(b) The Marxian Conception of the Transitional State

The question we have just discussed as to the type of the community when Socialism is fully realized is an academic question. Yet it is not unimportant, because it is always useful to follow an idea to its logical conclusion.

On the other hand, the question of what constitution is required by the State in the period of transition from capitalist to socialist economy, when the workers have captured political power, although capitalist production is still going on, is of the highest practical and immediate importance.

We would emphasize that we are here speaking of the constitution of the State. Neo-Communism, which has made this question a practical one, confuses the question of the organization which the State ought to have with the social effects which arise from this organization under specific social conditions.

In the passage we have already quoted, Marx spoke of the State of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, which “could not be anything else than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

This leaves undecided the question of the constitution through which this dictatorship would be expressed. Lenin introduces the greatest confusion into this question in his attempts to clarify it. He distinguishes between the form of the State and the form of the Government. The proletarian State form is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the bourgeois State form is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. With respect to the State form, he distinguishes between forms of government, or what we should call the political constitution: republic, absolute or constitutional monarchy, etc. These distinctions are for him of very slight account, at least for the period of the “ dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” But he takes the greatest pains to elaborate the necessary constitution for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The description of the middle class State as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” is one of the most absurd fictions that our age has produced. It clearly shows the crudeness of Bolshevist thought, which reduces the totality of the economic and political struggles of our time to the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Yet Bolshevism itself is always being pulled up short by the reality of the peasantry on its own doorstep.

The bourgeoisie have never been the sole possessors of political power, exercising their dictatorship in this sense. They have constantly been obliged to form a political alliance with various classes, the landlords, the peasantry, the lower middle class, the bureaucracy, and even with the workers, as the English Liberals did for several decades.

What appears as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, their dominant influence over Parliament, Governments, the Press, etc., is not the result of a State form, but of their economic and intellectual superiority. Consequently, in advanced capitalist countries this influence is exercised under any political constitution, or, to use Lenin’s language, form of government.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is quite a different matter. It cannot arise from an economic or intellectual superiority, which finds expression under all forms of government. It can only be the result of the possession of political power by the workers, which fact presupposes, a definite form of government.

In this idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat a Marxian inconsistency has been detected. For, it is said, according to Marx, the political superstructure rests on the economic foundation. How, then, is it possible to break down economic superiority by a purely political force? Every class that is economically the stronger will always be the stronger politically.

This is a favourite objection of anarchists to the political struggle. They desire to paralyse capitalism by purely trade union action. This is logical enough, but for all that it is not true. For in what manner can the trade union organization of the workers abolish the economic superiority of the possessors of the source of life of labouring mankind? As a matter of fact, behind their emphasis upon the purely trade union struggle lurks in the minds of anarchists the idea of smashing the economic superiority of capital by the destruction of the capitalist means of production.

But the Bolshevists are downright inconsistent when they champion the opinion that economic superiority is always bound up with political superiority. On these lines, the Georgian Bolshevist, Macharadse, argued against the Menshevists of his country, who contended that, although the country was not sufficiently advanced for capitalism to be entirely abolished, they could still have established the political rule of the workers. This is quite impossible, avers Macharadse:

“The assertion of the political hegemony of the working class is only a fiction, for political power is always based on economic power, and conversely.”

This is a wholly mechanical conception of historical materialism. The political and economic power of a class do not always coincide. If this were the case, then all the Socialist parties from the extreme Right to the extreme Left might disband.

The truth is merely that the political power of a class does not depend upon its inclinations or its will, but upon economic conditions. These conditions might at times invest a class with greater political power than is justified by its economic power.

The same capitalist development that makes the workers the most numerous class of the population also creates the conditions for the victorious progress of democracy, under which the most numerous class eventually attains to a dominant position in the State, and this in its turn reacts upon the economic conditions. It is noteworthy that Lenin himself perceives this in one passage of his work, The State and Revolution.

“If everyone really takes part in the administration of the State, capitalism cannot retain its hold. As a matter of fact, capitalism, as it develops, itself prepares the ground for everyone to be able really to take part in the administration of the State. We may class as part of this preparation of the ground the universal literacy of the population, already realized in most of the more progressive capitalist countries; then the education and discipline inculcated upon millions of workers by the huge, complex, and socialized apparatus of the post, railways, big factories, large scale commerce, banking, and so on.” (p.103)

He further considers that, with such an economic groundwork, it is quite possible, immediately within twenty-four hours, to pass to the overthrow of the capitalists and bureau oats. This is an incursion into the realm of phantasy. But he is quite right in stating that in present-day society democracy will eventually render capitalism impossible, and that capitalism creates the conditions for the operation of democracy upon socialist lines.

It is a pity that in 1917 Lenin did not raise the question as to whether these conditions existed in Russia. This would have saved the lives of millions of Russian workers, peasants, and intellectuals, and preserved the Russian State from complete dissolution.

Only occasionally does he perceive that the conquest and exercise of political power for the attainment of specific economic ends depends upon specific economic conditions.

While in his view the “State form” of the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” is independent of the various forms of government, he sees clearly enough that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is bound up with a specific “form of government.” But he seeks more than a form of government, which under given economic conditions would enable the workers to conquer and freely employ the political power. He seeks a form of government which, by virtue of its mere existence, would assure the dominance of the proletariat, independent of all economic conditions.

Lenin believes this form of government has been found in the constitution of the Soviet Republic. Experience has now shown that this constitution does not maintain the rule of the proletariat under all circumstances.

That no constitution can be devised which would assure the rule of one class irrespective of all economic conditions is implied by the materialist conception of history, and it is a very peculiar brand of Marxism which, from the standpoint of economic determinism, sets out to discover a form of government of this kind.

Our present task is quite different. We have merely to discover under which political constitution the political rule of the workers is possible.

Not every constitution is suitable for this purpose. Marx stated in his Civil War in France:

“The working class cannot simply seize the available machinery of the State and set it in motion for its own ends.”

Lenin quotes this sentence in conjunction with a passage from a letter which Marx wrote to Kugelmann on April 12, 1871:

“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; and it is this that is the preliminary condition of any real people’s revolution on the Continent.”

If we consult the Eighteenth Brumaire, we find the following references to this subject:

“This executive power, with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its multiform and artificial machinery of government, with its army of half a million officials, side by side with a military force of another half-million, this frightful parasitic organism covering as with a net the whole body of French society and blocking up all its pores, had arisen in the period of absolute monarchy, at the time of the fall of feudalism. Every revolution brought this machine to greater perfection instead of breaking it. The political parties, which alternately struggled for supremacy, looked upon the capture of this gigantic governmental structure as the principal spoils of victory.

“The political centralization which modern society needs is erected on the ruins of the military and bureaucratic governmental machinery which was fashioned in opposition to feudalism.”

From these and similar passages, Lenin draws the inference that the chief task of the victorious working class is to destroy the State power. He attacks the “opportunists,” and especially myself, because we do not see this.

“The opportunists of modern Social-Democracy do not, on any account, want to hear of the destruction of the State, of the removal of the parasite.

“‘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.”

In these and numerous similar passages Lenin refers to the State and the State machinery, which the victorious proletariat will have to destroy.

In this respect Lenin is distinguished from the Bakunists merely by the fact that, after the destruction of the existing State, the victorious proletariat will immediately – “Start the building of a new proletarian State machinery by introducing the necessary measures to secure a wider democracy, in which bureaucracy shall be uprooted.”

Nothing is easier than to reduce Lenin’s arguments ad absurdum by showing how the new “proletarian” State machine, which has been set up in place of the old and shattered machine, looks. What has happened to the greater democracy and the extirpation of bureaucracy and militarism, these parasitic excrescences, which the new Communism promised us?

Here, too, is revealed the middle class character of the present Russian Revolution, in spite of its Communist inscription, to which is applicable the dictum of Marx regarding the middle class revolutions of France:

“Every revolution brought this machine to greater perfection, instead of breaking it.”

Yet this objection merely demonstrates the inability of Lenin and his disciples to carry out their own programme; the light-hearted abandonment of their principles, as well as the backwardness of Russia. It throws no light upon the problem we are now concerned with.

Yet its solution is not far to seek. We have merely to read what Marx has written, without being influenced by Lenin’s interpretation. And then it becomes clear that Marx did not in any way mean that the workers could under no circumstances establish their rule without destroying the transmitted State machinery. Marx rejected only a special form of this machine, the bureaucratic-militarist form, which had reached an exceptionally high stage of development in the second French Empire, and which at the time Marx wrote the passages that have been quoted was either in full swing (The Eighteenth Brumaire) or had just been destroyed (Civil War in France, Letter to Kugelmann).

That these remarks did not apply to every existing State is expressly declared by Marx himself, when he states that the destruction of the “bureaucratic-militarist machinery” is the “preliminary condition of every real people’s revolution on the Continent.”

Thus he expressly excepted England. Of course, Lenin contends that this exception is no longer valid. To-day the bureaucratic-military machine has become omnipotent even in England. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the leaders of the World Revolution that they have no suspicion of what is really happening in the world.

Since 1871 England has become far more democratic than she was at that time, and since the recent world war she has again considerably reduced her military establishment, which during the war had been expanded to the utmost limits in order to destroy the military machine in Central Europe. To-day there are only two great States in Europe where the destruction of the “fearful parasitic excrescence of bureaucracy and militarism” is still necessary for a “real people’s revolution” in the Marxian sense, and they are France, the Empire without an Emperor, and to a far greater extent Russia, the Czardom without a Czar. It is a legitimate inference from Marx’s words that the destruction of the existing State machinery of Russia is an indispensable preliminary to any working class progress.

This is so clear that I understand the Leninite philippic against bureaucracy and militarism, written immediately before the Bolshevists came to power, is now strictly forbidden by the agents of the Cheka as a subversive and therefore a counter-revolutionary piece of writing.

From the Marxian principles we may draw the following inferences without fear of contradiction.

The working classes may not seize any State machinery and operate it for their own purposes. A bureaucratic militarist State machine is unsuitable to this end. The only suitable instrument is the democratic Republic, which a victorious working class must establish where it is not already in existence. In the year 1871 and for a long time thereafter this seemed to be an essential task of the workers everywhere. The last few years have brought about a fundamental change. Almost everywhere in Europe the victorious workers find the democratic Republic already in existence, and there they have no need completely to destroy the State machinery, but only to remove vestiges of the monarchy as well as bureaucratic and military privileges.

That the Marxian observations concerning the breaking-up of the State apparatus did not apply to every State, but merely to the military monarchies, is pronounced by Engels to be the case in his criticism of the German Social Democratic draft programme of 1891, where he states:

“If anything is certain, it is this, that our Party and the working class can only achieve power under the form of the democratic Republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

On the other hand, Engels said that the Paris Commune of 1871 was the dictatorship of the proletariat. The constitution of the latter was that of a democratic Republic.