Many envision the state as an impartial force, standing “above classes” and representing the interests of all members of society equally. According to this belief, the laws, police, judges, armed forces, politicians, and cultural institutions under government control operate impartially, with no class allegiances. However, as Marxists we challenge this misconception and understand that the state is, in fact, an instrument of ruling class domination.
During the epoch of primitive communism, there was no need for a state. Resources were shared to meet the needs of the entire tribe, and affairs were managed through customs and the authority of elders. The tribe acted together to defend themselves against external threats and punished those who violated these customs.
However, all this was to change with the economic development of more advanced methods of farming. A surplus began to be produced beyond what was required for immediate consumption, and this surplus became concentrated within the hands of a few heads of families. This marked the beginning of a class society, with people henceforth divided between the propertied and the propertyless, the exploiters and the exploited. Due to the antagonistic interests of these classes, a state became necessary to protect the property of the exploiters and prevent revolution. In the words of Marx, “the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another.”
Eventually, the need to contain class antagonisms drove the ruling class to try and conceal the true, class-based nature of the state. While rights had, at one point in time, been granted “on a property basis,” effectively admitting that the state protects the interests of the possessing class over the non-possessing class, under capitalism, differences in property are no longer officially recognised. Engels said, “Wealth here employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely,” through means such as bribery and corruption.
As capitalism developed and competition between enterprises intensified, huge monopolies began to form and the state became the state of monopoly capitalism. Under these circumstances, the state cannot be understood solely as an instrument of class domination; it also becomes a tool of systematic capitalist expansion. Marx observed the growing influence of capitalist monopolies over the state as “the abolition of capital as private property within the boundaries of capitalist production itself,” a shift away from the chaotic and unplanned nature of capitalist production towards the organised production of the future society.
Likewise, Lenin described state-monopoly capitalism (in which monopolies are nationalised and operated according to capitalist planning) as the precursor to the socialist system, stating, “socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.” Under socialism, production is reorganised to serve the interests of society at large rather than monopolies, while the centralised and efficient nature of production developed under state-monopoly capitalism remains.
However, this does not imply merely fighting for a return to the state capitalist period of post-WWII Britain, repeating the same mistakes which prevented the transition to a socialist economy and instead allowed all progress to be reversed during the period of neoliberalism. Marxists understand that capitalist exploitation cannot be destroyed without revolution, that is, without the working class smashing the capitalist state. The working class is the revolutionary class under capitalism not because it is the “most oppressed” class (in fact, the lumpenproletariat is the most oppressed and downtrodden class), but because its interests are tied up in bringing about a higher form of society and it has the power to enact the transformation from one to the other.
This was once also true of the capitalists. Take England, for example. From the mid-16th century, the feudal system of production gradually broke down, while a new class of merchants and industrialists, known as the bourgeoisie, began amassing huge amounts of wealth by trading and producing for the expanding market. As the bourgeoisie grew, they found themselves increasingly restricted by feudal society, thus, as their interests were tied up in moving beyond the feudal economic, social, religious, and political order, they became the revolutionary class of this epoch. During the English Revolution in the mid-17th century, bourgeois forces, led by Oliver Cromwell, overthrew the parasitic feudal state that hindered societal progress and made possible the full development of commerce in English society.
While under feudalism, the bourgeoisie bears the responsibility of resolving the contradiction between the feudal order and the growth of commerce, under capitalism, the working class carries the responsibility of resolving the contradiction between the social relations of production and the private ownership of production.
The Parliamentary Struggle
One of the most important conclusions that Marx derived from the Paris Commune was that the working class cannot confine themselves to simply taking hold over the ready-made state machinery; they must “smash” it and replace it with a proletarian democracy to prevent counterrevolution and the ruin of the socialist project. In practice, this means militant opposition to capitalist structures alongside the development of working-class structures in preparation for their replacement. Khruschev opposed this idea, arguing that in the second half of the 20th Century, with the strength of the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union, conditions in the imperialist countries were ripe for a peaceful transition to socialism via the bourgeois parliaments, but this was never achieved.
Following a revolution, the new, socialist democracy cannot be a “complete democracy,” a democracy for the exploiters as well as the exploited. It is democratic in a new way (for the proletarians and non-propertied in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie), a new form of state therefore known as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In Russia, the duma represented the parliamentary mechanism through which the bourgeoisie aimed to establish its dictatorship after the tsar was overthrown, while the soviet councils represented the same for the proletariat. Although the Bolsheviks boycotted the duma elections on the eve of the socialist revolution, they did participate in the preceding period, while at the same time working to dispel any democratic illusions painted around the bourgeois parliament, as well as around the idea that the parliamentary struggle could ever achieve state power. Instead, they simply recognised it as another mechanism through which to raise class consciousness, put forward their demands, and prepare for the imminent revolution.
Communists participate in parliamentary elections for similar reasons today. They have no misconceptions about the “justice” of liberal democracy, recognising that capitalists can always use their monopoly over wealth, the media, and the law to secure their preferred representatives, lobby for capitalist-friendly policies, or, as a last resort, to outlaw any working-class opposition or remove them through direct military intervention. Instead, communists seize this platform as a means through which to promote revolutionary politics and programmes, to expose the farce of “equality” under capitalism, to count their forces, and to give the working class a taste of how communists will fight for the working class upon taking power.
As a party of a different type, the Communist Party must not only differentiate itself from the bourgeois parties, but also from the reformist socialist and social democratic parties, who tend to prefer “shopping lists” of working-class demands which they would implement if elected. Communists prepare their programmes differently, instead focusing on “short” programmes of key capitalist reforms which are deeply felt among the working class in order to escalate the class struggle and build worker power if achieved, alongside “long” programmes of revolutionary demands which may well be impossible to achieve under capitalism, but which the working class can rally around in order to provoke a revolutionary leap.
Choosing which demands to make at what time is a vital aspect of communist leadership and is a difficult skill to learn. Demands must not trail behind the current level of working-class consciousness and organisation, an example of tailism, nor must they be adventurist and march too far ahead, presenting unrealistic and unachievable demands which demoralise the workers before a revolution is possible. Marx’s programme for the Parti Ouvrier in France is a good example of these principles put into practice. Whatever the demands put forward in their programme, communists must permeate them with an honest, Marxist-Leninist analysis in working-class language to prevent any reformist illusions.
Finally, once the socialist revolution puts the working class in power, the purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to protect the gains of the revolution, eliminate private ownership through socialisation of the means of production, and increase the productive forces as rapidly as possible. The dictatorship of the proletariat is tasked with carrying the revolution forward to the complete victory of socialism and laying the foundations for the future classless society under communism. In making these changes, the state renders itself unnecessary and withers away.
Further Reading:
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, F. Engels
The State and Revolution, V. I. Lenin
The Civil War in France, K. Marx
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, K. Marx
The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier, K. Marx and J. Guesde
Discussion Questions:
- How does the state maintain the illusion of acting in the interests of the whole of society?
- How do we as communists expose the state as a tool of class dictatorship?
- Why does the capitalist state occasionally nationalise branches of industry? This is often called “public” ownership, but is it really?
- Why can the working class not simply “lay hold” of the existing state machinery? What does this mean for our revolutionary strategy?
Can you think of an example of “tailism” or “adventurism” from a communist party?
