Results and Prospects Issue 2

RESULTS and

PROSPECTS

Issue No.2/2012 Price. £2.00

Theoretical Journal of the Revolutionary Socialist Organization Theoretical sloppiness always takes cruel vengeance in revolutionary politics. - Leon Trotsky

Special Bodies of Armed Men The Development of the Theory of the State of Marx and Engels

Also inside: - Unemployment in Britain - Theses on Revolutionary Interventions in Workplaces and Trade Unions

www.revolutionarysocialism.blogspot.com

Introduction

Introduction W

elcome to the second issue of our theoretical Journal “Results and Prospects”. The Revolutionary Socialist Organization has been around in Britain for more than half a year now. And an important 6 months it has been! On November the 30th Britain saw the largest strike action since the general strike in 1926. While millions of workers on the street showed their determination to fight, the Union bureaucracy sold out quickly afterwards for more than moderate concessions. Further strike action has constantly been delayed. This shows that the union bureaucracy is clearly unwilling to take on the fight. Meanwhile, encouraged by the inactivity of the workers’ movement, the capitalists and their Tory government continue their onslaught of public welfare. Without much of an uproar they have pretty much privatized the NHS, continuing the work of the previous capitalist labour government opening up the NHS for business. These attacks on working people’s livelihood

will unquestionably go on until the capitalists are shown a proper fight back. Like in the school playground, we have to stand up to the bullies and not hand them our lunch money willingly. It is evident that neither the union bureaucrats nor the labour party will stand up for the workers. In fact, this is the crux of the issue we have to stand up for ourselves. Today however, the working class lacks a united voice and a coherent set of ideas to overcome the misery forced upon it by the capitalists. What is necessary is to once again find the way to the ideas of revolutionary socialism, the only ideas that are truly able to change the world. “Results and Prospects” tries to contribute to the clarification of ideas in the working class and in the political left. In this issue we publish for the first time our pamphlet “The development of the theory of the state by Marx and Engels” in English. In it, Christina Stojanovic explains how Marx and Engels came to un-

derstand the state throughout their work, and how it was only Lenin who was able to fully systemise their findings. This is accompanied by a new introduction by Michael Bonvalot, written for the re-publication in German. In the current protest movements it seems as if things were turned on their head, and the Tories were the ones fighting the state whilst the left came out to defend it. Only by going back to Marx and Engels can we understand that the workers’ have no stake in the capitalists society and it’s state. The second article by James Stevens looks at the historic development of unemployment and how it intrinsically linked to the development of capitalism. As an addition to those texts, we have also published the RSO’s theses on“ nterventions in Trade Unions and Workplaces”, an important programmatic document of our organisation, putting forward our political understanding of approaching the working class in workplaces and trade unions.

Contents Unemployment in Britain; An Attempt at an Explanation The Development of the Theory of the State by Marx and Engels Preface Main Afterword Theses on Revolutionary Interventions in Workplaces and Trade Unions Who we are 2

Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

p. 3 p. 14 p. 14 p. 16 p. 23 p. 27 p. 31

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Unemployment in Britain An Attempt at an Explanation

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he misery that unemployment wreaks cannot be underestimated. For the working class to be unemployed in Britain today means to be living in extreme poverty. It means having to endure the morale-sapping routine of searching through a list of potential, menial jobs, none of which would pay enough to raise one completely out of poverty. It means spending hours of time working to produce a CV, that is your personal advert, and filling it with ‘buzz words’ devoid of any meaning. One has to play the game of picking the right ‘buzz word’ for each different job. If the person reading the CV and deciding who gets the job doesn’t see any of these magic buzz words on the CV then they automatically consign it to the unwanted pile. It is a pile that towers over the prospective candidate pile in height. Being unemployed means having to endure this process day after day, spending life applying for jobs only to be rejected time after time, making one question one’s own worth and usefulness. It means having to write down each job one has applied for on a grey piece of recycled paper, because that’s obviously all one is worth, to show to the ‘job advisor’

so as not to get barred from receiving the paltry £53 a week ‘job seekers allowance’, or the dole as it used to be known. On the way home from the job centre thoughts turn into fears. Fears about how you’re ever going to make that next rent payment; that next gas bill payment; how you’re going to eat, whether you’ll ever be able to afford a pair of shoes that aren’t falling apart; whether you’ll ever have enough money to go out and meet a friend for a pint. It means being alive but it doesn’t mean living. It means surviving, just, ever in insecurity, ever unable to truly enjoy oneself, ever just one mean jobs advisor away from absolute destitution and starvation. The reality of the situation in 2012 According to the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics 2.67 million people in the United Kingdom are unemployed. The figures, released in March, reveal that 8.4% of the population able to work and actively seeking work are unable to find work. Amongst this number are 1.04 million unemployed 16-24 year olds, meaning

that 22.5% of Britain’s 16-24 year olds are currently out of work. This is the highest rate of unemployment in Britain since 1994. The reason for the current state of affairs, in which one in five of Britain’s young workers do not have jobs, has been the subject of much debate amongst the bourgeois media. Some blame an influx of immigrant workers taking the jobs that would be done by British workers. Some blame China for stealing British jobs as the factories of the orient pump out goods that were formally made here. Some even go so far to say that the reason that 2.67 million people are unemployed is because these 2.67 million people are simply lazy, feckless, work-shy scroungers who refuse to get up in the morning to go to work. They cry that the problem is a generation of people who have developed a sense of entitlement and lack the industrious work ethic that formally made Britain “great”. There is some truth in the statement that jobs that might formally have been taken by British born workers are being taken by workers born abroad. It Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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is also true that there has been in the last decades a wholesale destruction of Britain’s once mighty manufacturing industry and a huge expansion in the Chinese manufacturing industry. And it is also true that workers in Britain enjoy better working conditions and rates of pay than their Chinese counterparts whose ‘work ethic’ bourgeois commentators hold in such high esteem. These factors though, whilst part of the picture, do not by themselves explain the rise in unemployment to its current rate. The cause of the rise in unemployment is really rather simpler to explain. When the global capitalist economy is in recession unemployment generally increases. When the global capitalist economy is booming unemployment generally decreases. The global capitalist economy is currently suffering from the effects of the worst recession since the great depression of the 1930’s and the 2.67 million people in Britain unable to find work are a consequence of this. Unemployment is an inherent byproduct of the capitalist mode of production. Unemployment is specific to a mode of production in which the producers are separated from the means of production and have to sell their labour according to the needs of the capitalists. The individual is not the personal property of another person as in the slave mode of production nor are they bound by feudal ties to perform labour for their feudal lord. The individual is never forced to perform labour. The compulsion to sell ones labour to another is provided not by the whip but by the individuals need to earn money to eat or else face destitution and starvation. The individual will face destitution because they own no means of production themselves. They do not own the tools they need to produce the

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necessities of life, which they need for survival. Workers are thus forced to work for somebody else who will pay them money with which they purchase the necessities of life. If the individual worker can not find another individual capitalist willing to employ him, then the worker is unemployed. Furthermore to be unemployed does not imply that the person does not do anything at all, for work is meant in its modern usage, meaning paid employment. The specialization of work (and the meaning of work) to paid employment is the result of the development of capitalist productive relations. To be in work or out of work is to be in a definite relationship with another class, which has control over the means of production. It is only in this sense that a woman running a house and bringing up children can be said to be not working. In addition unemployment statistics include only those people who are actively seeking work. The figures disguise those people who are not working but who have given up all hope of ever finding a job due to demoralisation. How many people fall into this categoryis hard to determine but their sufferings are even worse than that of those who have not yet given up hope of finding a job. To understand the reasons for unemployment it is necessary to look at history and learn where it stems from. A History of Unemployment In the beginning there was no money. People lived in hunter gatherer groups living off the land, which was owned by the tribe collectively or by no one, subsisting as best they could. Everyone knew how to build a fire or make a shelter and everyone in the society participated in the gathering of the necessities of life that the tribe needed to

survive. Everyone was employed for the benefit of the society, a state known as primitive communism. As mankind developed farming techniques it was able to create a surplus of food so now not every individual in the society was needed to dedicate their work to collecting the necessities of life. Instead a class arose that administered society, originally in an attempt to maximize efficiency, but which gradually developed into a ruling class with interests separate to those of the people who laboured to produce the means of subsistence. The slave mode of production developed whereby civilizations would enslave prisoners of war and their offspring. Society was broadly divided into two classes, slaves and slave owners. The slaves would perform the labour that was necessary for the development of society and the slave owners would live off the surplus the slaves created. If a slave refused to work they could be sold, whipped or executed as they were the property of the slave owner. If a free person was so destitute they could not eat they might be enslaved and forced to perform labour in return for the necessities of life. Because the slave owners saw their slaves as property they had to look after them, feed them, cloth them and provide them with shelter. Not making use the labour of the slaves was pure folly as that would automatically mean to lose ones investments. Employment in the Feudal Mode of Production The slave mode of production developed into the feudal mode of production whereby the labouring class in society was the peasantry who owned their own small plots of land that they could cultivate themselves. They were

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however tied by feudal law to spend a part of their time labouring for their feudal lord who owned much bigger tracts of land. If they refused the knight or lord would evoke the letter of the law and use violence to punish the peasant for refusing to fulfill their duties to him. These peasants though still did not work for a wage, they worked for the lord because they were legally bound to and they subsisted by tilling their own plots of land. They produced the means of subsistence on their own land. This system was the predominant one in England until the middle of the 14th century. The seeds of the capitalist mode of production, and the first examples of unemployment, can be found in the feudal mode of production. Every mode of production places certain limits on the extent to which mankind can expand its productive capacities, the feudal mode of production reached this limit in England as early as the 13th century, due to the natural limits of the land. Particularly successful peasants had discovered that they could sell some of the surplus of their own production at markets and with the money they received in exchange could buy other things they needed. Some of them discovered the benefits of long distance trade and market towns emerged where people would come from afar to trade in goods. These towns were largely free from the grips of feudal lords extorting the population as they did in the villages of the countryside. Craftsmen became concentrated in the towns and they would produce goods not for their own consumption but specifically for the purpose of exchange. The successful craftsmen amongst them who possessed extra capital would hire other people to work for them producing goods and pay them with money. The embryo of what was to become the capitalist class had developed.

At the same time of this development in the towns, a great change occurred in the countryside. Since the early 13th century a process of commutation had been taking place whereby a feudal lord commuted the labour service owed to them by their serfs in exchange for a payment of money, or rent. This development was in the interest of both parties as the lords found wage labour to be more efficient and the former serfs found it a less harsh system. Following the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century though between a third and a half of England’s population died, creating a great shortage of labour. Fields were left unsown, crops untendered and prices doubled within a year. The peasants demanded higher wages and, so great was the mortality during the plague, that the peasant labourers were able to dictate their own terms to the lord and in most cases received a rise in real wages. The parliament consisting almost entirely of landowners passed the statute of labourers in 1350 in an attempt to check their labour costs, ordering that the labourers work for the lower wages they received before the plague. The law made it an offence for anybody “able in person” to be idle, on punishment of being committed to gaol (prison) and gaol was also the punishment for anyone refusing to work for the lower wages. The peasant labourers and serfs however were able to circumvent the law by playing the landlords off against one another. If one did not grant them their wage demands then they would run the low risk of being caught as a fugitive and simply go and sell their labour to a lord who would. The historian A.L. Morton writes that, “the old village community in which families had lived generation after generation upon the same land began to break up and a migratory class of labourers and peasants moving from one

job and holding to the next arose.” The feudal lords’ reaction to this development was to enclose their arable land for use in sheep farming which required far less labour and was much more profitable due to the booming trade in wool. This enclosure led to many evictions of residents and increased the number of labourers who had no land of their own, roaming the country and seeking work. The lords also introduced a new kind of land tenure, the stock and land lease. In this system a tenant farmer would take a lease on a plot of land for a number of years and the lord would provide the tenant with the seed, cattle and implements needed for farming. In return the lord would receive a rent calculated to cover both the value of the land and the cost of the stock and at the end of the lease the stock would have to be returned in good order. At first the holdings rented would have been small but in time many of them grew and the tenants themselves began to employ labourers. The attempts by the lords to roll back the gains of the peasants and labourers provoked anger and led to the Peasants Revolt in 1381. The rebellion was put down but there was no complete return to the pre-black death conditions. After the revolt Villein unions continued to exert pressure for higher wages and for the commutation of services of peasants still bound by feudal ties. Peasant agriculture began to replace the open field system and though enclosures for sheep farming continued to cause local and temporary hardships it wasn’t until around 1500, when the population had returned nearly to pre-black death levels, that it began to drive the peasants off the land on a large scale.


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In the 16th century the preconditions for the capitalist society developed. The peasantry had to be atomized, broken up into solitary defenceless units before they could be reintegrated into a mass of wage labourers taking part in capitalist production. This was done through the acceleration of the process of enclosure which combined with the steep rise in population meant a general dispossession of the peasantry from their land. Henry VIII’s sale of the monasteries to the big landlords of the new type also added to the ranks of the landless and property-less as these men exploited the former church estates to the utmost. England was thus in the early part of the 16th century faced with the problem of a huge army of unemployed for whom no work could be found. Their descendants eventually found work in the growing cloth industry or the commercial enterprises of the towns but the process was slow. The government attempted to remedy the problem of the unemployed by passing acts limiting the expansion of enclosure but the laws were ignored by the local Justices of the Peace as these were the same men who were profiting from enclosure. What the nascent capitalism required, consciously or otherwise, was not “the plough in the hands of the owners” but, “a degraded and servile condition of the mass of the people, the transformation of them into mercenaries, and of their means of labour into capital!” A far more effective remedy in the eyes of the government was the series of penal laws passed over the century handing out draconian punishments for the offence of being unemployed. In 1536 it was decreed that ‘sturdy vagabonds’ should have their ears cut off, and death was the penalty for a third offence. In 1547 anyone who refused to work was condemned to be the slave of whoever denounced him.

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In 1572 unlicensed beggars were to be flogged and branded unless someone was willing to employ them. For a second offence they were to be executed unless someone would take them into service, for a third offence they were to be executed anyway. Toward the end of the century however the industries of the expanding towns had absorbed a large part of the unemployed and the increased demand for food in the towns meant arable farming became more profitable and enclosure for sheep farming was checked. The farms though were now no longer tilled by peasants who owned their plots but were, by and large, large scale farms which would become capitalist farms. With the decline in the number of unemployed came legislation to deal with those people who were still unable to find work. The Poor Law of 1601 included arrangements for setting the poor to work upon “a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool thread, iron and other necessary ware and stuff” firmly establishing the principle that if relief were to be given to the poor it was to be given only in the most humiliating and degrading circumstances depriving the unemployed person of any dignity. From this act developed the whole system of Poor Rate, Workhouse and settlement by parish that lasted until the shock of the industrial revolution. The 18th century saw major improvements in both agricultural and industrial technique which had huge implications for the working lives of the majority of people. Improved crop rotation methods imported from the Netherlands meant farms could yield far more food than before and improved breeding methods meant that the amount of meat that could be acquiesced from livestock also increased. The changes though were entirely incompatible with the primitive open field method still practiced by the

majority of yeoman farmers and it was only large landowners who possessed sufficient capital to fund changes in technique. Consequently, the technical revolution led to, and developed alongside of, a social revolution that changed the whole structure of rural England. Whilst the enclosures of earlier times had been made with the object of turning arable land into land for sheep pasture those of the 18th century transformed the communally cultivated open fields into large, compact farms on which the new and more scientific mixed farming could be more profitably carried out. In addition, much common land not then under plough, land on which the villagers had certain long standing customary rights of pasturage or wood or turf cutting, as well as other land which had been merely waste was enclosed. It has been calculated that between 1740 and 1788 the number of separate farms declined by over 40,000. From 1717 to 1727 Parliament passed 15 enclosure acts, from 1728 to 1760 it passed 226, from 1761 to 1796, 1,482 whilst from 1797 to 1820, the period of the Napoleonic Wars, there were 1,727 passed. In all over four million acres were enclosed under these acts. As soon as Parliament had passed an act of enclosure the business of redistributing the land was conducted by a powerful commission under the influence of wealthy landowners so that re-allotment amounted practically to confiscation of smaller landowners’ plots. The sums received under the conditions were usually too small to be employed successfully in any other business even if the farmer had the know how to make good use of them. The class of cottagers, who had lived in the past by a combination of domestic industry, the keeping of a few beasts or some poultry or irregular work for wages now found it-

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self thrown back entirely on the last of these resources. The enclosing of the fields in the 18th century led to mass impoverishment of the working population there and had three results with consequences that went far beyond the sphere of agriculture. The consequences of the Agricultural revolution were: - Firstly it increased the productivity of the land and so made possible the feeding of the great industrial populations of the new towns. - Second it created a reserve army of wage earners, now ‘free’ completely from any connection with the soil, men without ties or place or property. It provided a force of free labourers over the same period that the bourgeoisie had accumulated mass amounts of capital and came at a time when the large scale production of commodities was at last possible with the advent of the industrial revolution. - Thirdly, it created a home market for manufactured goods. The subsistence farmer could make what he needed domestically so might consume a great deal but buy very little. The labourer that he had now become was usually compelled to consume a great deal less but everything he consumed had to be bought on the market. The Era of Capitalism The Industrial Revolution in Britain beginning in the latter part of the 18th century created what Marx referred to as the proletariat. People had been driven off of the soil due to enclosure and the cottage industries were driven out of business as the bigger mills were able to produce commodities much

cheaper with their superior techniques. Formerly insignificant hamlets, such as Manchester, became great industrial cities over the course of half a century as people migrated en mass to the new towns hoping to eek out a living. The capitalists owning not only the raw materials but also the machinery needed for production and the building where the goods were produced, needed a great number of labourers to work in their new industries and offered to pay these people if they’d perform labour for them. The people of the countryside, in desperation, flocked in greater and greater number each year to where there was work. Adding to the numbers of this mass were Irish men and women who had been reduced to near starvation by English rule and immigrated to the emerging cities of England. As the populations of the towns swelled the number of workers seeking jobs outgrew the number of jobs the capitalists were offering. The workers were competing against one another for the same jobs. The capitalists realised this and used it to their advantage. They would offer worse terms for the same job to the workers. The capitalist would say to the worker “take this job and work longer hours for less pay than you were before”. If the worker refused these worsened terms the capitalist would say, “no matter, I will find some other worker who will take the job,” and inevitably some poor desperate soul would accept the job on the worse terms. The original worker who refused the job would now, with no property or source of income, be unemployed. With no income he would be facing starvation so he could either turn to criminal activity, with all the danger that this entails, or, far more often, would have to accept another job on whatever terrible terms the capitalist was now offering. This system

meant misery for the worker whether employed or unemployed and huge profits for the capitalists who would cheapen labour as far as the working class would let them without fighting back. However there were never enough jobs for everyone, even in the “good” times, but something that plagues the capitalist mode of production that hadn’t affected previous modes is periodical crises. There comes a point where the produce of the capitalist’s factories cannot be sold anymore because those with money already have the commodities they need and those on low wages cannot afford to purchase the things they produce. Unable to sell all their stock at a profit the capitalists stop or limit production of commodities until they can sell the stock already produced. The problem in capitalist crisis is not that there is not enough to go around but the opposite, that there is too much to go around that can not be sold at a ludicrous enough price to please the capitalist. During these periods of recession many more people are thrown out of work. This happened after the end of the Napoleonic wars as the British government, no longer at war, no longer needed to purchase vast amounts of supplies for the military. The manufacturers hoped that the loss of the military contracts would be alleviated by increased demand from a Europe no longer under blockade but Europe had been so devastated by war that it was financially unable to provide the demand the British manufacturers needed. As a result thousands of workers found themselves without jobs. In Shropshire 24 out of 34 blast furnaces went out of production and thousands of iron workers and colliers were thrown out of work. There was a revival of industry beginning in 1820 due to Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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Britain holding a monopoly on industry at the time but the cycle of boom and bust would now be the one which dictated to millions of workers whether they would be able to keep their heads just above the poverty line or whether they’d be condemned to suffer the worst consequences of unemployment. By 1830 Britain was again suffering a slump in trade. Factories were closing down, unemployment increased rapidly and the wages of those still employed fell. This crises was again followed by a period of boom in trade which was again followed by a crisis of overproduction. In 1834 the government revised the poor law in an attempt to deal with the problem of unemployment as the parish relief system was judged to be costing the bourgeoisie far too much money. The principle of the new system was simple: every person in need of relief must receive it inside of a workhouse. For the new system to work it was necessary that the condition of the pauper should be ‘less eligible, than that of the least prosperous workers outside.’ At a time when millions were on the verge of starvation, this objective could only be achieved by making the workhouse the home of every imaginable form of meanness and cruelty. Families were broken up, food was poor and scanty and the tasks imposed were degrading and senseless, oakum picking and stone breaking being amongst the most common. The misery that this system was wreaking by the middle of the nineteenth century is documented superbly in numerous literary works, such as those of Charles Dickens, which sympathized with the plight of the oppressed. It is a work though by one of the founders of Marxism, Friedrich Engels that best describes the horrors of the capitalist system. In ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’

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Engels describes the lot of the poor man, “cast into the whirlpool, he must struggle through as well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work, i.e. if the bourgeoisie does him a favour to enrich itself by means of him, wages await him which scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together; if he can get no work he may steal, if he is not afraid of the police, or starve, in which case the police will take care that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner.” Engels then writes that during his residency in England of less than two years he knew of 20 to 30 people who had died of simple starvation in the most revolting circumstances. The period from 1845 to 1875 was the “Golden Age of the Manufacturers,” a time when Britain was the “Workshop of the World”. Capitalists were profiting immensely from Britain’s virtual monopoly over world trade enforced by the powerful Royal Navy. They needed so many workers in their factories that unemployment was relatively low apart from that caused by the cotton famine during the American Civil War when 60% of Lancashire Textile workers became unemployed. The crisis of 1875 however was more profound than those that had preceded it and was followed by others in 1880 and 1884. The recovery of British industry was much slower after each crisis and whilst it still continued to progress it was at a much slower rate. The reason for this slowing of industrial expansion was that the British manufacturing monopoly was being broken by the rapidly industrialising nations Germany and America. The effects of this crisis were felt especially hard in the East End of London which was populated by hundreds of thousands of unemployed, destitute dockers, unskilled and casual workers who had witnessed the shipbuilding industries migration to Clyde in the 1860’s. It was amongst

the poverty stricken people of East London that a mass movement of the unemployed emerged during the winter of 1886/1887. The Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League made attempts at organizing this mass movement of the unemployed and called a demonstration in Trafalgar Square for 13th November 1887. The demonstration though was attacked by the police who killed three protestors and injured hundreds more after which the mass movement of the unemployed quietly evaporated as the destitute reverted to a state of general disheartenment. The plight of workers unlucky enough to be unemployed only worsened in the first years of the 20th century. The situation was worsened by the steep rise in prices that occurred between 1895 and 1914 with the purchasing power of 20 shillings in the hands of a working class housewife diminishing to 14 shillings 7d over that period. The increasing militancy of the working class and the rise of the influence of the labour party, as well as the decreasing physical health of the working class causing severe troubles for the army to find fit recruits, forced the liberal government in 1911 to pass the National Insurance Act which provided a small amount of insurance to workers who often found themselves unemployed due to the seasonal nature of their work, such as those in the shipbuilding industry. The act though made no provision for dependants and unemployment still equaled destitution. The imperialist world war of 19141918 briefly alleviated the problem of unemployment as men were drafted either into the factories to make weapons or into the army to be slaughtered on the fields of France. Afterwards however, the problem of unemployment took on new proportions. The U.S.A

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had come out of World War One as the worlds’ industrial powerhouse whilst Britain, burdened by the immense cost of the war, had been knocked off her perch as the world’s undisputed superpower. Struggling to compete with the superior technique of foreign competitors British industry entered into the terminal decline it is still suffering from today. Unemployment during the 1920’s hovered at between 10% and 12%, about one million people, and the decade was one of great class struggle, climaxing with the general strike of 1926. The lot of the working class only worsened as the great depression followed the Wall Street crash in 1929. By the end of 1930 unemployment had hit 2.5 million (20%) and by the end of 1931 had reached 3 million. In some of the industrial towns and villages of north east England the unemployment rate was 70% and entire communities queuing for soup became a norm. It was during these years that the dole, or ‘Job Seekers Allowance’ as it is now called was developed. In August 1931, the 1911 National Insurance scheme was replaced by a fully governmentfunded unemployment benefit system. This system, for the first time, paid out according to need rather than the level of contributions a person had made whilst employed. This unemployment benefit was subject to a strict means test, and anyone applying for unemployment pay had to have an inspection by a government official to make sure that they had no hidden earnings or savings, undisclosed source(s) of income or other means of support. For many poor people, this was a humiliating experience and was much resented and anyone who has had to jump through the innumerable hoops put in front of them by the Job Centre PLC today would attest to.

Britain only began to crawl out of the depths of depression once the government began rearming in preparation for World War Two. The worst poverty was still being endured by people in industrial communities though until the war broke out in 1939 and the government enlisted every hand in its efforts to win yet another imperialist war. During the war the victory of British imperialism was at times so threatened though that the state had to take control of industry and instill a spirit in the workers of self sacrifice to achieve greater things. The workers bought into this but once the war had been won they realised the greater things they had been fighting for were different from those the capitalists had envisaged. The workers refused to regress to the poverty they had endured in the 1930’s and any government attempt to make them do so would probably had resulted in revolution. Thus the post war consensus was born. For the next thirty years all parties in government agreed on some principles for how the state should be run. One was the maintenance of a welfare state with a National Health Service, decent pensions, unemployment benefits etc. Another was the striving to maintain full employment, a policy which was largely successful with the average unemployment rate between 1945 and 1973 being 1.3% as the table shows. The low unemployment was the result of the government’s Keynesian economic policy where it would spend money to stimulate the economy and put certain limits on the freedom of finance capitalism to do whatever it wanted. The government in the post war decades benefited from the economic boom, this boom was the result of new spheres for profit making being opened up by the immense destruction of capital that had occurred during World War Two. The tendency of

the rate of profit to decline however is an inviolable law of capitalism and from 1973 onwards the global economy began to suffer more pronounced recessions. In 1971 unemployment rose above 1 million for the first time since the thirties and by the end of the decade numerous oil crises, economic stagnation and inflation had contributed to 1,500,000 people being out of work, a rate of 5%. The election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1979 marked the end of the post war consensus and the rejection of the policy of full employment. The neo-liberal policies implemented by Thatcher’s government, the privatizing of previously state owned industries, tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the financial sector and a war on the trade unions which led to spiraling unemployment, were an unmasked expression of the capitalists’ desires,. By July 1982 3 million people were unemployed in Britain for the first time in fifty years and once again whole communities, especially in the north of England were devastated. The official number of unemployed fell briefly to 1.6 million after 1986 but in 1990 recession hit again, and again there were 3 million people out of work. The economy recovered as new spheres for investment were opened up in the formerly soviet states in Eastern Europe and Russia and unemployment fell so that when the Labour Government came to power in 1997 it was at a rate of 8%. New Labour continued on with roughly the same economic policies of the conservatives promoting a deregulated financial sector, de-industrialization and a general deskilling of the working class. It was less the result of these economic policies and more the long economic boom that capitalism enjoyed which allowed the unemployment rate to fall to around 5.5% by July 2005. Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, talked about the “end of boom and bust”. He foolishly imagined that he had found a way to circumvent one of the inherent laws of capitalism which Marx pointed out in the 19th century. If Gordon Brown had tried to understand the economic system he was supposed to be regulating then he would have understood that, in capitalism, periodic crises are inevitable and that there is a tendency for each of these crisis to be worst than the last. The Great Depression of the 1930’s was the worst recession in capitalism’s history up to that point and economic recovery was only ensured through the massive destruction of capital as a result of World War Two. The current economic crisis which began in 2007 with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, continued with the credit crunch, the collapse of Lehmann brothers and the bailing out of the banks is today inflicting suffering upon the working class in the age of austerity. In the age of austerity it has been the policy of government to make enormous cuts to funding for public services. In Britain this is leading to the loss of 710,000 public sector jobs. The government’s justification for making hundreds of thousands of people unemployed is that reduced government spending will open up opportunities for private sector companies to expand and create jobs. So far though this creation of jobs in the private sector had been largely non existent and in actuality many large private sector employers have shed jobs during the recession as they look to squeeze more value out of each worker rather than hire in greater numbers. The result, as mentioned already, is that as of March 2012 2.67million people in the U.K. are unemployed, a rate of 8.4%.

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Unemployment, far from natural This history of unemployment demonstrates that for a human being to be unemployed is not something natural in the slightest. Unemployment is a concept that only exists when a human being is separated from the means of production. The ruling class first had to separate people from the soil before they would be willing to be exploited in the capitalistic manner, that is, for a wage. It is a condition of existence that has been engineered for the benefit of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. It has been shown above, that the development of unemployment was inseparably linked to the development of the modern proletariat. The first to fully grasp the interrelation, the dialectics of this process, was Karl Marx, especially in his major work, Capital. Unemployment explained by Marx Karl Marx explains unemployment in Capital as the concept of relative surplus population. In chapter 25, section 3 of the first volume he writes, “A surplus labouring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus-population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost.” He means that as the capitalist mode of production expands in fits and starts, the fits being recessions, the starts being booms, capitalism needs a mass of unemployed labourers ready to be employed in industry during the periods of expansion. They are then thrown out of work again when expansion

ceases but they will be needed by the capitalists when they expand again. Marx point out that, “the whole form of the movement of modern industry depends, therefore upon the constant transformation of a part of the labouring population into unemployed or half employed hands”. As a side the half employed hands Marx refers to are a part of the population we understand today as people working part time or people in ‘vulnerable employment’. According to the latest Office of National Statistics figures in March 2012 there were 6,600,000 half employed hands in Britain. Most of these part time workers are only working part time because they are unable to find full time work. The trend in the labour market back towards casual work, with the increasing dominance of employment and temping agencies, is as worrying as the rise in actual unemployment. There are currently 1.5.million temporary workers in Britain who can be hired and fired at an hours notice, be paid less for doing the same job and lack rights such as paid holidays and redundancy pay. All these workers provide competition for workers in full time jobs and contribute to the willingness of those workers to be further exploited. The government encouraged trend of workers in part time employment however is an issue that requires an article all to itself. We must now though go back to the 19th century to learn more from Marx. As the technology used in the factories became more sophisticated, capitalists no longer needed highly skilled, better paid labour as unskilled poorly paid labour could perform the menial tasks required in production. The capitalist could therefore buy more individual labour with the same outlay of capital. This not only meant

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the displacement of skilled labour by unskilled but also meant the displacement of adult labour by child labour. It always benefits the capitalists to squeeze more labour out of one worker than hire two so they do their level best to overwork their employees. But, “the overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to over-work and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists.” The amount an employer is willing to pay in wages is dependant on the number of people seeking jobs. Marx writes, “taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore not determined by the variations of the absolute number of the working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working class is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminution in the relative amount of the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is now absorbed now set free.” We can observe this law in motion today by comparing different historical periods. During the post war consensus period when there was almost full employment the smaller industrial reserve army meant that workers in employment could demand higher wages, and received them as the industrial reserve army (unemployed persons) was relatively small. Today as there is a large industrial reserve army employers are able to keep wages low. In local gov-

ernment the practice had been to give workers an ultimatum of signing a new contract on a lower wage or lose their jobs. Workers, in the knowledge that there are millions of people out there willing to take their job for the lower wages, sign the contracts consenting to lower wages and over work. Marx points out that in this manner the supply of labour, to a certain extent, becomes independent of the supply of labourers. The Problem and the Solution It is obvious to see that in capitalism keeping a section of the population unemployed benefits the capitalists as it allows them to more easily exploit the worker. It is in their interest to keep unemployment relatively high. Conversely the worker is forced to toil harder and for a lesser wage due to the threat from the industrial reserve army. It is against their interests to have high unemployment. It is in the workers’ interest to have no one unemployed but this can not be achieved within the confines of the capitalist mode of production. The experience of low unemployment after the Second World War was unique in that it was only possible for the capitalists to grant the workers their demands due to the high profits they were able to reap from post war reconstruction. Excluding another, inevitably even more destructive world war such concessions will not be made again and unemployment in the millions will be the lot of the working class. The only way that the working class can escape from the misery unemployment causes, both for the employed and the unemployed, is to do away with the system that creates these conditions. That is to create a new system in which the chief concern is to provide for the

needs of its citizens not for the private profit of a parasitic few capitalists. In such a society, socialism, the workers will democratically plan their economy instead of subordinating it to blind market forces. The workers will, from information gained in this process, be able to organize their labour to create all needs of life. Those who can work will have to work, those who will not work, will not eat. Work will be shared out evenly between all members of society, following the guide of “each according to his/her abilities. There will be work that needs to be done and everyone will be needed to chip in to get in done, unemployment will not exist. With the labour of everybody in society put to work creating only the things the society needs, as opposed to useless things like giant private yachts, as well as by making full use of all labour saving machinery, even those that do not create profits for capitalists, the amount of labour each person will have to contribute will be significantly less than it is today. This massive increase in time that has not to be spent on necessary labour will enable humanity to fully live up to its potential, cultivate their abilities and give a huge impetus to general culture. To get to socialism however the working class must organize itself to fight collectively against the rule of the bourgeoisie. Workers are constantly competing for jobs and those with jobs are constantly at risk of losing their job to someone without one. Both the employed and the unemployed must be organised so that they are not competing against each other for the capitalists benefit. The organisation of those in employment has seen relative successes in the concessions won by the trade unions. The organisation of the unemployed however, a task that is also of vital importance for the success of the revolution, has met with mixed Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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successes. Learning lessons from previous attempts at organizing the unemployed In the U.K. the Communist Party of Great Britain established the National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) in 1921 with the twin goals of preventing unemployed workers becoming blackleg strike breakers and of improving their general condition which in 1921 was dire. Around 2 million workers were unemployed and nearly 2 million more were only on short time work. To make matters worse in March 1921 the government halved the post war benefit to the unemployed. In response to this the NUWM raised a number of demands which were: 1. Raise the benefit of the unemployed 2. Remove the ‘not genuinely seeking work’ clause from the conditions of denying relief to a person 3. Restore benefits to all those excluded by previous governments 4. No disqualification unless refused work on trade union rates of pay 5. Shorter working day without loss of pay 6. Adequate pension for all over 60. In contrast to previous campaigns against unemployment which relied on appeals for charity the NUWM waged a tremendously energetic campaign which brought dignity to the fight of the unemployed, arguing for militant direct action. Demonstrations, hunger marches, raids on the offices of the council guardians who were responsible for providing relief, strike solidarity and even raids on factories against overtime working and piece rates were organised. The NUWM even managed to organise unemployed workers to join strikers in their struggles during the engineers lockout in 1922 and the dockers strike of 1923/4. Concessions were won through these struggles but

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the influence of the NUWM ultimately proved to weak to play a decisive role in events and the number of unemployed workers remained in the millions right up until outbreak of the second world war. Unlike Britain, the 1920’s in America was a period of relative economic prosperity. It was not until the Wall Street crash, and the Great Depression that followed it, that unemployment skyrocketed peaking at 18 million in 1933. Left to themselves the legions of unemployed workers provided a ready pool of scab labour for strikebreaking employers to exploit and use to blackmail their workers into accepting worse terms of employment. What was needed to deal with the rampant unemployment was a mass organisation including both employed and unemployed workers to unite the whole working class in a single struggle. In struggle against a system which by protecting the profits of a few industrial and financial moguls subjected the masses of working people to untold privations. Unfortunately the activists, union organizers and revolutionaries who tried to create such an organization were hampered, harassed, persecuted by men who claimed to be forwarding the interests of the working class but were in reality protecting the interests of the ruling class. The Communist Party of America was but an organ of Stalinist foreign policy in the U.S.A. and, as such, was more concerned with destroying the influence of the Trotskyist left opposition in the labour movement than alleviating the suffering of the unemployed. At the same time the American Federation of Labour, the union with the largest membership in America was crippled by the conservatism and opportunism of its leaders and was therefore virulently opposed

to even entertaining the prospect of revolution. Both the Communist Party of America and The American Federation of Labour both eventually endorsed the Roosevelt government’s ‘New Deal’ which included innumerable anti working class measures and actively tried to sabotage the efforts of anyone who organized to oppose the ‘New Deal’. Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges the Trotskyists faced they did achieve some success in uniting the struggles of employed and unemployed. In Minneapolis the Trotskyists set an example of working-class unity which even the Stalinists found impossible to ignore. Even before the three strikes in 1934 which established the General Drivers Local 574, under Trotskyist leadership, and transformed Minneapolis into a union town, the militant Teamsters sought to organise the unemployed. During the strikes this paid off as many of the 4,000 unemployed workers of the Minneapolis Central Council of Workers (MCCW) militantly defended the truck drivers’ picket lines. The tale during the depression overall though was one of defeats for the labour movement with unemployment wreaking untold misery for millions. It was a decade in which the unemployed had to learn that destitution was not a personal failing of their own or a temporary condition, as claimed by the ruling class, but a permanent feature of capitalism which could only be eradicated by the overthrow of capitalism itself. Unemployed organizers had to learn that by themselves the unemployed are difficult to organize into a stable formation and are prey to right wing ideologies and tempted to scab on employed workers. Leadership in the unemployed struggle must ultimately fall to the employed workers

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who can utilize their economic power and organisation derived from their position in capitalist production. The Challenges of Today This article has focused heavily on unemployment and attempts to organize in an attempt to end the misery that it causes historically, but the only value in history is to learn lessons from it, to avoid making the same mistakes twice so we can positively shape the future. According to the International Labour Organisation in 2012 there are 200 million people unemployed worldwide whilst there are 1.5 billion people in ‘vulnerable employment’ meaning they are liable to become unemployed at any moment. The International Monetary Fund in its annual World Economic Outlook report is warning that the global economic recovery is very fragile and the risk of a relapse that triggers an even bigger crisis than the last is high. If the crisis worsens, which it increasingly looks like it will, this will bring with it yet more job losses and even higher unemployment creating a situation ever more like the one workers worldwide barley survived in the 1930’s. In that situation capitalism failed to solve its inherent contradictions and the only way to end the economic crisis was to enter into a second inter-imperialist war which resulted in the deaths of more than 70 million people. Such a scenario is not unforeseeable in the near future. We have to understand that there can only be an end to unemployment when the majority of humanity is no longer prey to the fluctuations in the anarchic capitalist system, which puts people out of work according to the needs of profits while putting more and more pressure upon those still in employment. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, today the most concrete thing we can

do to fight against unemployment is to awaken the attention of all workers to the facts of unemployment. Every worker in employment today could be unemployed by tomorrow and unemployment will always hang like the sword of Damocles above the head of those workers standing up and fighting for their interests. The capitalists will not shun for a single second the opportunity to play the workers off against each other for their own benefit. It is only by consequently dismantling the bourgeois lies of “undeserving poor” and lazy scroungers and fighting a common struggle against the common enemy, capitalism, that a better society, free from misery and poverty can be brought about. James Stevens, RSO Manchester Bibliography Engels, F. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 Jones, O. Chavs Marx, K. Capital Moore, T. Utopia Morton, A.L. A People’s History of England Orwell, G. The Road to Wigan Pier Steinbeck, J. The Grapes of Wrath Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class Tressel, R. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists


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Theory

The Development of the Theory of the State by Marx and Engels

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Preface

he more the vulnerability of capitalism becomes apparent, the more the ideas of Marx and Engels resurface. In bourgeois papers there a more hints to the economic theories of Marx and Engels and also in leftist social democratic and trade union circles there is increased discussion about Marx. But the restriction on the economic analysis of Marx and Engels also means a misrepresentation, because the two were not only theoreticians, but also political activists in the service of a revolutionary transformation of society. Furthermore, while they were working on theoretical problems, this was not a simple examination of capitalist society, but an examination of the way this society could be overcome. In fact it is exactly the achievement of Marx and Engels to have found that theory and practice cannot be separated. Theory, for Marx and Engels was always a guide to action. In this contribution we want to trace the development of the theory of the state by Marx and Engels. Marx and

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Engels went through an important development of their own analysis. For Marx and Engels, it was clear that the working class taking power is a prerequisite for the development of communism. [1] However, they were not aware of what this “dictatorship of the proletariat” - ie the working class instead of the capitalists as the ruling class - meant for the development of the form of the state. For a long time Marx and Engels thought it possible that a workers’ party could take over the bourgeois state apparatus, for example through a majority in an election. But after the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx wrote in a letter: “... If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people’s revolution on the Continent.” [2] The theory of the state of Marx and Engels was not carved in stone, but

was developed in the real struggles of the working class. The Paris Commune gave them not only a confirmation of earlier assumptions, but also showed them the new form of government, in which the proletariat has taken power. This enabled them to finally realize what it exactly means to “smash” the state. And Friedrich Engels was able to declare in 1891: “Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. “ [3] This processing of the experience of the Commune was central, and a significant development of Marxism. But, even before that, Marx and Engels were of course committed to revolutionary development. Friedrich Engels had already written in 1847 “The principles of Communism”;

Theory

“Question 16; Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible? It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes. But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words. “ [4] It has to be remarked critically that the positions of Marx and Engels were not consistent even after the events of the Paris Commune. Marx limited his knowledge of the “precondition for every real people’s revolution” on the “continent,” so did not include Britain or the USA. Later we find in Engels (especially in his later phase) positions that even mean a clear step backwards. Thus Engels wrote in 1895 in his new introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France: “The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the “revolutionaries”, the “overthrowers” — we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow.” [5] And he continued:

“Its [the German social democracies’] growth proceeds as spontaneously, as steadily, as irresistibly, and at the same time as tranquilly as a natural process.” Engels’ conclusion was that the legal parliamentary struggle was now far more realistic than the armed struggle on the barricades.” This position was clearly a product of the “peaceful coexistence”, that Engels entered at the end of his life with the then already partially reformist SPD and demonstrates once again that it is necessary to also look upon the “classics” with a certain critical distance. However, despite the later writings of Engels it is evident that the experience of the Commune meant an essential incision for Marx and Engels. The two even found it necessary to correct the Communist Manifesto. In the last preface to the German edition of The Communist Manifesto, signed by its two authors, dated 24 June 1872, Marx and Engels declare, that the program of the Communist Manifesto has “in some details been antiquated.“. “One thing especially,” they continue, “was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”[6] (Interestingly Britain is not named as an exception here.) The analyses of Marx and Engels were later developed and generalised primarily by the Russian Marxists. Lenin, however, had a long way to go to reach this conculusion, this journey led him from half-hearted agreement with the position represented by Nikolai Bukharin, who built upon the experience of Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune, to fully embrace

his concept. In his book State and Revolution, Lenin to a large extent generalised his positions on the need to smash the bourgeois state apparatus. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and others are not saints or idols. They have made very important contributions, but that does not mean that they were free of mistakes. For us it’s about applying the Marxist method - and where it is necessary, to make use of this same method to criticize important Marxists. In the second part of our contribution, we go into detail of this question i.e. response to a reader’s letter. This contribution was first published as a pamphlet by the AGM (Arbeitsgruppe Marxismus), one of the forerunners of the RSO. We are pleased to now republish this text for the first time in the English language and hope to make a small contribution to the debate on Marxist theory. Michael Bonvalot (RSO Vienna) __________________________ [1] “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 (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,[1] (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society .”Karl Marx, letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, 1852 [2] Karl Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, MEW 33, p.205 [3] F. Engels, Introduction to K. Marx, 1891: Civil War in France, MEW 17, 623ff. [4] Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Communism [5] Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Introduction to Marx, “Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850”, MEW 22/2} [6] Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party


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M

Main

arx’s and Engels’s writings, in which they deal with the question of the state, fall into four groups; First, those writings that came into being in the wake of Marx’ criticism of the traditional legal philosophy (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, On the Jewish Question) [1] Second, those writings in which Marx and Engels set out for the first time in a comprehensive manner the materialist understanding of history that were produced prior to the Revolution of 1848 (The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto) [2] , Third the articles, statements and writings, which were the product of the processing and assessment of current political events (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Civil War in France) [3] , And fourth, a series of polemics against the anarchists and different trends in social democracy, which however will not be dealt with in this article because in those polemics Marx’s and Engels’s previous findings are compactly summarized, but are not fundamentally developed further (Political Indifferentism, On Authority, Critique of the Gotha Program, Anti-Duhring ...) [4]. Finally, outside of this division or as a group of its own stands Friedrich Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State [5] , in which Engels works out the elementary results of the marxist theory of the state and especially arranges them in the ,until then, most general form. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Marx begins his political and journalistic appearance as a fighter against religious, spiritual and government oppression in the most consistent wing of the democratic movement. His criti-

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cism is, therefore, first religious and political, which is directed against the existing conditions in Germany, particularly in the Prussian State. It is therefore obvious that Marx, who along with philosophy and history has studied law, when in the theoretical field, deals with realm questions of law first. Marx’s critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which falls into the time before the long-term collaboration with Engels, documents Marx’s transition to materialism and is still strongly characterized by his break with the idealistic approach. [6] By the example of the criticism of religion, Marx developed the understanding that being is not the realization of consciousness, but that consciousness is produced by the social being. “But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. “ [7] These factual circumstances, the law and politics must therefore be subjected to criticism. Marx starts with the criticism of the German political and legal philosophy because in Germany the development of the modern countries of Europe was only imitated in the realm of philosophy, the German legal and political philosophy (an imitation in itself) is just the ideal expression of those developments, that, in other countries, have been completed through revolutions. Marx shows that the contradictions inherent in the Hegelian philosophy of law are expressions of the actually existing contradictions within the state on the one hand and its worldly circumstances on the other. However the key to understanding lies in these very material conditions of life, which Hegel called in summary “civil

society” . Marx concluded from that , as he later wrote, “the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy.”: [8] In this context the use of the term “civil society” has to be explained quickly. In fact, Marx used this term in two ways. On the one hand, Marx uses the term to describe generally the sphere that includes the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage of the development of productive forces. that is to say the economic base. On the other hand, he uses it to describe this specific sphere at the time of the bourgeoisie. In the first section of The German Ideology Marx himself explained the dual use of this term: “Civil society as such only develops with the bourgeoisie; the social organisation evolving directly out of production and commerce, which in all ages forms the basis of the State and of the rest of the idealistic superstructure, has, however, always been designated by the same name.” [9] Political state and civil society are also the two categories around which Marx developed his criticism in On the Jewish Question, by investigating the relationship of political and general human emancipation. The state, taken as an expression of a deficiency or secular conflict, represents to Marx the general entity, in which people encounter as abstract equals - the state as illusory community. Concretely however, people exist in civil society where they face each other as isolated, egotistic individuals. This separation of political state and civil society corresponds to the separation of people into citizen and bourgeois, citizen of a state and citizen. As a citizen an individual is an abstract moral person, a member of that imagined community. As part of civil society, however, he is a labourer, a

Theory

merchant or a farmer, man in his real society. Marx sees this separation unfold fully only in the “purely political” or “modern state”, which has already brought about the political emancipation of men and which is quite completely elevated above the civil society. The “Christian state”, which is still dominated by feudalism and in which the political order is still very much intertwined with the social order is, by comparison to the “modern state”, even a “non-state” [10] , because it has not yet dared to proclaim itself as the pure, political state. “The so-called Christian state is the imperfect state, and the Christian religion is regarded by it as the supplementation and sanctification of its imperfection.(...)It makes a great difference whether the complete state, because of the defect inherent in the general nature of the state, counts religion among its presuppositions, or whether the incomplete state, because of the defect inherent in its particular existence as a defective state, declares that religion is its basis.” [11] Therefore the political state does not free the people from religion; it is simply declared a private matter. Similarly, the emancipation through the political state is not the real human emancipation. Political emancipation means equality in the sphere of the state, equality as a moral person. This is done by declaring that the base of inequality is not political and therefore moves it into the realm of civil society, in which it can begin to unfold freely. So the state, for example, abolishes private property politically by abolishing property-bound suffrage. “Nevertheless, the political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, edu-

cation, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions (...) The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society.”[12] Political emancipation is, therefore, the reduction of man, on the one hand, to the member of civil society, on the other hand, to the citizen of the state. General human emancipation can therefore not stop at the stage of political emancipation: “Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” [13] as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished. “ [14] Already here the idea of taking back the state into society, to neutralize the alienation of humanity within the state, reversing the separation of bourgeois and citizen, becomes apparent. Marx formulated this idea, of course, only as an ideal goal to be aimed for, without insight into the historical materialist conditions of its implementation. However Marx expands this idea in a concrete form later on (see The Civil War in France). The German Ideology In The German Ideology, written in 1845/46, Marx and Engels take an important step closer to the task of ex-

plaining how the general human emancipation would come about. Marx and Engels give an account of their shared understanding that the particular social structure, the state, the religion and the consciousness of a society emerge consistently from the material conditions of life found on a certain social level. And further that the productive force in the course of its development comes into conflict with these existing social relations, which cause radical changes in society. The origin of the disintegration of the interests of each individual and the common interest of all individuals, that is the raison d’être of the state, they locate already in the division of labour. The contradiction between town and country, a product of the division of labour, “begins with the transition from barbarism to civilisation, from tribe to State, from locality to nation, and runs through the whole history of civilisation to the present day (the Anti-Corn Law League). The existence of the town implies, at the same time, the necessity of administration, police, taxes, etc.; in short, of the municipality, and thus of politics in general. “ [15] The development of the state therefore takes place materially in the development of special bodies and institutions, which no longer coincide with the mass of the people. This in itself has a certain level of a division of labour as a prerequisite. A finding that is indeed essential for the understanding of the state in general and the conditions of its abolition. Marx, and Lenin in particular build upon this idea when they develop the tasks of the proletariat in relation to the state. The possibility that the productive power, social relations and consciousness do not have to enter into conflict with each other anymore is seen by Marx and Engels, in an analogy to Marx’s conclusions in On the Jewish Question in the abolition of Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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the division of labour. Now, however, they already mention it as a necessity on the way, an important intermediary step; “...And out of this very contradiction between the interest of the individual and that of the community the latter takes an independent form as the State, divorced from the real interests of individual and community, and at the same time as an illusory communal life, always based, however, on the real ties existing in every family and tribal conglomeration – such as flesh and blood, language, division of labour on a larger scale, and other interests – and especially, as we shall enlarge upon later, on the classes, already determined by the division of labour, which in every such mass of men separate out, and of which one dominates all the others. It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another (of this the German theoreticians have not the faintest inkling, although they have received a sufficient introduction to the subject in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher and Die heilige Familie). Further, it follows that every class which is struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination itself, must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do. “ [16]

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This achievement represents a qualitative step on the path of development of the Marxist theory of revolution and the state and finds its clear programmatical conclusion immediately before the Revolution of 1848 in the Manifesto of the Communist Party; “In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.(...) We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. (...) When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the

old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.” [17] With the abolition of class antagonism the necessity of a public political force, the organisation of one class to oppress another, meaning the necessity of the state, is thus abolished too. This is also true for the ideological function of the state. The necessity to maintain an illusory community will disappear once man has become a real speciesbeing. Here Marx also formulated the thought that the state can not be abolished by a single stroke and that the bourgeois society can not be overcome by a trick. The proletariat, in a transitional phase, must make use of its political supremacy to create the conditions for the withering away of all class distinctions. In this period, the state, in the sense of the oppression of one class by another - the bourgeoisie being oppressed by the proletariat - has to continue to exist, but annuls itself as socialized economic development progresses. Even in On the Jewish Question Marx shows a tendency, to regard only the modern state, which develops alongside the bourgeoisie, as the pure, fully developed state. In The German Ideology Marx develops this thought parallel to the different stages of property, from tribal property to pure private property, which corresponds to the mode of production of the bourgeoisie. Real private property began with the ancients, as with modern nations, with movable property. — (Slavery and community) (dominium ex jure Quiritum). In the case of the nations

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which grew out of the Middle Ages, tribal property evolved through various stages — feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture — to modern capital, determined by big industry and universal competition, i.e. pure private property, which has cast off all semblance of a communal institution and has shut out the State from any influence on the development of property. To this modern private property corresponds the modern State, which, purchased gradually by the owners of property by means of taxation, has fallen entirely into their hands through the national debt, and its existence has become wholly dependent on the commercial credit which the owners of property, the bourgeoisie, extend to it, as reflected in the rise and fall of state funds on the stock exchange. By the mere fact that it is a class and no longer an estate, the bourgeoisie is forced to organise its self, no longer locally, but nationally, and to give a general form to its mean average interest. Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the state has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but it is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeoisie necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests. [18] This means that the necessity of the state arises with the emergence of private property. Its most complete form, i.e. the form in which it is most detached from the real basis of society, and becomes an external, alienated force, is reached in the same way as private property proceeds to its purest form. Before continuing to work out the development of the Marxist theory of the state it makes sense to take a look at what Marx was occupied with for most of his political work. At the end of

1843, i.e. after he had written the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and had come to the conclusion that the key to understanding society must be sought in the economy, Marx began dealing himself with questions of political economy. The Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 [19] are the first product of this engagement. This is followed by The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy [20] , Wage Labour and Capital [21] and the “Communist Manifesto”, all of which are already dedicated to this work. During the Revolution of 1848/49 Marx interrupts the study of economics and continues it in exile in England in a systematic manner. The next eight years for Marx are completely dedicated with the preparations for his Critique of Political Economy. It was not until 1857/58 that the first draft of the future Capital was produced, which was only published in 1939/41 as Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie. The plan of 1857 is designed to give a comprehensive analysis of capitalism in its totality. Marx wanted to produce a book on the state; however, he never got to start working on it. The conception of 1865/66, which is the basis for the three volumes of Capital generally differ from the plan of 1857. In 1867 the first volume of Capital is published by Marx, which he himself edited. In the following years Marx is mainly concerned with the editing of the other volumes. So it is apparent that the main part of Marx’s systematic studies and works is dedicated to political economy. The few works in which he dealt the question of the state during that time arise from the processing of current political events and do not have the systematic character of his studies on political economy. One of these events, in the assessment of which Marx’s theory of the state is enriched by one aspect is

the coup of Louis Napoleon in 1851 in France. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte On 2 December 1851 the period after the French Revolution hit rock bottom after the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte. Marx wrote a series of articles directly at the time of these events, from December 1851 to March 1852, which were later published under the title The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [23] in one volume. In these articles Marx shows how the various parties struggling for power continually rise against the ruling party on the back of the lowest party and how from a certain moment on the parties above the lowest party are unable to follow the course of the revolution, and so, again on the back of the lowest party have to turn against the revolution. Thus, the subjugation of the proletariat, which in February had fought on the side of all bourgeois groupings against the monarchy, was carried through by the republican bourgeoisie in June 1848. Followed by the demise of the republican bourgeoisie against the united monarchists, and ultimately the elimination of the monarchists in the coup of 2 December. In the course of these events it already becomes apparent that the bourgeoisie, for fear that the revolutionary proletariat would turn against it, was no longer able to consistently lead the democratic revolution to the end. The revolution of 1848 moves “on a descending line,” compared to the 1789 revolution, as Marx noted. Marx shows how the different parties struggling for power do not qualitatively change the state but are handing the military-bureaucratic apparatus over to each other. Meanwhile these parties continue to build and perfect the Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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state machinery until finally this pure apparatus, in the name of the whole of society takes state power and elevates above class interest, seemingly as a force above the conflicting parties, its own, “pure” regime.

chine instead of breaking it. The parties, which alternately contended for domination, regarded the possession of this huge state structure as the chief spoils of the victor.” [24]

“But the revolution is thoroughgoing. (...) It first completed the parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has achieved this, it completes the executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. (...) The executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its wide-ranging and ingenious state machinery, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half million – this terrifying parasitic body which enmeshes the body of French society and chokes all its pores sprang up in the time of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal system which it had helped to hasten.(...) The first French Revolution, with its task of breaking all separate local, territorial, urban, and provincial powers in order to create the civil unity of the nation, was bound to develop what the monarchy had begun, centralization, but at the same time the limits, the attributes, and the agents of the governmental power. Napoleon completed this state machinery. The Legitimate Monarchy and the July Monarchy added nothing to it but a greater division of labor (...) Finally the parliamentary republic, in its struggle against the revolution, found itself compelled to strengthen the means and the centralization of governmental power with repressive measures. All revolutions perfected this ma-

Lenin was the first to draw the conclusion that Marx here is raising the question of the tasks of proletariat regarding the machinery of the state. And that Marx answered the question in the sense that “the proletarian revolution had approached the task of “concentrating all its forces of destruction” against the state power, of “smashing” the state machine. “ [25] Lenin however emphasizes clearly that Marx in 1852 had yet to pose the question what the state machine was to be replaced with, and was not able to do so because “experience had not yet provided material for dealing with this question, which history placed on the agenda later on, in 1871.” [26] Lenin justified his presentation by a remark of Marx in a letter to Kugelmann:


“If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it [Marx’s italics - the original is zerbrechen], and this is the precondition for every real people’s revolution on the Continent.” [27] Marx wrote this letter on the 12 April 1871, i.e. during the days of the Paris Commune, a few days before he theoretically processed and generalised this event in The Civil War in France. Marx does not, in his “18th Brumaire,” draw the programmatic conclusion that the proletariat in the course of its revolution has to “smash” the militarybureaucratic state machinery. The for-

mulation, which comes close to this conclusion has a much more algebraic character. The remark in the letter to Kugelmann from this point seems already as an algebraic interpretation by Marx himself of the formulation in the “Eighteenth Brumaire” in the light of experience of the Paris Commune. Between the “Eighteenth Brumaire” and the Paris Commune there are almost twenty years, a time that was, as stated above, for Marx mainly filled with intense and systematic study of the political economy. The Paris Commune of 1871 On the fourth of September 1870 the workers of Paris, behind which at that point stood the whole of France, proclaimed the republic. With Prussia in full march on Paris and many of the labour leaders still in Bonaparte’s prisons, the Paris workers tolerated a group of former civil deputies around Adolf Thiers’s who took political power in order to form a government of national defence. The Parisian proletariat was armed in defence against Prussia. “But Paris armed was the revolution armed. A victory of Paris over the Prussian aggressor would have been a victory of the French workmen over the French capitalist and his state parasites.” [28] The first task of the new government under Thiers was the disarming the National Guard, in which a large part of the Parisian proletariat was organized. Fearing a new uprising of the workers, the Thiers government however did not dare to accomplish this task on its own. Finally Paris capitulated to the German troops on the 28th of January 1871 and barely a month later the preliminary peace treaty of Versailles is signed, which obliges France to pay to a series of fatal war reparations and in addition to demobilize of the National Guard. The Paris proletariat refused to hand over its weapons. The

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protest against the truce culminates on the 18.th of March in the uprising of the National Guard against the government troops. The Central Committee of the National Guard in Paris took power and acted as a provisional government until at the end of March from a general and free election the Commune was formed. The nobility and the bourgeoisie fled to Versailles, where troops were organized to defeat the Commune. The commune eventually succumbed to the superior forces of the Versailles troops after a fierce final battle in the Montmartre district of Paris on 28 May 1871. What followed was a terrible punishment in which almost all of the vanguard of the Parisian proletariat was murdered. Marx characterized the Paris Commune as a proletarian revolution or, as Engels wrote twenty years later, “As almost without exception, workers, or recognized representatives of the workers, sat in the Commune, its decision bore a decidedly proletarian character. Either they decreed reforms which the republican bourgeoisie had failed to pass solely out of cowardice, but which provided a necessary basis for the free activity of the working class – such as the realization of the principle that in relation to the state, religion is a purely private matter – or they promulgated decrees which were in the direct interests of the working class and to some extent cut deeply into the old order of society.[29] What were these measures, which represented the proletarian character of the Commune? The first decree of the Commune was the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people. The National Guard, which should include all able-bodied citizens, was declared the sole armed force. The Commune was formed of delegates, elected by universal suf-

frage in the various districts of the town. Its members, receiving only an average workers wage for their services, were responsible and revocable at short terms. The Commune was not to be a parliamentary body but a working body, making and executing laws at the same time. Furthermore, the police was transformed into a tool of the Commune, responsible and revocable at any time. Similarly, all judges and other officials should work for an average workers wage, being elected, held responsible and revocable at any time. The Commune decreed what the bourgeoisie was never able to, the separation of church and state. All church property was expropriated. Furthermore the commune adopted a number of economic reforms, such as the abolition of night work for bakers, etc. but also much more extensive measures, such as the elimination of all rent debt, the appropriation of all the factories of those capitalists who had fled to Versailles, and the formulation of a plan for their operation by a federation of cooperative associations of organised labour. What these measures have in common is that they arise immediately from the relations in bourgeois society and take as a starting point the immediate demands of the workers, but at the same time these demands go beyond bourgeois society and show a practical way towards a new social order. In the “Communist Manifesto” Marx and Engels had already stated a couple of similar economic measures. For this reason they constantly emphasise that the replacement of capitalist society with a socialist society can not happen by a single strike. Much more between these two societies lies a phase of transformation of one into the other. A phase in which the proletariat has to imprint its mark upon the whole of so-

ciety and has to take various measures to move towards a planned economy. In 1847 Marx and Engels were still describing the political form of this transitional society as “the battle for democracy”.[30] In The Civil War in France, an address to the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association, which Marx wrote on the occasion of the Paris Commune, he recognises the Commune as “the finally discovered political form under which the economic emancipation of labour” could take place. [31] This important conclusion which Marx drew from the experience of the Commune and which he would even integrate as an essential concretisation into the preface of the Communist Manifesto [32] is outlined most succinctly in the second draft of the “Civil War in France”. “But the proletariat cannot, as the ruling classes and their different rival fractions have done in the successive hours of their triumph, simply lay hold on the existent State body and wield this ready-made agency for their own purpose. The first condition for the hold[ing] of political power, is to transform [the] working machinery and destroy it – an instrument of class rule.” [33] This idea is the logical consequence of the findings, which Marx explains in “The Eighteenth Brumaire,” and also the specification of the there-held algebraic formulation. In dealing with the Paris Commune Marx once again comes back to the phenomenon of the rule of the pure state apparatus, which has taken place in France during the Second Empire under Louis Napoleon. Here he makes an important point of his analysis clear. “At first view, apparently, the usurpaResults and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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tory dictatorship of the governmental body over society itself, rising alike above and humbling alike all classes; it has in fact, on the European continent at least, become the only possible state form in which the appropriating class can continue to sway it over the producing class. “ [34] As already before in the “German Ideology” and in “Eighteenth Brumaire” he deals again with the formative process of the apparatus with “the ubiquitous meshes of its bureaucracy, police, standing army, clergy and magistrature” [35] , whose origin he dates back to the time of absolute monarchy. Marx underpins his understanding that this “centralized state power” of the ascending bourgeois society serves as a “as a mighty weapon in its struggles of emancipation from feudalism. “The increased strengthening and improvement, the continued expansion of this machine, he explains explicitly from the developing antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, of which the French Second Empire under Louis Napoleon was the necessary consequence.

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meant the preliminary destruction of the old governmental machinery ... and its superseding by real selfgovernment “ [37] And further “The governmental force of repression and authority over society was thus to be broken in its merely repressive organs, and where it had legitimate functions to fulfil, these functions were not to be exercised by a body superior to the society, but by the responsible agents of society itself.” [38] It is also here that Marx expands on his earlier thought of taking back the alienated state which stands above society back into society: the taking back of the abstract citizen of the state as a part of an illusional community into the real human being as a part of a real society. The Commune did not yet end this separation, but it took the first step in that direction by replacing the military-bureaucratic apparatus, which is nothing but the purest materialization of this alienation, with the armed people and its electable, responsible and recallable organs. The origin of the state

So here Marx names the material form - to pick up a thought which was dealt with earlier in this article- in which the perfection of the state proceeds, i.e. the way in which it elevates itself more and more over society; the development and improvement of this machinery, with its bureaucracy, police and standing army. “This was the State power in its ultimate and most prostitute shape, in its supreme and basest reality, which the Paris working class had to overcome, and of which this class alone could rid society.” [36]

It was not until 1884, after the death of Karl Marx (1883), that Engels laid out, based on the, then contemporary, results of science, especially processing Lewis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society, the historical development of the emergence of class antagonisms and thus the origins of the necessity of the state. Engels based himself in important points on comments on Morgan’s writings made by Marx. Here Engels describes, in what was then the most explicit and most general form, the nature of the state.

Precisely this power in its “ultimate and exhausting shape, the Empire” had to be broken by the workers. “In its most simple conception the Commune

“The state is therefore by no means a power imposed on society from without; just as little is it “the reality of the moral idea,” “the image


and the reality of reason,” as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a particular stage of development; it is the admission that this society has involved itself in insoluble self-contradiction and is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to exorcise. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, shall not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, a power, apparently standing above society, has become necessary to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of “order”; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state. “ [39] And he continues: “As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.” [40] The main feature in which the development of the state, as opposed to the natural gentile-organisation is manifested, says Engels, is the “institution of a public force which is no longer immediately identical with the people’s own organization of themselves as an armed power. This special public force is needed because a self-acting armed organization of the people has become impossible since their cleavage into classes.”[41] Based on this analysis, the practical experience of the Paris Commune appears as a theoretical consequence of what Engels here has historicallymaterialistically proven. This becomes

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even more clear when Engels goes on to write: “This public force exists in every state (...) it becomes stronger in proportion as the class antagonisms within the state become sharper...”[42] This idea is in line with Marx’s idea of the perfection the state due to the development of the bourgeoisie. And, here again, from what has been stated in “Civil War in France,” the most highly developed form of this public power, the result of the sharpening of class antagonisms and class struggle is this naked state machine, as it found its purest expression in the Second Empire. However, precisely this general context is not worked out by Engles in the “Origin of the State”. He is only investigating the most general nature of the state, without integrating all insights on the different aspects of the state, won by them in class struggle. He does not give an analysis of the current state or the conditions of its overcoming, nor a specific investigation of the role of the proletariat during its revolution in relation to the state. So Marx and Engels have in no way “finished” the work laid out or developed their theory of the state comprehensively. The merit of summarizing all of Marx and Engels’s previous findings relating to the state in an orderly fashion belongs to Lenin and his work State and Revolution [43] written in 1917.He adds no essentially new aspects to the Marxist theory, but he develops its inner connections and generalisations, which are integrated into a generalised programmatic conclusion; The proletariat must in the course of his revolution smash the old, meaning exactly this alienated, elevated, state apparatus by replacing it with a system of councils similar in type to those of the Paris Commune. This new state is still a state in the sense of the oppres-

sion of one class by another, but at the same time it is not a state in so far as it is the rule of the majority over the minority and thus replaces the old, special, elevated state. The new workers state apparatus is based on the armed proletariat, and its allied stratas, organized in the councils. Lenin called this new type of state, which only contains the conditions for the withering away of the state in general, the proletarian semi-state. This article set itself the goal of showing two things; First, that Marx and Engels’ occupation with questions of the state since the finishing of The German Ideology had basically taken place only selectively and in a nonsystematic manner, as opposed to, for example, their occupation with political economy. Secondly, that the trend of the general features, of which theory is enriched by practical experience, basically can itself be deducted from the existing approaches of historical materialist-dialectical analysis of the state. This fact should be recognized as an acknowledged one, instead of being concealed or even glossed-over. After all, only when Marxism has a clear awareness of its shortcomings and the tasks confronting it, will it be able to lift its own theory to the heights of the time and become an effective instrument for the explanation of the contradictions and problems of contemporary society, and ultimately transform itself into an instrument for overcoming them. Christina Stojanovic, RSO Vienna

Afterword To the Editor of the Arbeitsgruppe Marxismus, With interest I read the contributions to the Marxist state theory (Marxismus No.2), especially the one by Christina Stojanovic on the development of the positions of Marx and Engels. She concludes that Marx and Engels had developed no complete theory of the state and the role of the proletariat in the revolution, often she states that this merit fell to Lenin. Doesn’t this imply that the claim of the revisionists, to stand in the tradition of Marx and Engels, is not totally unjustified! Peter Göppl Comments

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he theory of the state that Marx and Engels (though not in a finished work) have developed includes 1) the impossibility for the proletariat to make use of the bourgeois state machinery for its “own purposes”, and 2) the need to “smash” it. These are positions that in our opinion are clearly incompatible with social-democratic reformism and its “parliamentary road”. Furthermore Marx and Engels developed their own basic understanding of how a proletarian state would look like after the Paris Commune in 1871.They however (like Stojanovic has worked out) never summarized their findings in a compact work (similarly like they could not, for a lack of time finish their original far reaching plan of “Das Kapital”). Summarising the findings was finally left to Lenin and his work State Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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and Revolution (1917). He did not add a new aspect to Marxist theory. However he has them brought for the first into a closed form and has most clearly and explicitly got to the heart of its programmatic implications of the smashing of the state and generalised them (see: Christina Stojanovic, The Development of Theory of the state by Marx and Engels, in: Marxism No. .2, December 1994). We by no means think that Marx and Engels were infallible or that they have always known everything. If we here refrain from false positions such as those on so-called non-historical peoples and concentrate on the question of the perspective of socialist revolution, which particularly Engels has towards the end of his life arranged himself in a sort of peaceful coexistence with the leaders of German Social Democracy (which increasingly arranged themselves with the forces of the state), especially with August Bebel, but also with Victor Adler. Some of the remarks by Engels from this period, in which he has devoted himself mainly to the release of Volumes 2 and 3 of “Capital” (which he saw as a more substantial role for him than a stronger involvement in the leadership of the 2nd International), include a historical determinism, which is contrary to the historical materialist method of Marx and Engels and to which the reformists were later able to refer to with some justification. Thus Engels says in the end of October 1891 in Socialism in Germany an article printed in Die Neue Zeit that the German social democracy would be at the point “where it is possible to determine the date when it will come to power almost by mathematical calculation .” (MEW 22, p 250). The use of force by the rulers or war could delay this a little but not prevent. “Let us

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sum up. Peace ensures the victory of the German socialist party in some ten years’ time; war offers it either victory in two or three years, or complete ruin, at least for the next fifteen to twenty years. (...) This war, in which fifteen to twenty million armed men would slaughter one another and devastate Europe as It has never been devastated before, this war would either lead to the immediate triumph of socialism, or it would lead to such an upheaval in the old order of things, it would leave behind it everywhere such a heap of ruins, that the old capitalist society would become more impossible than ever, and the social revolution, set back by ten or fifteen years, would only be all the more radical and more rapidly implemented. “(ibid., 256)

the Marxist method - and therewith (if necessary) also work out certain inconsistencies and mistakes of Marx, Engels and co.

Such objectivism is incompatible with dialectical materialism. It contradicts the Marxist understanding of the importance of revolutionary subject (the working class lead by a revolutionary party) for the historical development, an understanding which was developed by Marx and Engels, and which Engels had summarized in “Anti-Dühring” in cooperation and with the support of Marx. With “Anti-Duhring” and a number of other popular writings Engels has made an essential contribution to make Marxism known to wider sections of the working class.

So he has also, in the question of the character of the revolution, held on to his half-hearted conception of the “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants”, the conception that the revolution in Russia was a bourgeoisdemocratic one, which would be made by workers and peasants (because the bourgeoisie would be too weak and reactionary).He realized only through the experiences of the February Revolution and the bourgeois Provisional Government, that the revolution had to be driven further into a proletariansocialist one to avoid being suffocated by the counter-revolution (which Trotsky had understood much earlier in his concept of “Permanent Revolution”). Also on the question of the state Lenin’s position would develop. Regarding the question of the state, Lenin was influenced by Karl Kautsky (the “Pope of the 2nd International” who was as a defender of orthodoxy against the Marxist revisionism of Eduard Bernstein a model for the Russian Marxists).

The objectivist tendencies in his last years in no way diminish the contribution of Engels to the analysis of capitalism, as founder of scientific socialism and the modern labour movement. Rather, they show that not even the greatest revolutionary leaders were free from the different influences (including conservative ones) of their age. And finally, there can be no question for Marxists to transfigure Marx and Engels into uncritical worship, but to understand and being able apply

Lenin not only summed up the Marxist theory of the state in general and its programmatic conclusions in particular. In the early 20’s in the debates about the prospects of the imperialist system he had also emphasized that capitalism was no situation it could not move itself out of (albeit with enormous sacrifice for mankind). But he had not received this wisdom through divine inspiration, he had not always had, and to every question, the correct positions (as opposed to how he was always portrayed by the Stalinist historiography in its Lenin-cult).

When Lenin’s Bolshevik party col-

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league Nikolai Bukharin (who later played together with Stalin an essential part in the bureaucratisation of the soviet state) in 1916 in his article On the theory of the imperialist state said that the “capitalistic robber state” is in essence the “organisation of the ruling class” and its armed force could only be broken by the force of the masses, Lenin’s first reaction was: the article is “totally useless (...) the political part (...) is completely inadequate and not thought through.” Lenin categorically rejected its publication. The angry Bukharin wrote a letter to Lenin, from Scandinavia to Switzerland, “For one thing I ask you; If you are up for a polemic please keep a tone that does not force a split” - and published his article in a Dutch, a Norwegian, a Swiss newspaper and a Russian émigré newspaper in New York. Lenin responded violently to Bukharin’s breach of the Bolshevik party discipline - and writes a response to Bukharin’s article: “The Socialists advocate the use of the modern state and its institutions in the fight for the liberation of the working class as well as for the need to take advantage of the state as the actual form of the transition from capitalism to socialism. “ Lenin was occupying himself later with the question of the state and came to the conclusion that Bukharin was not so wrong. In a letter to Inessa Armand in February 1917 he wrote: “I have been busy in recent times especially with the position of Marxism on the State, I have collected much material, and came, as it seems to me to very interesting and important conclusions, which speak much more against Kautsky than against Bukharin. “ In his farewell speech to Swiss workers prior to his departure for Russia, he said: “We do not need the ‘ready made’

state machinery, as it exists in the democratic bourgeois republics, but the immediate power of armed and organised labour. This is the state that we need. “ And when Bukharin arrived in Moscow in late April or early May, Lenin asked his wife Krupskaya to meet him and pass on the message that, “on the question of the state he (Lenin) now has no longer any disagreements with you” In August and September 1917 when in Finland, where he had to hide from the persecution of the bourgeois government, Lenin wrote, his famous book “State and Revolution. It defends the Marxist position against the Social Democratic reinterpretations, summarises - as mentioned above - the Marxist theory of the state in a generalised form, gets to the heart of the programmatic consequences, and is essentially directed against Kautsky, and therefore also against Lenin’s own, former position. To defend Marxism against bourgeois, reformist or ultra-leftist attacks is not to glorify the heroes of the labour movement, but to understand the Marxist theory in its development, to understand the Marxist method. Eric Wegner, RSO Vienna

Notes [1] Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, [2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, MEW 3, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party [3] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, see also the first and second draft . [4] Karl Marx, Indifference to Politics, Friedrich Engels, On, Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, Friedrich Engels, Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, Part Three socialism, Marx and especially Engels, were in these contributions, very clearly working out their understanding of the withering away of the state. This - in contrast to the understanding of the anarchists - cannot just happen as a single act, but only as a process, as a phase in which the proletariat takes conscious steps to restructure the economy and society as a whole. The state withers away at the pace at which its material base is removed, meaning the pace at which the class antagonisms and deficiency vanish. [5] Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State [6] Under Marx’s critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right several of his works can be subsumed. For one thing, the manuscript of 1843 (containing an analysis of paragraphs 261 to 313 of Hegel’s work “Outline of a Philosophy of Law”) was designated by himself as “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, which should have been published after the release of the Introduction in the “Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher”. When preparing for print however, it became obvious that: “the intermingling of criticism directed only against speculation with criticism of the various subjects themselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the development of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult.” Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right was first published in 1927 under the editorial title of “Criticism of the Hegelian State Law.” The editorial title is usually given as a supplement to the proposed title of Marx, especially in contrast to the Introduction .On the other hand, the works “On the Jewish question” and the letters of Marx to Ruge, (editor of the “German-French Yearbooks) both published in the “German-French Yearbooks” in 1844, connect to the content of the “Critique of


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Theory

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”. [7] Karl Marx, Preface to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. [8] Karl Marx, Preface to Critique of Political Economy. [9] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, I Feuerbach, [10] Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, [11] ibid [12] ibid [13] “Own forces” [14] Ibid. [15] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology. Feuerbach [16] ibid [17] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party [18] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology [19] Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [20] Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy [21] Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital [22] MEW 23 [23] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx here is making a pun on an analogy to an event of the French Revolution. He referred to the coup of 2 December as a “second edition of the 18th Brumaire “.On 18 Brumaire Year VIII, 9 November 1799, Napoleon crashes the Directory in a coup and makes himself dictator with the title of First Consul. This analogy is, as Marx himself explains, insufficient for an important reason: “In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the Constitutionalists succeeds that of the Girondins; and upon the reign of the Girondins follows that of the Jacobins. Each of these parties in succession rests upon its more advanced element. So soon as it has carried the revolution far enough not to be able to keep pace with, much less march ahead of it, it is shoved aside by its more daring allies, who stand behind it, and it is sent to the guillotine. Thus the revolution moves along an upward line. Just the reverse in 1848.” The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [24] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, [25] VI Lenin, State and Revolution, [26] ibid [27] Karl Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann [28] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France [29] Friedrich Engels, Introduction to “The Civil War in France”

26


[30] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party [31] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France No matter how much the state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be amended. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions currently existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organisation of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune (where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months) this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing was especially proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” [33] Karl Marx, second draft of the “Civil War in France” [34] ibid [35] ibid [36] ibid [37] ibid, Marx here understands an Empire as exactly this centralized military bureaucratic apparatus. See [33] Karl Marx, second draft of the “Civil War in France” [38] ibid [39] Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State [40] ibid [41] ibid [42] ibid [43] VI Lenin, State and Revolution

Strategy

Theses on Revolutionary Interventions in Workplaces and Trade Unions

Introduction:

T

oday, more so in the German-speaking countries than in other parts of the world, the subjectively revolutionary left is largely isolated from the working class. It has no basis in the workplaces and, as a consequence, it is not a relevant factor within the trade unions. For Marxist revolutionaries, this situation represents a dramatic weakness. There are a number of objective reasons for this situation: fascism, the Cold War, the “welfare state”, social partnership, etc. This societal framework makes revolutionary work in the trade unions and the workplaces very difficult and must be taken into account when making decisions for or against this kind of work; it cannot be overcome in a voluntaristic manner. Nonetheless, the political work of the subjectively revolutionary left is not without relevance, even if it is difficult in the current situation to find a path in between ultra-left adventurism and opportunist primitiveness (referred to by Lenin as “handicraft methods”). We will summarize the results of our discussions in the form of theses.

1.

Communists see a revolutionary working class as the only possible subject for smashing the bourgeois state and abolishing the capitalist system of exploitation. Therefore, establishing a basis within this class (in the workplaces, residential areas, trade unions, workers’ committees, etc.) is a central goal for any revolutionary organization. The key sectors of the economy and the strategically important workplaces in which a large number of wage laborers are concentrated play an special role in this context, since it is here that the system can be struck at its core, the profits of the capitalist class. It is here that the potential for collective struggle of

the workers is highest. Therefore, in principle and in the long-run, every revolutionary organization must be oriented towards building up a basis in these sectors, towards workplace interventions in these sectors.

2.

Trade unions are, on the one hand, the most elementary form of proletarian class organization. They often represent a broad coalition of forces in defense of immediate class interests against capital, which can lead struggles and contribute to the development of class consciousness, making them ”schools of war for the workers” (F. Engels). On the other Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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Strategy

hand, working class politics which focus solely on trade unions have a tendency to remain trapped within capitalist logic and thus subordinate to it, limited to “realistic” policies of redistribution. Today, the vast majority of trade unions internationally are controlled by reformist, bureaucratic apparatuses; in the German-speaking countries this situation is especially obvious. These apparatuses function as capitalism’s “political police” (L. Trotsky), attempting to nip any independent class activity in the bud. Despite all this, trade unions remain important points of reference for communists wherever they actually organize substantial groups of workers as a class in opposition to capitalist interests, whether they be single trade unions or unions with a specific political or religious orientation. In these cases, revolutionaries will in principle seek to disempower the bureaucracy, make the trade unions democratic and committed to class struggle, and revolutionize them.

3.

However, this orientation towards revolutionizing trade unions remains in limbo if it is not based on a relevant amount of political influence in the workplaces. Today, the trade union structures and circles in the German-speaking countries normally do not have an active basis; they are dominated by shop stewards and union officials. Even if serveral of them are critical and some of them used to belong to the radical left, they are nonetheless trapped in a primitive, economist mindset and a logic of the trade unions’ rules. For a revolutionary, intervening into this milieu without a basis in the workplaces leads in the best case to a role as an advisor and helper. The possibility to make decisions about the political course will always lie in the hands of others. In this kind of intervention, the revolutionaries will be dependent on the good will of left reformist trade union officials or shop stewards. As has been clearly shown by the experiences of many subjective revolutionaries in the German-speaking countries in the last few decades, revolutionary intervention into trade union structures or left-wing trade union circles without a basis in the workplaces in all probability leads to being smothered in the bureaucratic apparatus or degenerating into a primitive trade union left. In order to follow developments in this milieu and to distribute political propaganda, it can make sense to participate in events

28


of these structures (just like events of other currents of the left) - a continuous intervention, however, does not have a perspective under the aforementioned conditions.

4.

Successful revolutionary interventions in workplaces may quickly pose the need for work in trade unions. Nonetheless, the primary goal of revolutionary politics is the intervention in the workplaces themselves and establishing a basis there. Given the current conditions in the Germanspeaking countries (far-reaching control over the trade unions by bureaucratic apparatuses, lack of a tradition of independent struggles in the working class), this goal is not easy to attain. It is fairly easy to be elected shop steward on the basis of a (politically unspecified) commitment to co-workers. Here there is a big danger of ending up a “wellliked” shop steward carrying out primitive, left-wing union policies, wearing oneself out with the odds and ends of shop steward routine. It is no coincidence that subjectively revolutionary organizations have often lost those comrades who ran as shop stewards because there was hardly a connection between this type of work and their task of building up a revolutionary organization, and the dual burden of both activities could not be shouldered in the long-run (especially for comrades with children). Given the limited strength of subjectively revolutionary groups, starting an intervention in a workplace and thus taking on the everyday feuds of the work environment must be carefully considered. Most importantly, it must be evaluated in relation to the central goal of building up a revolutionary organization. This means realistically assessing the opportunities in relation to the risks, because it will do the organization no good if an unplanned conflict in the workplace causes comrades to lose their jobs and their means of existence.

5.

If a revolutionary organization with the necessary strength and political stability, following an assessment of the objective criteria, decides to begin a workplace intervention and thus to build up a political basis from the inside (which must always be an organizational as opposed to an individual decision), further questions and political snares are to be expected. The first question involves selecting a suitable workplace

Strategy

for an intervention in which one or more comrades work. Small workplaces are usually not worth the effort. A further criterion is whether there are starting points for revolutionary or at least class struggle agitation amongst the workers. Then it is important to not be too exposed in workplace conflicts too early on. The consequence could well be that the exposed comrade would be left standing in the rain by her or his colleagues, and a dismissal would leave the entire project nipped in the bud. Initially, there must be a defensive approach, building up support in the form of a group of co-workers who agree on central questions. What is important here is a basic line which is clearly against social partnership and for class struggle, as well as unity about democratic decision-making processes amongst the workers (transparency and independent activity instead of secret negotiations). Even when the formation of such a group is successful, early workplace conflicts should be avoided because in this case the group is in danger of being attacked by management and security etc., (possibly in cooperation with bureaucracy of the shop stewards and the trade unions, especially in big companies also by the police and secret services) at a stage when it is not yet capable of sufficiently protecting itself, and being broken up. Therefore, it is important to not let oneself be swept away by every first sign of a movement and then be shot down, but rather to run for a shop steward position (and thus to achieve at least some form of protection against dismissal) based on the support of the established group. Since only the chairperson of the shop stewards’ committee has the power to make decisions and only the first in the list of candidates can potentially be elected to this post, it is important for a comrade to take the first slot in the list, in order to avoid giving management the chance to buy off a candidate with less political consciousness. The work as a shop steward must, as already announced during the candidacy, avoid functioning as an intermediary and instead support independent activity. All meetings of the shop stewards’ committee must open to all workers. All decisions about the course of action towards management must be made by assemblies of workers, explicitly breaking from the bureaucratic and paternalistic routine of many workplaces. Clearly, building up an isolated and therefore generally short-lived opposition in a workplace is not the central goal for communists today;

the central goal is building up a revolutionary organization. Every intervention in workplaces must be subordinate to this. This means that such interventions must be accompanied by general political propaganda amongst the workers (from the inside or the outside) in which the situation of specially oppressed sections of the working class (women, immigrants) is featured regularly, and that the intervention must be used as an example for the left and the workers’ movement. Intervention in a sector must always be the responsibility of the revolutionary organization (and not only of those comrades directly involved), which means it requires regular discussions in the organization and systematic support from other responsible comrades.

6.

If a revolutionary organization is not strong enough to provide the massive resources required for this type of workplace intervention and/or does not have comrades in sectors suitable for an intervention, interventions in workplace/proletarian milieus at a lower level of intensity can be considered. Just as interventions in left-wing trade union circles without a basis in the workplaces are a dead end, a one-time distribution of fliers in the case of workplace conflicts that break onto the scene spontaneously is not very promising. It is true that the workers at these actions are happy to take the fliers of left-wing groups, especially because hardly anything is ever distributed in front of workplaces and the material, besides being related to the conflict that concerns the people at the moment, has the lure of something exotic and interesting. But this is also the problem: the small left-wing group previously unknown to the workers and its “radical” propositions are too alien to really be taken seriously. Even if many of the workers are initially happy about this sign of solidarity from outside and some offer positive feedback, in the end they will trust the shop stewards they know. The left-wing groups have no possibility to follow up on the issue (once the conflict has openly erupted, it is too late to build up continuity) and the interventions and all the energy that went into them usually dissolve into thin air. In cases where important conflicts arise in workplaces or trade unions, where the revolutionary organization has access to the basis of the workers involved, interventions might make sense; However, their purpose is to gather experience and Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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Strategy

one must avoid the illusion of being able to attain influence within the working class via these interventions. This must be reflected in the character of the intervention (not the greatest amount of fliers but rather observing, discussing, offering more in-depth material).

7.

When it comes to interventions in a workplace/proletarian environment, continuity is key if one wants to be taken seriously and become a political factor. If the conditions for intervening in a workplace are not given for a revolutionary organization, then continuous intervention from the outside in workplaces or other proletarian milieus can be a useful intermediate step. But without contacts within the specific workplace and thus without the possibility of acquiring inside information and receiving feedback, even the regular distribution of fliers etc. might very well be like banging one’s head against the wall. If the organization does have such contacts, then one of the conditions for continuous intervention in a particular workplace is met. However, further issues require clarification: Is the organization, given its strength and political stability, capable of seriously and continuously carrying out the intervention? What is the relationship between the resources required (production and distribution of political material, regular meetings with the contacts at the workplace, etc.) and the benefits generated in terms of building up the revolutionary organization (gathering experience in a workplace/proletarian milieu, drawing interested workers into the organization’s periphery)? Does the mood of at least part of the workforce lend itself to revolutionary propaganda? Are there workers in the workplace interested in general social and political issues and open to contact with the radical left? Only such workers - and not those interested exclusively in questions pertaining to their trade union or the workplace itself - can potentially be integrated into a revolutionary organization in the current situation. Accordingly, besides questions directly affecting to the situation of wage laborers, revolutionary propaganda must systematically introduce general social and political issues into the workplace/proletarian milieu. Ultimately, any such intervention must be subordinate to building up a revolutionary organization.

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Agreed at the founding conference of the RSO (May 2007) Translation: Anke Hoorn, RSO Vienna

Who we are A brief summary of the political positions of the RSO The Revolutionary Socialist Organization (RSO) is fighting against capitalism and for a new socialist economic and social order. Every day it becomes more evident that the so-called “free market” has nothing to offer for most of the world’s population. Capitalism means hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, war and misery. Even in the richest countries in the world, millions live at or below the poverty line. In contrast, a small portion of the population owns the majority of the assets; in Britain 1% of the population owns more than a third of all assets. Two classes are facing each other in the capitalist society. On one side are the capitalists who own the means of production. They are faced by the wage earners who are forced to sell their labor power. Many workers today are isolated, discouraged, and full of capitalist political ideas and filled with capitalist preju dices. Nevertheless, only the wage earners through strikes and other collective forms of struggle can bring the capitalist mode of production to a halt and hit the capitalist class at the critical point, their profits. Capitalism in its neoliberal phase after the collapse of Stalinism in 198991 is politically and militarily on the rise world wide. The working class of the European countries is subject to massive social attacks. Trade unions and social democratic parties are unable to oppose this, but are perfectly integrated into the system. Their representatives participate in cutting public services and creating racist divisions. The Green Parties are not an alternative, they are bourgeois parties, some

of which have a progressive rhetoric on human rights issues, but, where they participate in government, show that they are part of the normal capitalist state. The different imperialist blocs are arming themselves. The imperialist “global player” is still the United States. But the EU is trying to downsize the military gap with the United States and is also more and more acting as a militarily independent bloc. In contrast, we support the resistance against imperialist wars and occupations and combine this with the slogan: “The main enemy is at home.” To secure its domination, capitalism is (also) using and fostering the division of the working class. We are fighting against the oppression of people because of their ethnicity, gender, age or sexual orientation and we oppose these divisions with the unconditional support of every fight for equal rights. We are for the socialization of large corporations and their transformation into co-operatives under democratic workers’ management and control. Capitalism can not be eliminated by a few votes or parliamentary reform. All attempts to overcome capitalism through reforms have failed (and have often led to bloody defeats). Only a fundamental upheaval, a revolution based on the active participation of large segments of the population can destroy the state of the ruling class, eliminate the bases of inequality, oppression and exploitation and create a free society.

to the Russian October Revolution of 1917. This revolution has indeed failed in the Stalinist degeneration in the twenties, but the idea of an alternative to capitalism retains its validity. Our socialism has thus nothing to do with the “social” democratic parties, or with the Stalinist dictatorships in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba and China. Capitalism is internationally organized and networked. Therefore, our revolutionary alternative has to be international and internationalist. The RSO is not “the” revolutionary party. None of the currently existing organizations can claim that for themselves. A new revolutionary party will emerge from a process of transformations and mergers. The RSO will try to play a positive role in this process to build such a party and therefore put forward a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. If you are interested in this project, then get in contact with us and support us in building a revolutionary and socialist organization!

We are Marxists and follow in the tradition of the “left opposition” against Stalinism by Leon Trotsky. Our alternative is socialism. Our socialism is a free, democratic society built on elected councils. We refer positively Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

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Publications of the Revolutionary Socialist Organization

RESULTS

and

Bi-annual theoretical Journal

PROSPECTS

Theoretical Journal of the Revolutionary Socialist Organization

Issue No. 1 includes: - Britain: An Economic and Political Crisis - The Student Protests of Autumn 2010 - Capitalism in Crisis - What Strategy for the Left? - Theses on United Fronts, Alliances and Elections

revolutionary SOCIALIST

Working Class Monthly Published by the Revolutionary Socialist Organization

Socialist and working class newspaper Published monthly

Contact: If you want to know more about the Revolutionary Socialist Organisation visit our web page : www.revolutionarysocialism.blogspot.com or e-mail us at: [email protected] or just simply talk to the person who sold you this journal. Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012

Results and Prospects Issue 2

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