The State and Revolution

By 1851, Marx had pushed his argument one step further, describing the state in much more concrete terms rather than as an abstract philosophical concept. He also described in greater detail how revolution sharpens the edge of state repression, which the triumphant revolution then seizes for its own purposes. Lenin argues that too many Marxists (such as Karl Kautsky) have interpreted Marx’s earlier abstractions as a rejection of revolution, but Lenin insists that Marx made his position perfectly clear by 1851 and 1852. Marx became more concrete as he developed a richer understanding of the state itself.

The modern bourgeois state truly came into being with a standing army and a centralized bureaucracy. These institutions serve as a “parasite” (2.2) on the working class, growing more powerful as class antagonism intensifies. The state turns the lower classes against one another by providing jobs where one peasant may torment another. The state then presents a parliament as the place where such antagonisms might reach a resolution, where in fact it only prolongs real change.

The real proletariat, however, are not fooled, and they come to see the entire state as nothing more than a vehicle of bourgeois interests and repression. Therefore, the only meaningful choice is to destroy the system. Engels’s hopes that France would lead the revolutionary way have so far gone unfulfilled, but the same historical process is now unfolding across all of Europe and the United States. Now that these states are all evolving into empires, with each fighting for monopolies on capital, it is only a matter of time before the global proletariat likely concentrate their energies and turn them against the state.

Lenin asserts that in 1852, Marx defined with perfect clarity the relationship between socialism and the state. Marx did not invent the idea of the class struggle, as there were plenty of theorists before him who defined the concept. Marx’s contribution was to recognize the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat as a successor—albeit a temporary one—to the bourgeois state.

Lenin believes that those, like Kautsky, who refuse to accept this part of Marx’s legacy are proving themselves to be inauthentic Marxists, unwilling to go where the theory indisputably leads them. All modern states, “whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’” (2.3). The dictatorship of the proletariat is the only possible bridge between the current state of affairs and the achievement of full communism.

Marx was initially cautious when the workers of Paris sought to overthrow the government in 1870, but when the moment was ripe, he supported them eagerly. Even though the Paris Commune was ultimately suppressed, its legacy endured as a “practical step that was more important than hundreds of programs and arguments” (3.1). The Commune was important enough to prompt a revision in The Communist Manifesto to the effect that the proletariat must take hold of the state in order to destroy it.

Reformist Marxists have ignored this revision, but Marx made the point absolutely clear in his later reflections on the experience of the Commune. One factor that has changed since Marx’s time is that Britain and the United States are more open to proletarian revolution, largely by virtue of their entry into the First World War. Marx also cited the Paris Commune to draw the distinction between a “people’s revolution” (3.1, emphasis added) and a bourgeois revolution: A bourgeois revolution only reshuffles the composition of the ruling class rather than produce any meaningful change.

A genuine people’s revolution was not possible in 1871 because the proletariat was nowhere near the majority, but it was an early indication of what would later become possible. A people’s revolution would occur once the workers and the peasants joined forces to seize the machinery of the state and then destroy it.

Lenin admits that Marx was relatively vague in The Communist Manifesto regarding what would replace capitalism, but argues that the Paris Commune helped to solidify his ideas. The Commune was the ultimate antithesis of the modern state, abolishing the army and replacing it with the people in arms. It then established universal suffrage, with all elected officials coming from the working class. The Commune failed to suppress lingering bourgeois elements “with sufficient determination” (3.2), but it did signify the majority in league against the minority which had been oppressing them. So long as the Commune was in power, the institutions of the state began to wither, as seen in such measures as the reduction of state employees’ salaries and treating them like any other worker.

The Commune marked a return to the “primitive democracy” (3.2) characteristic of pre-capitalistic society, whereby all officials were entirely accountable to the public. Under such a system, it becomes less and less necessary for one class to oppress the other. Since governments are vehicles of class oppression, the state withers away.

Lenin states that the Paris Commune was an example of real democracy, which he differentiates from rule by a parliament or other legislative body. Under a parliamentary system, the only real difference is which specific members of the ruling class will be in charge for the interval of a few years. Such governments conduct the real work of government “behind the scenes” (3.3), far from public scrutiny.

Lenin complains that too many false Marxists have fallen for the parliamentary trap, enticed by the prospect of “lucrative and honorable posts” (3.3) for party members. The Commune, by contrast, produced in reality the liberties that parliamentary democracy only pretends to have. Representation is necessary, but representatives must be directly accountable to their constituents, as they were in the Commune.

Contrary to widespread opinion, Lenin insists that Marx was not a utopian: “He studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it” (3.3). He therefore did not suggest abolishing all bureaucracy at once, but rather, replacing it with a new kind of bureaucracy which will ultimately render itself unnecessary.

The proletariat will use what capitalism has created, namely large-scale production and bureaucratic centralization, to expedite the revolution. After that, all forms of economy will resemble the post office, an industry which the state monopolizes and that exists to perform a public service rather than maximize profits.

According to Marx, the purpose of the Paris Commune was not to destroy the nation, but to reorganize its government along thoroughly democratic lines. Some have mistakenly interpreted Marx as favoring a federalist system, concentrating certain powers in the central government and delegating others to states or provinces, even though Marx did not speak to that question specifically. However, Lenin argues that “Marx was a centralist” (3.4) and would not want a centralized, proletariat state to limit itself in the purging of bourgeois remnants. In fact, this task requires a bureaucracy capable of extending itself into every corner of the country, and so Marx explicitly warns against those who claim that the Commune was trying to destroy the fabric of the nation.

Lenin writes that Marx was absolutely clear in his desire to see the state abolished in its entirety. He predicted that this would happen inevitably, and once the Paris Commune took power, it gave him a more concrete idea of what would follow in the wake of the bourgeois state. In Lenin’s view, the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 “continue the work of the Commune and confirm Marx's brilliant historical analysis” (3.5).