The State and Revolution (n. d.)/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PARIS COMMUNE OF
1871—MARX'S ANALYSIS
1. In What Lay the Heroism of the Communists?
It is known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers, proving to them that an attempt to overthrow the Government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March, 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the rising had become an accomplished fact, Marx welcomed the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries. Marx did not fall back upon an attitude of pedantic condemnation of an "untimely" movement; unlike the all-too-famous Russian renegade from Marxism, Plekhanoff, who, in November, 1905, wrote to encourage the workers' and peasants' struggle, but, after December, 1905, took up the liberal cry of "You should not have resorted to arms."
Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards—"storming Heaven," as he said. In the mass revolutionary movement, although it did not attain its objective, he saw a historic experiment of gigantic importance, a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, a practical step more important than hundreds of programs and discussions. To analyze this experiment, to draw from its lessons in tactics, to re-examine his theory in the new light it afforded—such was the problem as it presented itself to Marx. The only "correction" which Marx thought it necessary to make in the Communist Manifesto was made by him on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Communards.
The last preface to a new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24, 1872. In this preface the authors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, say that the program of the Communist Manifesto is now "in places out of date."
"Especially," they continue, "did the Commune demonstrate that the 'working class cannot simply seize the available ready machinery of the State, and set it going for its own ends.'"
The words within the second inverted commas of this passage are borrowed by its authors from Marx's book on The Civil War in France. One fundamental and principal lesson of the Paris Commune, therefore, was considered by Marx and Engels to be of such enormous importance that they introduced it as a vital correction into the Communist Manifesto.
It is most characteristic that it is precisely this correction which has been distorted by the Opportunists, and its meaning probably is not clear to nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine hundredths, of the readers of the Communist Manifesto. We shall deal with it more fully further on, in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. It will be sufficient here to remark that the current, vulgar interpretation" of the famous formula of Marx here adduced consists in that Marx it is said, is here emphasizing the idea of gradual development in contradiction to a sudden seizure of power, and so on.
As a matter of fact, exactly the reverse is the case. What Marx says is that the working class must break up, shatter the "available ready machinery of the State," and not confine itself merely to taking possession of it.
On April 12, 1871—that is, just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann:
"If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will see that I declare the next attempt of the French Revolution to be not merely to hand over, from one set of hands to another, the bureaucratic and military machine—as has occurred hitherto—but to shatter it (Marx's italics—the original zerbrechen); and it is this that is the preliminary condition of any real people's revolution on the Continent. It is exactly this that constitutes the attempt of our heroic Parisian comrades." (Neue Zeit, xxi., 1901–2, p. 709.)
In these words, "to shatter the bureaucratic and military machinery of the State" is to be found, tersely expressed, the principal teaching of Marxism on the problems concerning the State facing the proletariat in a revolution. And it is just this teaching which has not only been forgotten, but has also been completely distorted by the prevailing Kautskian "interpretation" of Marxism!
As for Marx's reference to the Eighteenth Brumaire we have quoted the corresponding passage in full above.
It is interesting particularly to note two points in the passage quoted. First he confines his conclusions to the Continent. This was natural in 1871, when England was still the pattern of a purely capitalist country, without a military machine, and, in large measure, without a bureaucracy.
Hence Marx excluded England, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, could be imagined, and was then possible without the preliminary condition of the destruction "of the available machinery of the State."
To-day, in 1917, in the epoch of the first great Imperialist war, this distinction of Marx's becomes unreal, and England and America, the greatest and last representatives of Anglo-Saxon "liberty" in the sense of the absence of militarism and bureaucracy, have to-day completely rolled down into the dirty, bloody morass of military-bureaucratic institutions common to all Europe, subordinating all else to themselves, crushing all else under themselves. To-day, both in England and in America, the "preliminary condition of any real people's revolution" is the break-up, the shattering of the "available ready machinery of the State" (perfected in those countries between 1914 and 1917, according to the "European" general Imperialist standard).
Secondly, this extremely pregnant remark of Marx is worth particular attention in that it states that the destruction of the military and bureaucratic machinery of the State is "the preliminary condition of any real people's revolution." This idea of a "people's" revolution seems strange on Marx's lips. And the Russian Plekhanovists and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who wish to be considered Marxists, might possibly consider such an expression a slip of the tongue, They have reduced Marxism to such a state of meagre "liberal" distortion that nothing exists for them beyond the distinction between capitalist and proletarian revolutions; and even that distinction becomes for them a lifeless doctrine.
If we take examples from the revolutions of the 20th century, we shall, of course, have to recognize both the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions to be middle-class. Neither, however, is a "people's" revolution, inasmuch as the mass of the people, the enormous majority, does not make its appearance actively, independently, with its own economic and political demands, in either the one or the other. On the other hand, the Russian middle-class revolution of 1905–7, although it presented no such "brilliant" successes as at times fell to the lot of the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, was undoubtedly a real "people's" revolution, since the masses of the people, the majority, the lowest social "depths" crushed down by oppression and exploitation, rose up independently, impressed on the entire course of the revolution the stamp of their demands, their attempts to build up a new order on their own lines in place of the old shattered order.
On the continent of Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not in a single country constitute the majority of the people. A "people's" revolution, actually sweeping the majority into its current, could be such only if embracing both the proletariat and the peasantry. Both classes are united by the circumstance that the "military and bureaucratic machinery of the State" oppresses, crushes, exploits them. To shatter this machinery, to break it up—this is the true interest of the "people," of its majority—the workers, and most of the peasants—this is the "preliminary condition" of a union of the poorest peasantry with the proletarians: while, without such a union, democracy is unstable and Socialist reconstruction is impossible. Towards such a union, as is well known, the Paris Commune was making its way; though it did not reach its goal, by reason of a number of circumstances, internal and external.
Consequently, when speaking of "a real people's revolution," Marx did not in the least forget the peculiar characteristics of the lower middle classes (he spoke of them much and often), and was very carefully taking into account the actual relationship of classes inmost of the continental European States in 1871. From another standpoint, also, he laid it down that the "shattering" of the machinery of the State is demanded by the interests both of the workers and of the peasants, unites them, places before them a common task of destroying the "parasite" and replacing it by something new.
But by what exactly?
2. What Is to Replace the Machinery of the State?
In 1847, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx was, as yet, only able to answer this question entirely in an abstract manner, stating the problem rather than its solution. To replace this machinery by "the proletariat organized as the ruling class," "by the conquest of Democracy"—such was the answer of the Communist Manifesto.
Refusing to plunge into Utopia, Marx waited for the experience of a mass movement to produce the answer to the problem as to the exact forms which this organization of the proletariat as the dominant class will assume, and exactly in what manner this organization will embody the most complete, most consistent "conquest of Democracy." Marx subjected the experiment of the Commune, although it was so meagre, to a most minute analysis in his Civil War in France. Let us bring before the reader the most important passages of this work.
In the 19th century took place the development of the "centralized State power, originating from the Middle Ages, with its ubiquitous organs: a standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy and judges." With the development of class antagonism between capital and labor, "the State assumed more and more the character of a public organization for the oppression of labor, that is, of a machine for class domination. After every revolution marking a certain advance in the class struggle, the purely oppressive character of the power of the State became more and more apparent." The State, after the revolution of 1848–49, becomes "the national weapon of capital in its war against labor." The Second Empire consolidates this.
"The Commune was the direct antithesis of the Empire. It was a definite form … of a Republic which was to abolish not only the monarchical form of class rule, but also class rule itself."
What was this "definite" form of the proletarian Socialist Republic? What was the State it was beginning to create?
"The first decree of the Commune was the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the nation in arms." This demand now figures in the program of every party calling itself Socialist. But the value of these programs is best shown by the behaviour of our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who refused to put their theories into practice even after the Revolution of March 12, 1917!
"The Council of the Commune consisted of municipal representatives elected by universal suffrage in the various districts of Paris. They were responsible and could be recalled at any time. The majority were, naturally, working men or acknowledged representatives of the working class."
" … The police, until then merely an instrument of the Government, was immediately stripped of all its political functions, and turned into the responsible and at any time replaceable organ of the Commune …"
" … The same was applied to the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Council of the Commune down to the humblest worker, everybody in the public service was paid at the same rates as ordinary workingmen. All privileges and representation allowances attached to the high offices of the State disappeared along with the offices themselves. … Having got rid of the standing army and police, the material weapons of the old Government, the Commune turned its attention, without delay, to breaking the weapons of spiritual oppression, the power of the priests. … The judicial functionaries lost their sham independence. … In the future, they were to be elected openly and be responsible and revocable."
And so the Commune would seem to have replaced the broken machinery of the State "only" by a fuller democracy: the aboltion of the standing army and the transformation of all officials into elective and revocable agents of the State. But, as a matter of fact this "only" represents a gigantic replacement of one type of institutions by others of a fundamentally different order. Here we see precisely a case of the "transformation of quantity into quality." Democracy, carried out with the fullest imaginable completeness and consistency, is transformed from capitalist democracy into proletarian democracy; from the State (that is, a special force for the suppression of a particular class) to something which is no longer really a form of the State.
It is still necessary to suppress the capitalist class and crush its resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. But the organ of suppression is now the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom and wage-labor. And, once the majority of the nation itself suppresses its oppressors, a special force for suppression is no longer necessary. In this sense the State begins to disappear. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officials and chiefs of a standing army), the majority can itself directly fulfill all these functions; and the more the discharge of the functions of the—State devolves upon the masses of the people, the less need is there for the existence of the State itself.
In this connection the special measures adopted by the Commune and emphasized by Marx, are particularly noteworthy: the abolition of all representative allowances, and of all special salaries in the case of officials; and the lowering of the payment of ail servants of the State to the level of the workmen's wages, Here is shown, more clearly than anywhere else, the break—from a bourgeois democracy to a proletarian democracy; from. the democracy of the oppressors to the democracy of the oppressed; from the domination of a "special force" for the suppression of a given class to the suppression of the oppressors by the whole force of the majority of the nation—the proletariat and the peasants. And it is precisely on this most obvious point, perhaps the most important so far as the problem of the State is concerned, that the teachings of Marx have been forgotten. It is entirely neglected in all the innumerable popular commentaries. It is not "proper" to speak about it, as if it were a piece of old-fashioned "naivete"; just as the Christians, having attained the position of a State religion "forget" the "naivete" of primitive Christianity, with its revolutionary democratic spirit.
The lowering of the pay of the highest State officials seems simply a naive, primitive demand of democracy. One of the "founders" of the newest Opportunism, the former Social-Democrat, E. Bernstein, has more than once exercised his talents in the repetition of the vulgar capitalist jeers at "primitive" Democracy. Like all Opportunists, like the present followers of Kautsky, he quite failed to understand that, first of all, the transition from Capitalism to Socialism is impossible without a "return," in a measure, to “primitive” Democracy. How can we otherwise pass on to the discharge of all the functions of Government by the majority of the population? And, secondly, he forgot that "primitive Democracy" on the basis of Capitalism and Capitalist culture is not the same primitive Democracy as in pre-historic or pre-capitalist times. Capitalist culture has created industry on a large scale in the shape of factories, railways, postal system, telephones, and so forth; and on this basis the great majority of functions of "the old State" have become enormously simplified and reduced, in practice, to very simple operations such as registration, filing and checking. Hence they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for the usual "workingman's wage." This circumstance ought, and will, strip them of all their former glamour as "Governmental" and, therefore, privileged service.
The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and~the approximation of their salaries to the "ordinary pay of the workers"—these are simple and "self-evident" democratic measures, which harmonize completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as a bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism. These measures refer to the State, that is, to the purely political reconstruction of Society; but, of course, they only acquire their full meaning and importance when accompanied by the "expropriation of the expropriators," or at least by the preliminary steps towards it, that is, by the passage from capitalist private ownership of the means of production to social ownership.
"The Commune [wrote Marx] realized that ideal of all bourgeois revolutions, cheap Government, by eliminating the two largest items of expenditure—the army and the bureaucracy."
From the peasantry, as from other sections of the lower middle class, only an insignificant minority "rise to the top," and "enter society," make a career in a bourgeois sense, that is, become transformed either into propertied members of the upper middle class, or into secure and privileged officials. The great majority of peasants in all capitalist countries where the peasant class does exist (and the majority of capitalist countries are of this kind), are oppressed by the Government and long for its overthrow, in the hope of a "cheap" Government. This hope can only be realized by the proletariat; and by the fact of realizing it, the proletariat makes a step forward at the same time towards the Socialist reconstruction of the State.
3. The Destruction of Parliamentarism.
"The Commune [wrote Marx] was to have been not a parliamentary but a working corporation, legislative and executive at one and the same time. Instead of deciding, once in three years, which member of the ruling class was to 'represent' and repress the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, organized in communes, as a means of securing the necessary workers, controllers, clerks and so forth for its business in the same way as individual suffrage serves any individual employer in his."
This remarkable criticism of parliamentarism in 1871 is also one of those of Marx's dicta which have been conveniently "forgotten"—thanks to the prevalence of Socialist chauvinism and Opportunism. Ministers and professional politicians, "practical" Socialists and traitors of the proletariat of to-day have left all criticism of parliamentarism to the Anarchists, and, on this wonderfully intelligent ground, denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as "Anarchism." It is indeed not surprising that the proletariat of the most "advanced" parliamentary countries, being disgusted with such "Socialists" as Messrs. Scheidemann, David, Legien, Sembat, Renaudel, Henderson, Vandervelde, Stauning, Branting, Bissolati & Co., have been giving their sympathies more and more to Anarcho-Syndicalism, in spite of the fact that it is but the twin brother of Opportunism.
But to Marx revolutionary dialectics was never the empty fashionable phrase, the toy rattle, which Plekhanoff, Kautsky, and the others have made of it. Marx knew how to castigate Anarchism pitilessly for its inability to make use at least of the "sty" of capitalist parliamentarism when the situation is not revolutionary, but at the same time, he knew how to subject parliamentarism to a really revolutionary proletarian criticism.
To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and oppress the people through parliament—this is the real essence of middle class parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary and constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic Republics.
But if, in connection with the question of the State, parliamentarism is to be regarded as one of its institutions, what, from the point of view of those tasks which the proletariat has to face in this field, is to be the way out of parliamentarism? How can we do without it?
Again and again we must repeat: The teaching of Marx, based on the study of the Commune, has been so completely forgotten that any criticism of parliamentarism other than Anarchist or reactionary is quite unintelligible to the "Social-Democrats" (read—traitors to Socialism) of to-day.
The way out of parliamentarism is to be found, of course, not in the abolition of the representative institutions and the elective principle, but in the conversion of the representative institutions from mere "talking shops" into working bodies: "The Commune was to have been not a parliamentary institution, but a working corporation, legislative and executive at one and the same time."
"Not parliamentary, but a working" institution—this is directly aimed, as it were, at present-day parliamentarians and at the parliamentary Social-Democratic "lap-dogs." Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to England, Norway and so forth; the actual work of the State is done behind the scenes and is carried out by the departments, the chancellories and the staffs. Parliament itself is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the "common people." This is so true that even in the Russian Republic, in our middle-class democratic Republic, parliamentarism has already revealed its real purpose, though a real parliament has not yet come into existence. Such heroes of putrid philistinism as the Skobeleffs and the Tseretellis, Tchernoffs and Avksentieffs, have managed to pollute even the Soviets, after the model of the most despicable middle-class parliamentarism, by turning them into hollow talking shops. In the Soviets the Right Honorable "Socialist" ministers are fooling the confiding peasants with phrases and resolutions. In the Government itself a sort of.incessant quadrille is going on in order that, on the one hand, as many Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks as possible may get at the "pie," that is, the "cushy" jobs, and, on the other hand, that the attention of the people may be occupied. All the while the real "State" business is being done in the chancellories and the departments.
Dielo Naroda, the organ of the ruling party, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, recently admitted, in an editorial article, with the incomparable candor of people of "good society" in which "all" are engaged in political prostitution, that even in those ministerial departments which belong to the "Socialists" (pray, excuse the term) the whole official apparatus remains essentially the same as of old, working as before, and obstructiong every revolutionary initiative without let or hindrance. And indeed, even if we did not have this admission, would not the actual history of the participation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the Government prove this? It is only characteristic that, while in ministerial company with the Cadets, Messrs. Tchernoff, Roussanoff, Zenzinoff, and a herd of the Dielo Naroda staff have so completely lost all shame that they unblushingly proclaim as if it were a mere bagatelle, that. in "their" ministries everything remains as of old. Revolutionary and democratic phrases to gull the Simple Simons; bureaucracy and red tape in the Government departments for the "benefit" of the capitalists—here you have the essence of the present "honorable" coalition.
For the mercenary and corrupt parliamentarism of capitalist Society the Commune substitutes institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion does not become a mere delusion, for the representatives must themselves work, must themselves execute their own laws, must themselves verify their results in actual practice, must themselves be directly responsible to their electorate. Representative institutions remain, but parliamentarism as a special system, as a division of labor between the legislative and the executive functions, as creating a privileged position for its deputies, no longer exists. Without representative institutions we cannot imagine a Democracy, even a proletarian Democracy; but we can and must think of Democracy without parliamentarism, if our criticism of capitalist society is not mere words, if to overthrow the supremacy of the capitalists is for us a serious and sincere aim, and not a mere "election cry" for catching workingmen's votes—as it is with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Scheidemanns, the Legiens, the Sembats and the Vanderveldes.
It is most instructive to notice that, in speaking of the functions of what officials are still necessary both in the Commune and in the proletarian Democracy, Marx compares them with the workers of "any other employer," with the usual capitalist concern and its workers, foremen and clerks. There is no trace of Utopian thinking in Marx, in the sense of inventing or imagining a "new" society. No, he studies, as a scientific historical process, the birth of the new society from the old, and forms of transition from the latter to the former. He takes the actual experience of a mass proletarian movement and tries to draw from it practical lessons. He "learns" from the Commune, as all great revolutionary thinkers have not been afraid to learn from the experience of great movements of the oppressed classes; never preaching them pedantic "sermons" (such as Plekhanoff's "They Should Not Have Resorted to Arms," or Tseretelli's "A Class Must Know Where to Limit Itself").
To destroy officialism immediately, everywhere, completely—of this there can: be no question. That is a Utopia. But to break up at once the old bureaucratic machine and to start immediately the construction of a new one, enabling us gradually to abolish bureaucracy—this is not a Utopia, it is the experience of the Commune, it is the direct and necessary task of the revolutionary proletariat. Capitalism simplifies the functions of "the Government." It makes it possible to throw off autocratic methods and to bring it all down to a matter of the organization of the proletariat (as the ruling class) hiring "workers and clerks" in the name of the whole Society. We are not Utopians, we do not indulge in "dreams" of how best to do away immediately with all management, with all subordination; these are Anarchist dreams based upon a want of understanding of the tasks of a proletarian dictatorship. They are foreign in their essence to Marxism and, as a matter of fact, they serve but to put off the Socialist Revolution "until human nature is different." No, we want the Socialist Revolution with human nature as it is now; human nature itself cannot do without subordination, without control, without managers and clerks.
But there must be submission to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and laboring classes—to the proletariat. The specific "bossing" methods of the State officials can and must begin to be replaced—immediately within twenty-four hours—by the simple functions of managers and clerks, functions which are now already quite within the capacity of the average townsman and can well be performed for a workingman's wage.
We must organize production on a large scale, starting from what has already been done by Capitalism. By ourselves, we workers relying on our own experience as workers, must create an unshakable and iron discipline supported by the power of the armed workers; we must reduce the role of the State officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions; they must be responsible, revocable, moderately paid "managers and clerks" (of course, with technical knowledge of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian task. With this we can and must begin when we have accomplished the proletarian Revolution. Such a beginning, on the basis of large scale industry, will of itself lead to the gradual decay of all bureaucracy, to the gradual creation of a new order, an order bearing no similarity with wage slavery, an order in which the constant simplification of the functions of inspection and registration will admit of their being performed by each in turn, will then become a habit, and will finally die out as special functions of a special class.
A witty German Social-Democrat of the 'seventies of last century called the post office an example of the Socialist system. This is very true. At present the postoffice is a business organized on the lines of a State capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type. Above the "common" workers, who are overloaded with work and yet starve, there stands the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. We have but to overthrow the capitalists, to crush with the iron hand of the armed workers the resistance of these exploiters, to break the bureaucratic machine of the modern State—and we have before us a highly technically-fashioned machine freed of its parasites, which can quite well be set going by the united workers themselves, hiring their own technical advisers, their own inspectors, their own clerks, and paying them all, as, indeed every "State" official, with the usual worker's wage. Here is a concrete task immediately practicable and realizable as regards all trusts, which would rid the workers of exploitation and which would make practical use of the experience (especially in the task of reconstruction of the State), which the Commune has given us. To organize our whole national economy like the postal system, but in such a way that the technical experts, inspectors, clerks, and indeed, all persons employed, should receive no higher wage than the workingman, and the whole under the management of the armed proletariat—this is our immediate aim. This is the kind of State and economic basis we need. This is what will produce the destruction of Parliamentarism while retaining representative institutions. This is what will free the laboring classes from the prostitution of these institutions by the capitalist class.
4. The Organization of the Unity of the Nation.
"In the short sketch of national organization which the Commune had had no time to develop, it was stated quite clearly that the Commune was to become … the political form of even the smallest village. … From these Communes would be elected the 'National' Delegation at Paris. …
"The few but very important functions which would still remain for a Central Government, were not to be abolished—such a statement was a deliberate falsehood—but were to be discharged by Communal, that is, strictly responsible agents. …"
"The problem consisted in this: Whilst amputating the purely repressive organs of the old Government power, to wrest its legitimate functions from an authority which claims to be above Society, and to hand them over to the responsible servants of Society."
To what extent the Opportunists of contemporary Social-Democracy have failed to understand—or perhaps it would be more true to say, did not want to understand—these words of Marx, is best shown by the book, as famous or infamous as the work of Herostratus, of the renegade Bernstein—The Fundamentals of Socialism and the Problems of Social Democracy. It is just in connection with the above passage from Marx that Bernstein wrote saying that this program "in its political content displays, in all its essential features, the greatest similarity to the Federalism of Proudhon. … In spite of all the other points of difference between Marx and the 'petty shopkeeper' Proudhon (Bernstein places the words "petty shopkeeper" in inverted commas in order to make them sound ironical), on these points their currents of thought resemble one another as closely as could be." Of course, Bernstein continues, the importance of the municipalities is growing, but "it seems to me doubtful whether the first task of the democracy would be such a dissolution (Auflösung) of modern forms of the State, and such a complete transformation (Umwandlung) of their organization as is imagined by Marx and Proudhon, that is, the formation of a "national assembly from delegates of the provincial or district assemblies, which, in their turn, would consist of delegates from the Communes. So that the whole previous mode of national representation would vanish completely." (Bernstein, Fundamentals, pp. 184–136, German edition, 1899.)
It is really monstrous thus to confuse Marx's views on the "destruction of the State as parasite" with the federalism of Proudhon. But this is no accident, for it never occurs to the Opportunist that Marx is not speaking here at all of Federalism as opposed to Centralism, but of destruction of the old capitalist machinery of government which exists in all bourgeois countries.
The Opportunist cannot see further than the "municipalities" which he finds around him in a society of middle-class philistinism and "reformist" stagnation. As for a proletarian revolution, the Opportunist has forgotten even how to imagine it. It is amusing. But it is remarkable that this point of Bernstein's has not been disputed. Bernstein has been refuted often enough especially by Plekhanoff in Russian literature and by Kautsky in European, but neither made any remark upon this perversion of Marx by Bernstein.
The Opportunist has forgotten to such an extent how to think in a revolutionary way and how to reflect on revolution, that he attributes "Federalism" to Marx, mixing him up with the founder of Anarchism, Proudhon; and, although they are anxious to be orthodox Marxists and to defend the teaching of revolutionary Marxism, Kautsky and Plekhanoff are nevertheless silent on this point. Herein lies one of the roots of those banalities and platitudes about the difference between Marxism and Anarchism which are common to both Kautskians and Opportunists. These we shall discuss later.
There is no trace of Federalism in Marx's discussion of the experience of the Commune, quoted above. Marx agrees with Proudhon precisely on that point which has quite escaped the Opportunist Bernstein; while he differs from Proudhon just on the point where Bernstein sees their agreement. Marx concurs with Proudhon in that they both stand for the "demolition" of the contemporary machinery of government. This common ground of Marxism with Anarchism (both with Proudhon and with Bakunin), neither the Opportunists nor the Kautskians wish to see, for on this point they have themselves diverged from Marxism. Marx does differ both from Proudhon and Bakunin on the point of Federalism (not to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat). Federalism is a direct fundamental outcome of the Anarchist petty middle-class ideas. Marx is a centralist; and in the above cited quotation of his speculations there is no withdrawal from the central position. Only people full of middle-class "supersitious faith" in the State can mistake the destruction of the bourgeois State for the destruction of centralism.
But will it not be centralism if the proletariat and the poorest peasantry take the power of the State into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely into communes, and co-ordinate the action of all the communes for the purpose of striking at Capital, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the capitalists, in order to accomplish the transference of private property in railways, factories, land and so forth, to the nation, to the whole of Society? Will that not be the most consistent democratic centralism? And proletarian centralism at that?
Bernstein simply cannot conceive the possibility of voluntary centralism, of a voluntary union of the communes into a nation, a voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes in the business of destroying capitalist supremacy and the capitalist machinery of government.
Like all philistines, Bernstein can imagine centralism only as something from above, to be imposed and maintained solely by means of bureaucracy and militarism.
Marx, as though he foresaw the possibility of the distortion of his ideas, purposely emphasizes that the accusation against the Commune that it desired to destroy the unity of the nation to do away with a central authority, was a deliberate falsehood. He purposely uses the phrase "to organize the unity of the nation" so as to oppose the conscious, democratic, proletarian centralism to the capitalist, military official centralism.
But none so deaf as those who will not hear. And the Opportunists of the modern Social-Democracy do not, on any account, want to hear of the destruction of the State, of the removal of the parasite.
5. The Destruction of the Parasite—the State.
We have already quoted the words of Marx on this subject, and must now supplement them.
"It is generally the fate of new creations of History [wrote Marx] to be mistaken for any old and even defunct forms of social life to which the new institutions may bear a sort of likeness. Thus, this new Commune, which is breaking up (bricht) the modern State, was regarded as the resurrection of the mediaeval communes … as a federation of small States (Montesquieu, The Girondins) as an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization … The Communal constitution would have restored to the social body all those forces hitherto devoured by the parasitic excrescence called 'the State,' feeding upon Society and hindering it from moving forward freely. By this one act the regeneration of France would have been advanced. …
"The Communal constitution would have brought the rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the chief towns of each district, and would have secured for them there, in the persons of the town workers, the natural representatives of their interests. The very existence of the Commune would have involved, as a matter of course, local self-government, but no longer as a balance to the power of the State, which now becomes superfluous. … "
"The annihilation of the power of the State," which was a "parasitic excrescence," its "amputation," its "destruction"; "the power of the State now becomes superfluous"—these are the expressions used by Marx regarding the State when appraising and analyzing the experience of the Commune.
All this was written a little less than half a century ago; and now one has to excavate, as it were, in order to bring uncorrupted Marxism to the knowledge of the masses. The conclusions drawn from the observation of the last great revolution, through which Marx lived, have been forgotten just at the moment when the time has arrived for the next great proletarian revolutions.
"The variety of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which found their expression in it, proves that it was a thoroughly flexible political form, whereas all previous forms of Government have been, in their essence, repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially the government of the working class, the result of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class; it was the political form, at last discovered, under which labor could work out its economic emancipation …
"Without this last condition the Communal constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion."
The Utopians had busied themselves with the "discovery" of the political forms under which the Socialist reconstruction of Society could take place. The Anarchists turned away from the question of political forms of any kind. The Opportunists of modern Social-Democracy have accepted the capitalist political forms of a parliamentary democratic State as the limit which cannot be overstepped; they have broken their foreheads praying before this idol, and they have denounced as Anarchism every attempt to destroy these forms.
Marx deduced from the whole history of Socialism and of political struggle that the State was bound to disappear, and that the transitional form of its disappearance (the transition from the political State to the non-State) would be the "proletariat organized as the ruling class." But Marx did not undertake the task of "discovering" the political "forms" of this future stage. He limited himself to an exact observation of French history, its analysis and the conclusion to which the year 1851 had led, viz., that matters were moving towards the destruction of the capitalist machinery of the State.
And when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat burst forth, Marx, in spite of the failure of that movement, in spite of its short life and its patent weakness, began to study what political forms it had disclosed.
The Commune was the form "discovered at last" by the proletarian revolution, under which the economic liberation of labor can proceed. The Commune was the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to break up the bourgeois State, and constitutes the political form, "discovered at last" which can and must take the place of the broken machine. We shall see below that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in different surroundings and under different circumstances, have been continuing the work of the Commune, and have been confirming Marx's brilliant analysis of History.