution itself, trotskys lengthy history of the Russian Revolution is excellent, as is the shorter Lessons of October. Both are available online. Chris Harmans short book Revolution in the 21st Century (Bookmarks) is a good introduction to the concept of revolution and deals with the question of the state. For the origins of the state in the earliest class societies, read Harmans a Peoples history of the World (Bookmarks) or his article Engels and the Origins of Human society, available from www.marxists.de/science/harmeng/