Introductions written by Viktor Kotelnikov. You can read the original Russian version here.
Contents:
Editor’s Introduction
Handwritten by Soviet anti-revisionist Alexei Razlatsky in 1979, the following text is one of the most important works of Communist theory since Vladimir Lenin’s time, but is often overlooked and forgotten. It goes into great detail about the intensification of class-struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the intelligentsia under capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the separation of party and state, the withering away of this state, the counter-revolutions of the 20th century, and more.
Although he made some mistakes in later writings, there are only four real notable errors in this particular work that you should take into account while reading, and they do not affect the extreme value of his work:
- Several times equating the dictatorship of the proletariat and state-capitalist economy with the “socialist system” or “socialist society,” thus characterising historical — and, by extension, current — proletarian dictatorships as having reached the period of socialism, an error inherited mainly from Joseph Stalin which, during Razlatsky’s time, was almost universally accepted as fact. Fortunately it is relatively easy to tell what he’s referring to;
- Largely neglecting the international situation of isolation and world capitalism along with the relative underdevelopment of the “socialist camp” in his analysis of historical counter-revolutions, although his general points still stand;
- Speaking of Communism as something to be “built,” but in Razlatsky’s case this is a mere semantic error, as the work itself shows a very deep understanding of Communism revolution;
- Considering Mao Zedong to be among history’s most important Communist theorists and placing the experience of China in the same ‘positive’ category as that of the Soviet Union and Albania. Looking back, it would be more accurate to group it with Yugoslavia and Cuba, since, like the author says of those countries, its “policies have never been seriously grounded in Marxist principles” but its “history can be seen as a testing ground for certain ideas.” Additionally, we can today see that the Chinese Revolution functioned as a national bourgeois-democratic revolution that wiped away feudalism and foreign imperialist domination with the peasantry as the leading force. We can also say now that the revolutions of Korea and Kampuchea (Cambodia) should have been placed in the aforementioned ‘positive’ category. All of this can be largely attributed to the time in which it was written, with Razlatsky lacking both the privilege of hindsight and the vast array of study materials that we have today.
Some English translations have been released before, however all were either difficult to access or contained sufficient errors to warrant a new version. We have decided to publish this translation as part of Red Books Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the release of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ ‘Communist Manifesto’ on the 21st of February, 1848.
For a full, critical understanding, it is recommended to read Marx’s ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme,’ Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution,’ and Shakhban Mammaev’s ‘Karl Marx’s Proletarian Socialism’ — at least the latter — before beginning this book, as indicated in our reading list, especially since the author presupposes that the reader is already familiar with Communist theory.
Introduction (2008)
The crisis of the international workers’ movement
The world-wide impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the workers’ movement has been extraordinary. Increasing reaction in the decade leading up to, and that succeeding, this final implosion of the putrid remnants of the world’s first proletarian dictatorship [the Paris Commune was technically the first, but the Soviet Union was the first to successfully maintain it – Ed.], led to retreat after retreat of the working-class. Though, on a world basis, the effects were a little more uneven, certainly in the advanced capitalist countries, the — primarily self-proclaimed — “advanced detachments of the working-class” fell victim to an almost unbelievably rapid withering and decline.
At first glance this seems quite remarkable. After all, the entire Western revolutionary left had opposed the Soviet Union in one way or another, so why were they all so devastated by its collapse? Only the thoroughly bourgeois French and Italian Communist parties were less affected, and even they suffered significantly.
A simple question! What went wrong?
Yet in fact, a common thread connected them. None among them had any real, useful answer to the simple question of the working-class; “What went wrong?” When those of them that still had the fortitude to get up at four on a winter’s morning to hand out their propaganda to workers going on shift were confronted with the inevitable “Go back to Russia!” taunt, instead of being able to straighten up, look their misguided tormentor in the eye, and say with conviction “I’d like nothing better!” the best they could do was to shuffle their feet and launch into a long, dull, slippery presentation based on the chosen formula of their particular sect.
With no genuine Marxist analysis of the phenomena, the movement was completely hamstrung. The most intellectual of the left trend, whether within the predominantly petit-bourgeois, radical, activist left circles or among those who had become ensconced in academia, showed themselves to be completely incapable of producing anything more than a lot of hopeless moaning about what might have been and self-flagellation about the lack of an ideological compass.
Such is the tragedy of the Western left at the threshold of the millennium; and whatever unevenness their may be elsewhere, it is a tragedy shared by all progressive forces around the world.
Marxism has the answer
It is doubly tragic that, in fact, the missing, creative development of Marxism which might have broken the impasse has existed since 1979 when Alexei Razlatsky wrote ‘The Second Communist Manifesto.’
Still, better late than never!
The Five Extraordinaries are good!
‘The Second Communist Manifesto’ is an altogether remarkable work. To borrow a writing style (but not an ideology!) from Mao Zedong, this work is permeated with the Five Extraordinaries. It has extraordinary scope, extraordinary depth and extraordinary creativity, it shows extraordinary foresight and has extraordinary practical implications for the revolution.
Its scope is sufficiently broad as to justify its borrowing the title of the jewel of the popular works of Marxism. It is truly a worthy successor to the ‘Communist Manifesto’ by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It is not an easy work to read, yet it is both simple and accessible. Although aimed squarely at the Russian proletariat, its scope utterly transcends its own immediate aims, which gives it an enormous significance for the international working-class and their advanced detachments.
It is also a work of great depth. Razlatsky’s profound grasp of Marxist materialism and the dialectic of history is revealed again and again. His relentlessly proletarian perspective is coupled with a deep humanistic concern for the fate of our species.
It is a work that positively sparkles with creative developments of Marxism. From the pressing questions of the relationships between the proletariat, its party and its state under the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the ideological degeneration of the intelligentsia in the period since World War Two, this little book is packed with vital, original Marxist insights and powerful, new, analytic categories. It is intended as a popular work, so its insights have a synoptic form; but it is easy to see that behind these concentrated expressions, lies a broad, dialectical, and historical materialist understanding of the human condition, which Razlatsky’s untimely death in 1989 has, alas, left for the proletarian intelligentsia to reconstruct.
Again and again, Razlatsky shows the power of Marxist materialism by correctly prophesying the fate of the Soviet Union, the character of the succeeding regime, the crisis of the workers’ movement in the capitalist countries; and all this fully a decade before these events took place. It even makes some predictions which, while they have yet to be fulfilled, act as sign posts to the future. For example, with a single sentence, it sketches the outlines of proletarian environmentalism, pointing the way to the political economy of the Communist future.
And finally, this is a work with enormous practical significance for the working-class of the entire world. Not only does it answer the question “What went wrong?” but it provides the proletariat with the guidelines it needs to re-establish its dictatorship and to secure it against the degeneration which overwhelmed the entire socialist camp. It answers the question of the collapse of the Western left in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, and, with its devastating critique of the bourgeois intelligentsia, places the tasks of the proletarian intelligentsia firmly on the agenda.
The path to Communism
Is it a book free of all errors and omissions? Of course not! Is it a recipe for a march to Communism without any difficulties? No more than Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’ or Vladimir Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution’ or any book could be! But, like both of these, it is a work that does the world’s proletarians an inestimable service. It clarifies the crucial contradictions driving developments in today’s world, it sets the agenda for struggle against the senseless cruelties of advanced capitalism and it arms the proletariat against the apparently innocent errors which led to the wreck of the first great wave of proletarian revolution. In short, by summarising and concentrating the proletariat’s experience of the first wave of revolutions, it prepares the way for the second, decisive round in the global contest between the two great classes of the epoch, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. And it is the only work of Marxism which lays out in such practical detail the road which must be travelled to reach the goal of a classless society, of Communism.
Every true Communist longs for the withering away of even the proletarian state, (and, especially since the wreck of October, even before it has been created!) seeing in it, terrible limitations on the sovereignty of the class itself. What need has the self-active, self-directing subject, the international proletariat, for such a coercive apparatus? Yet it is only in moments of fatigue and of profoundly anarchist despair (alas, all too common in the late 20th century) that conscious Marxists can wish away the necessity of a state apparatus in the transition period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and can comfort themselves with the utopian fantasy of an immediate transition to classlessness.
Perhaps too, the international Communist movement shares the blame for such anarchist despair. Since the publication of Friedrich Engels’ work ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,’ there has been a tendency among Communists to shy away from any analysis of developments after the achievement of proletarian dictatorship out of a fear of being labelled a utopian socialist. So as, one by one, the bastions of the proletarian dictatorship were overwhelmed by the silent counter-revolution, honest Communists found themselves on the horns of dilemma. To understand the events of the present requires not only knowledge of history but also an understanding of the paths to the ultimate goal, to the future; yet, by the very tradition of the movement itself, to study the paths to the future was to lay oneself open to an automatic, though not always well-grounded, charge of utopianism.
‘The Second Communist Manifesto’ clears away these cobwebs and shows the working-class how it can create and maintain that proletarian dictatorship whose highest aim is its own rapid withering away.
What is to be done?
It is not an easy work! Advanced proletarians who read it will be able to more rapidly assimilate its content, but many, even of the honest elements of the Western Communist left, will find this very difficult. There is something here to irritate each of them; Trotskyists, neo-Stalinists, Maoists and Hoxhaists who cannot advance beyond refighting the battles of 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and even 60s and 70s will all be equally enraged by its challenge to their deeply ingrained prejudices. This alone should tell them something!
And truly this baggage is the primary reason that it is not an easy work. If you, dear reader, can read this work with an open mind it will amply repay your effort! And as you struggle with a passage, first, blame the translator who was unequal to his task; and second, blame the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who forced this work to be created under conditions of extreme repression and illegality, who forced it to be ‘published’ in hand-written form. And if you want to emulate the sacrifice of those who preserved this legacy for the workers of the entire world by producing copies by hand, then translate this work into all the languages of humanity. The working-class will thank you!
Viktor Kotelnikov
Introduction (1999)
“This little pamphlet is worth an entire volume!” This was how Lenin, in his time, assessed the ‘Communist Manifesto’ by Marx and Engels. Before you, dear reader, is another such “little pamphlet” with a similar title, ‘The Second Communist Manifesto.’ We, the workers of the former Soviet Union, consider that it merits a similarly high assessment. We say this because, by rights, those fighting for the victory of the proletariat will be guided by the ideas of both Manifestos. We began our struggle more than 20 years ago, in the depths of Brezhnevite medievalism, under the cruellest KGB inquisition. Our lot was to be driven underground, to endure arrests, prison and the gulag. This was our “reward” for continuous revolutionary agitation, propaganda, militant strikes and worker meetings. This is how things were under the absolute rule of the feudal CPSU. And this is how they continue to be under the semi-fascist regime of the “democrats,” the young and rapacious bourgeoisie.
Our own broad, practical work is itself a subject for Marxist analysis. Our experience, in particular, has many times confirmed the surprising truth, that “Marxism is the weapon of the proletariat and cannot be handed over to anyone else.” And the teachings of Razlatsky are the Marxism of our times; thus it is most profoundly and completely understood and mastered by the proletariat. Outside the proletarian ranks, individuals drawn to this teaching are rare indeed.
The prolonged, worldwide crisis of the worker’s movement can be explained by a single cause; the most profound crisis of Marxism, the theoretical basis, the theoretical foundation of the workers’ (Communist) movement. But the theoretical crisis cannot be overcome by the party, the International or the class. It is overcome only by the talent, the genius of individual people. Among the most prominent of these are Marx, Engels, Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. [Enver Hoxha would be more appropriate here – Ed.] Having departed this life ten years ago, Razlatsky belongs in the ranks of these giants.
Yet you may ask, if these teachings merit such a high evaluation, and they have existed for twenty years already, where are their practical results? Please try to understand our answer.
The complete and total failure of post-October socialism turned out to be so terrible, that in the world, and even in the USSR itself, it was simply impossible, right up to the end, to recognise how awful the situation of the Russian proletariat was. The principal role in this was played by our Communist movement. Today appearing as the most evil, worst enemy of the proletariat and revolution, it, by means of its Jesuitical mimicry, (such as the CPSU and its successors) continues to deceive and make fools of the working-class and society as a whole. If the open enemy of the working-class, the bourgeoisie, conducts its struggle using the normal means of repression, then our “Marxists,” Trotskyists, “Communists” and other “friends” of the workers (here we must stress that we are speaking only about Russia and the former Soviet Union) have chosen a different path. Although they are enemies and frequently compete among themselves, they have, without discussion, organised an information blockade, a conspiracy of silence around the ideas of ‘The Second Communist Manifesto,’ the like of which has never before been seen in history.
Among us, the workers (as yet not in all of Russia, but at least in the industrial heartland, the city of Samara) there is enormous hope for international proletarian solidarity. We believe that this truly counter-revolutionary conspiracy of silence surrounding the ideas of contemporary Marxism can be broken up thanks to the Internet and other communications media; that is to say with your help. One of the paradoxes of the current moment is that now, 20 years later, these ideas can be brought back to Russia, in order to launch the New October, via the West.
We are happy for all those who take ‘The Second Communist Manifesto’ to heart; we understand that this powerful, living well-spring of Marxist science will bowl you over.
We must hurry, for no one knows how much time remains before Russia bursts apart in flames. It will be for the worse if the explosion of Russia is overwhelmed by spontaneity. This could rock the entire planet, which is already so very sick.
One of the classics said, “The less you praise us, the more you can read us.” Read Razlatsky!
We envy you more than a little; you have started out on the right road. Before you lies the possibility of clearly and simultaneously seeing the past, the present and the future of humanity. So, the shape of the coming wave of proletarian revolution in the world depends greatly on you.
On behalf of the workers of Samara, and those who in one way or another have already sided with us:
Grigory Isayev, Viktor Kotelnikov, and Alexei Razlatsky
Preface
The spectre of Communism is once again haunting Europe, and beyond. And it’s still just a spectre; more than a century of history has carried it across countries and continents, but it hasn’t yet materialised.
Humanity is maturing; it ceases to believe in witches and spirits, devils and ghosts. If a ghost once terrified the bourgeoisie, now it itself is threatening the average person with Communism. Moreover, the ghosts are multiplying. Thanks to the efforts of numerous philosophical tailors, even the most respectable bourgeois dresses in translucent white robes and begins to stroll about as a dapper phantom, one among many. And no one can tell anymore which is the real one.
But that was the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, when the word “Communism” rang out for all proletarians as a word of hope. It was 1917, a year that resounded like a bell across the entire planet. And in many countries, the fires of proletarian struggle blazed, ready at any moment to ignite a global revolution.
What has changed since then?
And the proletariat, where it did seize power with its own hands, where it established its hegemony, is it happy? And if so, why isn’t its happiness so appealing to others?
In the USSR — a country that stands at the forefront of all labour movements — the dictatorship of the proletariat has been abolished. Does this mean the proletariat admits its failure, abandons its conquered positions, and voluntarily surrenders? And to whom?
Why do Western economists again and again turn to the theory of convergence; the increasing similarity, the intrinsic coming together of socialist and capitalist countries?
Why are socialist countries so reluctant to embrace these theoretical constructs? What is the essence of the Iron Curtain that nevertheless separates these worlds?
Since the mid-twentieth century, defying all predictions, the most revolutionary tendencies have been demonstrated by backward, underdeveloped countries. Why?
Why does the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries not only accept assurances of class harmony, but also almost voluntarily take upon itself all the burdens of the economic crises of the second half of the twentieth century – be it the global currency crisis or a private one, like the oil crisis?
Communist parties in countries like France, Italy, and some others are forced to abandon certain principles to maintain their numbers. What do their “new models” of socialism mean?
What is China seeking as it zigzags between socialist and the most reactionary regimes of our time?
Why have questions of international proletarian class solidarity faded into the background and quietly died away? Why has the working class been plagued by an inability to break free from the morass of internal and rather petty affairs?
Why does 20th century philosophy fail to offer directions capable of captivating progressive minds and the youth? Why do all the latest theories crumble within a few years, leaving only the philosophy of universal global denial standing unshakable?
The world looks in the mirror, wanting to see itself. But these reflections are shaky and blurry. Isn’t the spectre of Communism there?
Much can be seen in this mirror. If only you look not in the dark and not in the smoldering flicker of grease lamps. If only you illuminate it with the light of Marxism. If only you look through the eyes of the proletariat. And if the frame truly is a mirror, and not a painting from the last century.
It is time to look!
1: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat
The class-struggle of the proletariat against the rule of the bourgeoisie was the object of the close attention of humanity’s finest minds. Their work was not in vain. It brought the victory of the proletarian revolution closer.
Bourgeoisie and proletariat… The time that has passed since the victory of the Great October Revolution allows and compels us to look at the relations between the two most important classes, two ideologies, from a different perspective; from the perspective of the victorious proletariat.
Two issues come to the fore.
First, in capitalist society, the bourgeoisie — in addition to plundering the proletariat — performs certain social functions. Having dealt with the bourgeoisie, the proletariat assumes the entire burden of these functions. Dealing with this legacy, discarding everything that ensured the very existence of the bourgeoisie, its specific life activity, identifying those functions that are necessary even for a society without private property, and organising their implementation, is no easy task.
Secondly, the proletariat does not emerge from the proletarian revolution cleansed, renewed, and ready for Communism. No, it carries with it almost the entire bourgeois attitude to life instilled in it by capitalist society. It is deeply imbued with concerns about personal material well-being, it still thinks in terms of the commodity market and the labour market, and cannot exist without them. Where can we find the strength to overcome this, and how can we help them?
For centuries, capitalist society coped almost spontaneously with its problems. Of course, capitalism is not everlasting and can not cope with all the ever more acute problems which develop. The growth of the general crisis of capitalism (and it grows steadily) compels the bourgeoisie to become ever more organised, which directly contradicts its individualistic essence. The internal contradictions of an organised bourgeoisie appear, ever more clearly, in the rapid growth of corruption and all kinds of other crime, even in the most bourgeois environments. However, what is necessary for the preservation of capitalist production relations, i.e. the very basis of capitalist society, is determined by capitalism.
The natural interests of the bourgeoisie play a decisive organisational role in capitalist society. They subordinate and harmonise the interests of all strata of society, including the individualistic interests of workers — only the interests of an organised, revolutionary proletariat can resist them. Otherwise, the bourgeoisie fearlessly assumes all the responsibilities of organising production and society, fearlessly assuming dictatorial powers and exercising its dictatorship.
Driven by the desire to accumulate capital and the struggle for maximum profit, the bourgeoisie, in order to achieve its goals, needs society to be linked by a certain system of relations, and achieves this through conscious efforts to direct these relations in the direction it needs, i.e., by implementing a number of functions, it corrects social relations in a certain way.
Here are the most important of these functions:
- Organisation of production;
- Development of production;
- Distribution of goods;
- Regulation of relations between members of society;
- Regulation of the development of public organisations and their relations with society.
The bourgeoisie is also preoccupied with other matters (such as proving its competitiveness and waging political struggle) but these are the class concerns of the bourgeoisie itself. As for the issues listed earlier, even a socialist society cannot do without addressing them.
The capitalist mode of production is historically stable because the bourgeoisie has succeeded in making the satisfaction of the interests of virtually all strata of society dependent on the satisfaction of its own interests. Let’s not ascribe superior intellectual merit to the bourgeoisie; this state of society was not consciously shaped by it, but arose spontaneously, following the dictates of an objective law generalising the diverse individual strategies of the bourgeoisie. But the fact is that this is the final spontaneous stage of human society’s development. Where individual interests are replaced by collective interests distinct from the sum of individual ones, these interests cannot be organised except on the basis of materialist revolutionary theory, on the basis of a social awareness of social tasks.
How a classless society, having overcome all individualistic tendencies and actively and unanimously implementing its collective will, will cope with these concerns is relatively easy to imagine. However, while emerging victorious from the battle with the bourgeoisie, the proletariat is not yet so organised and is still far from having completely abandoned the qualities inherited from capitalist society. It still faces a long process of self-education, of liberating its consciousness from the historically imposed shackles of bourgeois individualism.
This period in the life of the proletariat is extremely complex and dangerous. Uneradicated individualistic tendencies, both outside the proletariat and within the proletarian milieu itself, remain active, continuing the struggle to acquire bourgeois (private) privileges, both through disguised forms of private property and through a special position in society, the establishment of specific personal dependencies, and so on. These tendencies inevitably create and shape a new bourgeoisie as soon as a place for it appears within the social structure.
The danger is compounded by the fact that the proletarian state itself is forced to appeal to the individualistic aspects of society’s consciousness. Capitalism develops skills and methods of work, but does not instil a need for labour. Therefore, to involve society in the production process, the proletarian state must use the same bourgeois incentives, which means satisfying individualistic interests and, thereby, preserving and even encouraging their development.
In exercising its dictatorship, the proletariat cannot avoid performing a number of functions on a bourgeois basis, for society is not prepared for any other means of implementing them. But maintaining proletarian class control is absolutely essential. Otherwise, if control becomes the prerogative of any individual or any group of individuals not in turn controlled by the entire class, the exercise of the dictatorship becomes the work of that group, acquiring a private, and therefore bourgeois, character—that is, the loss of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The proletariat should not be deceived by the legal and constitutional enshrinement of its right to class control over the most important social functions. Real rights are always based not on legal, but on the objective laws operating in society. It is no coincidence that in democratic bourgeois countries, governments elected by society, where the absolute majority are workers’ votes, invariably exercise the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The proletariat cannot count on the loyalty and integrity of its best representatives placed in key positions; where the class can cope with circumstances, individual representatives may prove unable to do so. And where control over the activities of representatives is exercised through their rotation at the will of the class, this rotation must be ensured not by law, but by the course of natural social processes; otherwise, it will prove a sham.
To realise its historical goals — developing toward a classless Communist society — the proletariat needs not only to seize power but also to maintain its own dictatorship throughout its entire development. To achieve this, the proletariat absolutely must know: first, the key points of the social system that it must keep under its class control; second, the means of implementing such control, and therefore the objective laws of social development that ensure its implementation; third, the proletariat must also master those social laws by which it can, through its own strength, restore control should it be lost or weakened. The strength of the organised proletariat is a reliable guarantee in all its endeavours, but only if it maintains a clear direction, a focus on the movement toward Communism.
The proletariat must be able to exercise its dictatorship. This does not come spontaneously; on the contrary, any spontaneity leads to degradation, to bourgeois decay. Only the highest level of organisation of the proletariat’s spontaneous aspirations for the collective resolution of social problems, knowledge, and the constant development of revolutionary theory, grants the proletariat the right to a leading position in society.
And the development of social opportunities for the consistent implementation of its dictatorship, the proletariat must begin by studying the experience of its class enemy; the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie begins with the organisation of production. Only by taking on the connection of labour with the means of production does the bourgeoisie gain the ability to appropriate the surplus product. The division of labour and the development of new technologies, leading to even greater specialisation; all this ensures its victory over the previous mode of production.
Thus, at the first stage, everything is decided by the organising power of capital. Capitalist accumulation, being the capitalist’s goal, simultaneously forces the capitalist to seek ways to increase labour productivity and facilitates this goal by concentrating production.
In the second stage, competition among the capitalists themselves becomes decisive, and this is the struggle for markets. But in this struggle, only those who achieve the highest labour productivity, who have the most sophisticated production, and who offer goods at the lowest price can win. At this stage, the law of maximum profit fully manifests itself as the fundamental economic law of capitalism. Maximum profit is the capital required for the timely restructuring of production, and each restructuring, in turn, brings superprofits generated by a temporary monopoly on a sophisticated, more advanced technology.
Then comes the third stage, when further technological improvement requires extensive research, large capital investments, and involves a very lengthy restructuring. The risk for the individual capitalist becomes prohibitively high: by embarking on such a profound restructuring, they have no guarantee that tomorrow their competitor won’t develop a more advanced, revolutionary technology that requires less time and investment. Such a guarantee is provided by the banding together of capitals, through growing monopolisation, and so capitalism acquires its monopolistic character.
And then, in its fourth stage, capitalism faces an impasse before an era of massive technological change. These coming changes require a unified approach that transcends the boundaries between industries, but capitalism is not destined to witness such a transformation. Capitalism can not undertake such complicated research; it is impossible to keep it secret, but the loss of monopoly is equivalent to a useless expenditure of money. The most that capitalism is capable of is to entrust such research to the state or inter-state organisation (these are the highest form of capitalist unity.) But the bourgeois state, being in a position to conduct research into complicated problems has absolutely no intention of doing so in the realm of increasing the effectiveness of production, for this could only result in the intensification of social contradictions. Herein, incidentally, lies the technological crisis, the technological side of the general crisis of capitalism.
What can we learn from the history of capitalism?
Capitalism arises in a society where a highly developed concept of property already exists, where property is already the most important means of asserting the individual in society, and it completes the development of the concept of private property in the consciousness of society, bringing it to its limits.
Accordingly, in establishing itself, capitalism pursues only one aim, accumulation, the extension of private property. But private property interests the bourgeoisie in one completely defined form, the form of capital. For only private property in the means of production provides the possibility of the appropriation of newly created value in the form of surplus product, it provides accumulation.
Continuous expansion accompanies the growth of capital, leading to increased competition and intensified struggle in both the commodity and labour markets. The struggle for monopoly control over highly productive production methods accelerates the pace of technological progress, and the uncovering and destruction of these temporary monopolies through competitive struggle makes the benefits of technological advances accessible to all of society.
But the potential for expansion is limited. Its further development requires an ever-increasing concentration of capital. Capitalism becomes monopolistic, and this reduces the intensity of competition. As a result, technological advances can no longer be revealed to society, since they are protected by industry monopolies. Under monopoly capitalism, technological progress loses its decisive significance for the bourgeoisie itself; it gains the ability to sustain its profits through other means, and the bourgeoisie ceases to play its progressive role in social development.
It’s easy to see that the entire course of development of capitalist society is dictated by the interests of the bourgeoisie. It’s also easy to understand that the bourgeoisie’s ability to direct development in its own interests rests on its ownership of the means of production, on private property.
But how, in what ways does the bourgeoisie realise its potential?
Abstract human knowledge developed alongside the development of humanity’s creative skills. From time to time, it enriched practice with new, useful discoveries. But it was the bourgeoisie that summoned, organised, and expanded the intelligentsia, placing it at the service of capital. The bourgeoisie compelled the intelligentsia to care for the organisation and improvement of production and engaged them in applied scientific research. This factor served as the source of many of capitalism’s achievements, so understanding its root causes and essence is absolutely essential.
The first steps of capitalism are firmly linked to the division of labour. To argue that by breaking the production process into individual operations, the new method allowed for the use of less skilled labour, reduced the time required to acquire the necessary skills, and thereby secured a decisive advantage is to miss the point. The key point, however, was that the integration of individual operations into a single production process was separated from the labour process; it became possible to divide these functions among separate categories of workers, identifying a unit of production organisers and pitting them against the direct producers. As a result, labour remained the preserve of some, while others were freed from labour to focus on increasing productivity. This separation is the essence of the process, although historically it was not the first such division. The level of development of productive forces achieved by humanity at that time gave it its unique character.
The cooperation of artisans and their unification into guilds stimulated the intensification of labour, but did not facilitate the dissemination of advanced work methods even within the guild. On the contrary, each guild member was interested in preserving their own secrets. This hindered the development of production; further progress required new incentives, and these arose with the division of labour.
The separation of production organisers and their allocation to a special category of workers was accompanied and strengthened by the formation of a system of distribution of benefits that stimulated their activities aimed at increasing labour productivity directly in production.
The guild master, who had previously been a direct producer himself, became a production master, no longer participating in the work, but interested in both ensuring that all the producers subordinate to him possess the most advanced, most productive methods of work, and in ensuring that their work, when combined in the final product, is expressed in the greatest value.
The foreman, meanwhile, remained interested in maintaining a monopoly on his organisational knowledge and his production secrets, limiting their dissemination to the circle of producers subordinate to him. Uncovering his monopoly threatened to devalue his products. But, firstly, he was forced to disclose his knowledge to the producers. And, secondly, it turned out that the foremen were in completely different positions.
The master-owner, the master-capitalist, who owned the means of production, openly sought to sell the manufactured product at the highest price — at a price that included not only the necessary surplus labour of the producers, but also the excess profit generated by his monopolistic organisational and technical knowledge.
A hired foreman, a foreman organising production owned by another owner, also sought to maximise the benefits of his monopoly knowledge. But the owner had no interest in paying the foreman all the excess profits generated by his monopoly knowledge. On the contrary, the owner sought to maximise his share of the profits and was guided by this very principle when hiring a foreman. Accordingly, the hired foreman’s share of benefits was determined based on the size of the excess profits received by the owner; the capitalist only incentivised the foreman to increase the excess profits appropriated by him, the capitalist.
The paths of the master capitalist and the hired hand diverged sharply. The capitalist no longer needed to possess exclusive knowledge himself; he purchased this knowledge, paying for it with a portion of the excess profits it generated. By appropriating surplus labour and capturing the maximum share of excess profits, the capitalist ensured his existence in a world of competitive struggle.
The hired craftsman was forced to sell his knowledge, abilities, and creative potential to the capitalist—this, too, in a competitive environment, where the measure and criterion were not the craftsman’s own income, but the very same profit of the capitalist.
The capitalist was ready to pay for any knowledge, invention, discovery, effective method of raw materials preparation, marketing, methods of organisation or production technology, any ideal goods, so long as they brought him superprofits. All this assisted the formation of a particular layer of society, the intelligentsia, whose specific function became the continuous development of the organisational knowledge of the capitalists.
Increasing labour productivity has been and remains the primary means of generating excess profits. It would be a mistake to assume that increased labour productivity directly increases the capitalist’s profits, allowing them to appropriate a larger share of the surplus product. In fact, such a redistribution is only possible because the product being produced is sold at a price exceeding the amount of labour actually embodied in it, and this is ensured by the capitalist’s certain advantages in labour methods, i.e., a certain monopoly over these methods. Uncovering this monopoly would lead to a reduction in the value of the product being produced and deprive the capitalist of their excess profits, even though they are masquerading as profits.
This is important to note, in order to understand that the labour of the intelligentsia (ideal, creative labour) neither creates value nor increases it. All value is created solely by the labour of the workers. However, clearly the intelligentsia provides an increase of the effectiveness of production in a well-defined sense, that of the “in natura” increase of the resulting product. In the bourgeois this fact gives rise not to joy, but worry, for it threatens to produce a crisis of overproduction. But the bourgeois does not want to drop out of the race for maximum profit, or the linked pursuit of superprofits, and, consequently, can not oppose this process.
Thus, by separately stimulating labour productivity through its intensification (payment of labour) and increasing labour productivity through improving the organisation of production (payment of the creative work of the intelligentsia), the capitalist wages a struggle to maximise his profits, consisting of surplus-value and excess profits generated by the activities of the intelligentsia.
In other words, the bourgeoisie doesn’t do anything with its own hands; it achieves its goals by forcing others to act. The labour of the proletariat creates capital for the bourgeoisie. The organisers of production ensure that the share of labour appropriated by the bourgeoisie is maintained at the maximum level. The creative intelligentsia produces inventions so that the bourgeoisie can extract its superprofits. And all this because the bourgeoisie holds one social responsibility inseparably in its hands; the distribution of labour and material wealth.
No, it’s not omnipotent in this matter; its capabilities are limited by the objective laws of capitalist society. But the capitalist knows these laws well and doesn’t miss a single opportunity they present.
In competitive bargaining on the labour market, he acquires labour-power, but such labour-power — in terms of qualifications, age, and other data — from which he will be able to obtain the greatest amount of surplus labour in a given situation.
The capitalist hires production organisers — as many as necessary — to maximise his excess profits by focusing on increasing labour productivity. The lawyers, commercial specialists, and other employees he hires also contribute to his excess profits, but outside of the production sphere.
The capitalist finances scientific research and technical creativity, but this is only an advance on the superprofits that will be brought to him by monopolistic possession of new achievements and new knowledge.
The capitalist distributes the quantitative measure of goods through wages.
In choosing the direction of development of production, his orientation to the output of definite goods, (and the capitalist always does this himself) relying on the analysis of market conditions and production forecasts done by hired specialists, he participates in the production of a definite qualitative composition by society. In so far as he grabs a corner of the existing market, he necessarily must take into account the existence of a social demand and try to satisfy that demand.
And when the capitalist finally settles on distributing goods, it turns out that the issues of labour distribution have already been resolved. It’s been determined how many and what kind of specialists he needs, what machines the workers will operate, what the intelligentsia will do. The capitalist has no intention of separating these issues: goods go to those who generate profits. The capitalist has also taken care of something else: that everyone, while striving to increase goods for themselves, ensures increased profits for themselves — that is, he has arranged a convergence of interests.
Of course, in a world of class contradictions, when the proletariat is increasingly organising for struggle, the capitalist could not solve its problems unilaterally, without the support of other forces. To govern society in its own private property interests, the bourgeoisie simply must keep social movement within the channel where alone it can build its dams and weirs. This channel is the channel of private property, and its banks are the entirety of the social relations of the capitalist world and, above all, the entire power of its organisations that support and shape these relations. The most colossal of these organisations is the bourgeois state, with its numerous means of control over society.
State power in most capitalist countries is formed on the most democratic principles. This, however, does not prevent it from remaining a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage poses no threat to the bourgeoisie, even though the industrial proletariat constitutes the majority of the population. Why is a handful of capitalists completely unconcerned about the outcome of the struggle for power?
Because in the struggle for power, strength, not numbers, wins. And the formula for strength in society is simple: numbers plus organisation. By uniting in political parties, almost entirely subscribing to the intellectually advanced segment of society, wielding the organising power of the media, and funding various societies and targeted campaigns, the bourgeoisie doesn’t simply shape public opinion in its favour; it suppresses, drowns out, and drowns out the voices of opposing ideologies in the general din. The organising power of wealth, money, and property, this is what helps the bourgeoisie not only in the reproduction of capital but also in the ideological indoctrination of society.
Due to its natural stinginess, the bourgeoisie misses and will continue to miss moments when the organisation of the proletariat and leftist forces in general reaches dangerous levels for the bourgeoisie, as happened, for example, in Chile in 1970. But even then, not all is lost for the bourgeoisie.
If, under normal “democratic” conditions, the bourgeoisie prefers to manage the proletariat by spending a minimal portion of its profits on organisational needs, then the threat of losing private property altogether forces the bourgeoisie to sacrifice even more — and then, without sparing a penny, it pours money into the creation of a fascist regime. Fascism is the flip side of bourgeois democracy; it is the same dictatorship, only in its unvarnished form. Under “democratic” conditions, the bourgeoisie prefers to wage the struggle against the proletariat through democratic means, hindering its organisation through broad ideological pressure, introducing chaos into the purposefulness of labour movements themselves, and funding bourgeois organisations sufficiently to resist.
Under fascism, the same organisational advantage of the bourgeoisie is secured through the violent destruction of workers’ organisations, the outright liquidation of proletarian organising centres, arrests, and executions. This is more costly for the bourgeoisie, introducing its own complications into the economy, but the bourgeoisie knows these difficulties are temporary. Shattered, destroyed, having lost their best cadres, having lost their established connections, workers’ organisations become ineffective for a long time, removed from the political arena. Then fascism becomes unnecessary; it can be quietly written off, and, having restored organisational superiority over disparate proletarian forces within the framework of the most magnificent bourgeois “democracy,” the vile acts of fascist terror can long be reviled as an accidental stain on the sterile democratic history of capitalist society.
This is how the bourgeoisie resolves its organisational problems. Compared to this, regulating personal relationships is a mere trifle. Here, one thing is enough: for the bourgeois state to assert the inviolability of private property through all its legislation, legal proceedings, and military force. Of course, in each specific case, each individual capitalist strives to snatch what the law doesn’t grant him; every bourgeois has firmly learned that justice is good, but not for the strong. And, of course, from all this grows a gigantic system of corruption and collusion between the big bourgeoisie and society as a whole. But these are already the details of capitalist existence.
Thus, the private property interests of the bourgeoisie serve as the most important organising principle in capitalist society. The process of realising these interests, the totality of actions undertaken by the bourgeoisie to satisfy them, simultaneously serves as the process of fulfilling a number of social functions, without which the interactions of society’s members would not possess the completeness and integrity necessary for the existence of society itself.
Does the bourgeoisie itself perform all such functions? No, it doesn’t. Wherever possible, the bourgeoisie recruits the intelligentsia. All leading positions in capitalist society are given to the intelligentsia. Government officials, right up to the highest ranks, are intellectuals. Technical and commercial managers of all ranks are intellectuals. The intelligentsia is also responsible for all ideological work. The creative potential of the intelligentsia is fully utilised by the capitalist world.
This position of the intelligentsia, as well as the growing depersonalisation of capital in joint-stock companies and other forms of capitalist cooperation, allows many bourgeois ideologists to speak of capitalism’s retreat from decisive positions, of the transfer of power into the hands of an intelligentsia formed into commercial and technical systems interacting according to their own laws and pursuing an economic policy supposedly independent of, and uncontrolled by, capitalists. This is a lie, because capitalists have never ceded control over the distribution of wealth to anyone; because by granting the intelligentsia the right to lead, the bourgeoisie reserves the right to dictate direction; because capitalists are willing to pay for the activities of any administrator, politician, or engineer, the activities of any system, as long as they faithfully fulfill their primary obligation to the capitalist — to ensure maximum profit.
No matter how significant the position of the intelligentsia may seem in bourgeois society, in reality the bourgeoisie allows it to do whatever it wants, but without going beyond the limits of what the bourgeoisie wants.
And yet, the position of the intelligentsia plays a very significant role in social development. The individualistic worldview firmly instilled by bourgeois society, the accessibility to the intelligentsia of all positions deemed key in the social order, combined with the intelligentsia’s practical experience in resolving both minor and major problems based on calculation and reasonable agreements, gives rise to a unique conviction among the intelligentsia — a belief in the possibility of stabilising society by strengthening its rational principles. Essentially, each intellectual possesses their own complete model for reorganising society, which consists of eliminating those obstacles they perceive in their personal relationships with society, the illogicality of which seems obvious to them. Remaining outside the heat of class conflicts, not bothering to analyse class forces and class interests, the intelligentsia is unable — and does not show a particularly strong desire — to understand that everything it perceives as obstacles is, in fact, a reflection of real and inevitable class contradictions, that in these “interferences” the iron grip of the capitalist, asserting his interests, makes itself felt.
This spiritual atmosphere gives rise to a host of theories among the intelligentsia regarding the “rational” — but in reality entirely idealistic and therefore untenable — organisation of society. All these theories play into the hands of the bourgeoisie, as they distract the thinking portion of society from participating in the class-struggle and obscure the true sources of social contradictions. But even more importantly, the apparent attainability of utopian social constructs fosters certain caste-based views among the intelligentsia, leading them to view themselves as a class capable of assuming full responsibility for the fate of society. This widespread delusion, fertile ground for the hypertrophied self-admiration characteristic of the intelligentsia, obscures the intelligentsia’s secondary, subservient role in society. The bourgeoisie willingly supports these manic prejudices, because the deluded intelligentsia reliably serves the bourgeoisie, while the enlightened one, realizing the obligation of its service, is capable of making a revolutionary choice: to serve the proletariat.
The fact that in capitalist society, the existence of the intelligentsia itself is necessitated by the needs of the bourgeoisie and is possible only under its watchful eye, not unnaturally, but only serves to strengthen caste beliefs. Those very actions of capital, perceived by the intelligentsia as annoying obstacles, ensure a certain equilibrium in capitalist society, its integrity and coherence; they prevent the intelligentsia from testing the inconsistency of its theories and maintain the belief that peace and order exist solely thanks to its efforts.
Two consequences of this state of affairs directly affect the interests of the proletariat. First, the intelligentsia’s class-based social aspirations isolate it from the proletariat, cutting it off from the rest of the proletariat. This seriously damages the development of proletarian theory and weakens the organisational work without which the proletariat will be unable to prepare for or engage in the decisive class battle. Second, after victory, the proletariat, no matter how much it needs the intelligentsia’s creative potential, cannot trust it: the desire to put its numerous theories into practice inevitably leads the intelligentsia to the only consistent solution — the resurrection of capitalist relations.
To not only win power but also to avoid losing it again, to skillfully wield it after victory, the proletariat must understand all these secrets of capitalist society, all the social forces operating within it. It must inherit them, transform them, and direct them toward the construction of a new society.
2: Worker as Master
As long as the proletariat is conducting its struggle in capitalist society, while it remains a class, opposing with ever greater strength the hated bourgeois order, it is sufficient to build solidarity around one idea, the idea of socialist revolution. But on completion of the proletarian revolution, having negated, destroyed bourgeois society and the state, the proletariat is confronted by the necessity of building a new society, discovering, maintaining and creating new functional links, increasing society’s integrity and coherence. This is the law of negation, implacable negation; society, from which those functions fulfilled by the bourgeoisie have been withdrawn, demands their replacement or renewal; and not every replacement is necessarily equally suitable. In the opposite case, all the holes will be filled spontaneously, in the form and likeness of those rejected earlier. And if the proletariat is not ready to renew and restructure the whole system of social relations, inevitably a new bourgeoisie will arise, appropriating the functions and privileges of the former bourgeoisie.
In revolutions of the previous era, a succession of functions arose spontaneously; the proletariat can not hope for this to happen. In previous crises in history, each slave owner, feudal or bourgeois, tied his own little knots in the net of social relations. But the socialist revolution qualitatively distinguishes itself in that a new subject, the class, enters the arena of struggle, and it wins only because it possesses the organizing power of a single subject and is able to rule only thanks to the strength of its own unity.
Acting spontaneously, workers themselves are incapable of rising above the respectable, bourgeois level of trade unionism. Only a qualitatively different form of organising class-consciousness, one that corrects individual interests and elevates them to the level of collective class interest, allows the proletariat to solve social problems and provides it with a decisive advantage in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology, both before and after the proletarian revolution. And the difficulties facing the proletariat also have their own qualitative differences.
First, the proletariat needs a good, reliable theory. Where an individual, a unity unto himself, can act successfully thanks to his own knowledge, talent, intuition, instinct, or, finally, luck, the proletariat can ensure the purposefulness and consistency of its actions only by aligning all specific tasks within a unified ideological system.
Secondly, the errors and misconceptions of individuals, the inaccuracy of their assessments, and the inconsistency of their decisions have no impact on the development of society as a whole: some individuals drop out, are removed from their functions, and others take their place. But gaps in the class-consciousness of the proletariat, its insufficient knowledge, and its mistakes mean nothing more than a retreat before the bourgeoisie: the bourgeoisie immediately returns, “coming to the rescue” where the proletariat fails to fulfil its responsibilities as hegemon.
Thirdly, a society resting on the interests of individuals, exerts no effort to compensate for individual losses which occur spontaneously through the action of those same interests. Loss or retreat by the proletariat means a reversion to the revolutionary road, they demand the repetition of the revolutionary labour, the repetition of the battle with the bourgeoisie.
The proletariat therefore needs a well-developed theory and methods that enable it to promptly assess changing circumstances and find the right solutions, as well as the ability to conduct research and enrich its knowledge with minimal losses. This is its weapon, and it must be constantly in combat readiness.
The proletariat must resolve two questions when it undertakes the construction of a new society:
- Improving the welfare of society;
- The development of its own consciousness.
Success in the second question depends almost entirely on the solution of the first. And on the first question, the proletariat must achieve radical solutions: it must not only reach the level of the leading capitalist countries, not only surpass them, but surpass them incomparably, reaching boundaries that are unattainable for them.
Proletarian society is capable of overcoming the obstacles that stop capitalism in its tracks as it reaches its peak. But this doesn’t happen automatically. These are the interests of the victorious proletariat, yes, but ways to satisfy these interests must still be found. And here, the proletariat cannot do without the experience of previous generations; here, it is absolutely necessary for the proletariat to be trained by the bourgeoisie.
The first and most general conclusion, drawn from past experience, is this: society inevitably moves in the direction of the spontaneous aspirations of its members. But this is not a conclusion; it is only half the story. The important addition is: under the prevailing conditions of existence. It was not without reason that the bourgeoisie fought for the universal recognition of private ownership of the means of production — this was the condition for the development of capitalism, the channel into which the spontaneous forces were directed. The condition of socialism is public ownership of the means of production. But here, clarification is necessary. A society that owns the means of production can be part of society, and its property then remains private property. Capitalism, too, does not shy away from public forms of ownership, creating, for example, joint-stock companies. The nature of socialism depends on the attitude of the societies that own the means of production toward society as a whole. And since the goal of the proletariat is proletarian socialism, only one form is acceptable: all-proletarian class ownership. And this, in particular, means that, having won back the means of production in the revolutionary struggle, the proletariat should not yield to anyone and should not share its ownership rights and privileges with anyone.
How to preserve these rights and how to use them; this is what the proletariat must directly learn from the bourgeoisie.
The pursuit of maximum profit, dictated by the conditions of competition, forces capitalists to constantly seek to improve labour productivity. This results in increased output and excess profits for the capitalist. The progressive social content of this process is revealed when competitors’ exposure of monopolies and the struggle for markets leads to a decline in prices for the manufactured product.
Increasing labour productivity is what the proletariat and society as a whole need. But what about other conditions?
By destroying capitalism, the proletariat also destroys capitalist competition.
Extracting maximum profit cannot be the goal of the proletariat: whatever the amount of profit, it is returned to the one from whom it is collected — the proletariat.
There is even less interest in superprofits for the proletariat.
But maximum production efficiency is the proletariat’s fundamental interest. Firstly, the proletariat’s well-being directly depends on it, for it has nowhere else to obtain wealth beyond what it produces itself. Secondly, increased production efficiency leads to a reduction in labour costs and the amount of working time required to produce the goods needed by society, which is crucial for the cultural and creative development of the proletariat and the growth of its consciousness.
Thus, pursuing maximum production efficiency, the proletariat is interested in constantly increasing labour productivity, leading to increased output in kind. This entirely determines the proletariat’s attitude toward excess profits: it is in the interests of the proletariat to rapidly dismantle all monopolies and fully disseminate advanced production methods. But here the proletariat differs from the capitalist only in scale: the capitalist is interested in the complete and rapid dissemination of new methods in his own production, and so is the proletariat.
The interests of the proletariat generally correspond to the interests of the individual capitalist in capitalist society. They are essentially a sublime, humanistic development of bourgeois interests. The place of abstract maximum profit is taken by a very concrete, maximum production efficiency, directly, not indirectly, linked to the increase in the production of material goods in kind. This occurs because the fundamental interest of the proletariat as owner is not based on the inhumane demand for the assertion of private property in the competitive struggle, but on the human needs of the proletariat as a consumer class. labour and production are restored to their original purpose: to serve as a source of satisfaction for immediate human needs, uncomplicated by the oppression of social injustice and the demands of the struggle for existence against the entire society.
The existence of a very clear analogy between the interests of the proletariat and the individual capitalist allows us to establish analogies in the realisation of these interests. The capitalist achieves his goals by stimulating the activities of workers, production organisers, technicians, inventors, and scientists in the direction he desires. He does not rely on any fixed system of incentives. On the contrary, he utilises the natural striving of people for a more complete satisfaction of demands, oriented to maximum effect in the direction which is fundamental to him; the receipt of profits.
The capitalist does not distribute all goods himself. But, in entrusting to some the distribution of goods to the rest, the capitalist personally decides the reward for his lieutenants. In this role he selects people who are more zealous and capable in defending his interests; and their share of the goods depends directly on their fulfillment of his demands. The capitalist recognises no other criterion than his own interests, whose ultimate expression is maximum profit.
The capitalist makes the fundamental, guiding decisions — such as orienting production toward a specific type of product, choosing development paths, and directing capital investment — himself. These decisions are linked by a single entity; his personal, subjective economic agenda. No objective factors can influence this policy except through the capitalist’s consciousness, refracting in his mind and becoming the condition for the decisions he makes.
Faced with alternatives where evaluating the magnitude of the final effect is difficult, the capitalist makes a subjective choice. This subjectivity is not arbitrary; it lies within the framework of general economic policy. Rewarding successes and punishing mistakes, the capitalist demands that all his employees follow the same policy, and that they be equally subjective in solving problems at their level.
What should the proletariat learn here?
To everything!
By determining the direction of production by its subjective class needs, subordinating it to its criterion of maximum efficiency, in all other respects the proletariat must master the rational techniques already discovered by the capitalist.
And here the main difficulty arises, the solution to which no capitalist experience can suggest.
The interests of the capitalist are represented by the capitalist himself. The integrity of the capitalist as an individual determines the unity and single-mindedness of his economic policy.
The interests of the proletariat are class interests. The subject expressing them is the class as a whole. The interests of individual representatives and groups differ from the interests of the class, for only for the proletariat as a whole does the satisfaction of needs directly depend on the efficiency of production; only the entire producing class can provide itself with anything beyond what it produces.
The implementation of a coherent economic policy consistent with class interests is beyond the reach of the proletariat as a mass of workers. It is accessible only to an organised class, only to a proletariat that has overcome its individualistic tendencies and recognised its collective goals. But even this is not the answer, nor is it the means for realising the proletariat’s rights as an owner.
The class interests of the proletariat take on concrete form, reflected in the consciousness of a single individual as clear ideas and slogans, accessible to the masses and capable of rousing them to organised action. And although the dissemination and assimilation of ideas requires both time and effort, the proletariat nevertheless knows how to find its leaders.
By expressing the interests of the proletariat in the most distinct and concentrated system of ideas, the leader embodies and materialises them in mass proletarian action. The fact that a complex leadership structure composed of vibrant individuals participates in organising these mass actions does not change the situation: this system itself is maintained and disciplined by an understanding of the masses’ need for these specific ideas, their response, and their willingness to follow the leader’s ideas. Such a system not only disseminates and supports ideas but is also capable of actively rejecting and refuting ideas that run counter to the sentiments of the masses, freeing itself from leaders who are dominated by these untenable ideas. The action of this system shapes the class-consciousness of the proletariat as a unified subject; participation in the mass movement brings revolutionary changes to each individual consciousness, forming the basis for the further development of class-consciousness.
The proletarian socialist [proletarian-led – Ed.] state faces different tasks from the outset. Accepting a vast economic system from capitalism, accepting a society in which not only non-proletarian elements persist but also in which individualistic, bourgeois aspirations, nurtured by the past, are strong within the proletariat itself, the socialist state must assume the function of regulating all related social relations. It must combine certain features of the bourgeois state and the capitalist economic system. While the mass movement draws on the best, most advanced, and revolutionary qualities of the proletariat, the state must orient itself toward the worst, most backward, but not yet eradicated, traits of both the proletariat and society as a whole, and must develop a system for regulating them. At its core, in its relationship to its citizens, the state always remains bourgeois, never rising above the principles of bourgeois justice. But this does not extend to external relations, to its treatment of non-citizens — here, the proletarian state acts solely as the agent of the proletariat, solely as the representative of its class interests.
These are the social foundations of society that the proletariat must take into account before applying the capitalist science of management.
The absolute master of all conquered means of production is the proletariat as a unitary whole.
The interests of the proletariat are personified in the leaders of the proletariat. It is the leaders who define the goals and construct policies in a concrete and coordinated form. But the decisive word still rests with the class, for only through the support of the masses can the leaders test their political ideas.
The interests of the proletariat are fulfilled by the proletarian state. The state acts like a system hired by the workers, (formed in the same way as a capitalist would, for the realisation of the will of the owner and finding itself under his subjective control) dependent on the will of its master, the proletariat as a whole, in all its sections.
The socialist state, as a governing body, no longer deals with the proletariat as a class — it governs society as a collection of individuals: workers, peasants, and intellectuals. It is obligated to care for individuals and social strata, to protect or suppress their activities, only insofar as this serves the interests of the proletariat, and in this, too, it must be under constant control.
The state, the state apparatus, must be formed through personal selection, and here the full application of capitalist science begins. The highest positions must be entrusted to people whose devotion to the interests of the proletariat is unquestionable and has been thoroughly tested. They must possess a profound understanding of current interests, the ability to realise these interests in concrete actions, in the selection of personnel, and in current policy. But all-proletarian oversight and all-proletarian evaluation must also accompany them in all their actions.
A particularly important area of activity for a socialist state is the economy. By replacing the capitalist pursuit of maximum profit with the socialist demand for maximum production efficiency, the socialist state must subordinate the entire economic system to this demand.
This applies primarily to the management team. Production organisers should be paid in direct proportion to their organisational contribution to increasing labour productivity, and they should be paid very highly.
Why is this so? Why can’t (or shouldn’t) the victorious proletariat dictate its own, different terms to the technical intelligentsia? Why can’t the hegemonic class exploit the creative abilities of specialists as mercilessly as the capitalist exploits the worker?
Because it is not beneficial to the proletariat and is contrary to its interests.
The manifestation of talent and creative abilities is individual in nature. The impetus for such individual expression is the struggle for social recognition and recognition itself. As long as commodity-money relations exist in society, recognition through the distribution of goods will remain one element of recognition in general.
But it is precisely on creative activity that the improvement of production and the growth of its efficiency depend — whether this be the work of production organisers or the creative initiative of the workers themselves. An increase in the production of goods without additional labour expenditure is precisely the economic goal of the proletariat; it is quite willing to pay for progress in this direction with this same increase.
And if we look back at the capitalist, if we learn from him, we’ll see that by paying specialists highly, he doesn’t lose, but rather increases, his profits. Moreover, he creates a competitive struggle among them for recognition, leading to the full development of their abilities and allowing the selection of the best. The proletariat can only detrimentally reject this approach.
The personal evaluation of each specialist should be based on the extent to which their work is beneficial to the proletariat. This evaluation should be made on a grand scale, from the vantage point of class interests. Learning from the capitalist, for example, it should be said that if the proletariat does not allow its specialists the opportunity to receive benefits greater than those they would receive in the service of the capitalist, then the proletariat is a poor manager. Working for a socialist society should attract even the most prominent specialists in the capitalist world with its profitability. The proletariat will only become richer by exploiting their abilities, for what is profitable for the capitalist is many times more profitable in a socialist economy, unfettered by competing monopolies.
And how should a hegemonic class treat its members; the workers? Does this question even make sense if the class is composed entirely of these same workers?
This question exists, and it is entirely legitimate. The proletariat, organised as a class, is not identical to the totality of its constituent workers. The difference lies in the very existence of organisation. Organisation is based on a commonality of interests, but not all interests are common: individual interests also remain, some of which continue to conflict with the interests of the class as a whole.
The class is interested in increasing wealth for all, while the individual worker is interested in increasing it for himself. But he can achieve this together with the class, or he can fight for it in a bourgeois manner, striving to appropriate the labour of his class comrades. As long as such a contradiction persists in the worker’s consciousness, a certain contradiction will persist between proletariat and proletarian, between class and individual interests.
This means that until then, the class must organise to defend its common interests against the tide of petty proprietor, bourgeois interests. This struggle is waged on two fronts. On the one hand, the goal of this struggle is to bring about revolutionary changes in the consciousness of each individual that will lead to the withering away and disappearance of bourgeois, individualistic interests. But on the other hand, as long as these interests exist, the proletariat is obliged to utilise them, turning them to the benefit of society.
The proletariat’s primary economic task is the constant growth of the benefits accruing to invested labour. This task is accomplished not by the labour of the workers, but by how effectively this labour is utilised, how sophisticated the entire production system is, and how well those hired by the proletariat as production organisers fulfil their duties. Therefore, if a certain labour contribution to social production is the worker’s duty, without which no benefits can arise, then the worker must pursue his fundamental interests in increasing these benefits by demanding creative output from production organisers at all levels, monitoring their activities, and promoting the advancement of the most capable; in other words, by constantly maintaining a strong class position. However, in solving this problem, the proletariat faces the need to apply the same demands to itself, as labour is still far from universally recognised as a duty, hindered by the same individualistic interests.
Since these are the same interests that rule in capitalist society, the task facing the proletariat is to organise them and channel in the right direction — that is, to stimulate labour activity in a businesslike manner by satisfying these interests for the benefit of the master — the entire working-class. Thus, in relations with workers, too, policy is dictated by one thing: the interests of the proletariat as a class, as a single whole.
The fundamental law that determines the existence of a proletarian socialist society, and which must guide the victorious proletariat and the state system that serves it, is formulated as follows:
The distribution of labour and products of production in the interests of society as a whole, stimulating the growth of public welfare and public consciousness.
Growing social prosperity serves as the material basis for the development of consciousness: increased production efficiency leads to a reduction in necessary labour costs, freeing up time for cultural development. But this does not yet resolve the fundamental issues of developing Communist consciousness.
The socialist state’s ability to develop consciousness is extremely limited. Essentially, the state’s task is not to change the masses’ consciousness itself, but to consolidate the progressive shifts already occurring in their consciousness into state forms, through corresponding changes to the entire system of social governance.
However, in relation to the non-proletarian strata of society, the state, as the executor of the class will of the proletariat, plays a very active role. The very existence of these strata is permitted only to the extent that it corresponds to the interests of the proletariat. The interests and needs of the non-proletarian strata are taken into account only to the extent that this corresponds to the most effective utilisation of this part of society for the benefit of the proletariat. Certain democratic opportunities for expressing their opinions and for presenting any demands are granted by the proletariat to the non-proletarian part of society with a single goal: to utilise these interests, stimulate them, compelling this part of society to devote the fullest possible labour and abilities to the benefit of the proletariat. As the interests of the proletariat develop and change, its attitude toward other classes and social groups, and its need for their existence, will inevitably change. The nature of the political freedoms granted to these strata by the state will change accordingly. Therefore, there can be no talk here of any political guarantees for these strata, with the exception of temporary agreements that the proletariat agrees to, taking into account the specific forms of its interests, corresponding to the current stage of history.
Accordingly, by pursuing such a dictatorial policy toward non-proletarian strata, the proletarian state also addresses the important task of restructuring their consciousness, demonstrating through all its measures that the only real guarantee lies in an irrevocable transition to the class position of the proletariat. Relations with the ruling-class are based on a completely different foundation. While remaining one of the most backward social institutions in relation to the proletariat, the state nevertheless cannot be so conservative as to not change in line with the development of its interests.
In the political sphere, this means the constant expansion of democracy for the proletariat. State control and state regulation of various aspects of public life have, from the very beginning, served to protect class interests against individual interests. As workers’ personal interests align with their class interests, state regulation of these interests becomes unnecessary — it is replaced by the socially conscious initiative of workers, recedes, and dies out.
In the economic sphere, in addition to the constant growth of production efficiency and the welfare associated with it, a change in the system of distribution of goods is also of significant importance; the movement from distribution “according to labour” to distribution “according to need” is carried out by expanding public consumption funds, by extending them to ever new categories of goods.
No state regulations can outpace the level of mass consciousness. Essentially, they merely record what has been achieved, responding to it with some lag. But the dynamics of perestroika, clearly demonstrating how certain shifts in individual consciousness are followed by changes in the entire system of governance, stimulates the emergence of new shifts and the recognition of new challenges.
As for the primary source, the root cause of revolutionary changes in the consciousness of the proletarian masses, workers have nothing to learn from the capitalists. These changes — conscious discipline, a class approach to social phenomena, self-restraint in the consumption of goods, and the recognition of public interests as one’s own — all arise as the proletariat grows in organisation, as each worker becomes aware of their class membership. This occurs during the proletarian class-struggle: it originates as ideas, manifests itself in the proletariat’s class victories, and is affirmed by revolutionary shifts in the consciousness of each worker.
And here the proletariat has only one science — its own historical experience.
3: Crisis of the Labour Movement
Isn’t it strange to talk about the tasks of the victorious proletariat, starting from the study of capitalist society now, when more than half a century of experience of proletarian victories provides tremendous material for concrete historical analysis?
True, there’s no need to claim that the preceding conclusions were reached without taking into account the recent history of socialist states. On the contrary, although everything stated follows from the laws of the historical development of society, from the laws of the capitalist economy and the class-struggle of the proletariat, this only becomes evident in the practice of socialism.
The peculiarities of socialist formations in the history of various countries allow us to reduce all the facts into four groups:
- The Soviet Union, China and Albania;
- The Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919) and Chile (1970-73);
- Yugoslavia and Cuba;
- All other states of the ‘socialist direction.’ [see our foreword – Ed.]
Although socialist traits are localised within nations, this is not a matter of nationality, but of political characteristics. It is therefore no coincidence that Hungary ended up in two groups — the second and fourth — based on the significance of the experiences of different historical periods.
The first group included countries that made a real positive contribution to the cause of socialism, independently encountered specific problems of socialist construction, and provided their own experience in resolving these problems. The experience of countries in the second group is also independent, but negative. The practices of countries in the third group, generally speaking, lie outside the mainstream of the socialist movement.
The policies of Yugoslavia and Cuba have never been seriously grounded in Marxist principles; they are eclectic. But their history can be seen as a testing ground for certain ideas. Finally, the fourth group consists of countries that are openly imitative, borrowing from others not only useful experiences, — there’s nothing wrong with that, in fact it is often worthwhile — but also errors.
Of greatest significance, of course, is the experience of the Soviet Union, which remained independent throughout its history. China’s experience from the mid-1950s to the death of Mao Zedong is also crucial; the period preceding this essentially mirrored the USSR’s socialist development, but with Mao Zedong’s death, everything resumed its familiar pattern. [Looking back now, the Chinese Revolution as a whole can be characterised as a bourgeois-democratic revolution that wiped away feudal remnants and had the peasantry as its leading force, thus the path to the current situation was already laid during Mao’s lifetime. – Ed.] Albania’s political life, in its entirety, may be of the greatest interest, but its closure and isolation make it difficult to analyse.
The experiences of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919) and Chile (1970-73) coincide in all their key aspects. In both cases, the socialist forces came to power peacefully, which, incidentally, attests to the overwhelming superiority of the progressive forces in some concrete historical circumstances. In both cases socialism perished, in the last analysis because of an underestimation of the organising role of property. In both cases the socialist government made insufficient use of political terror, which is the proletariat’s only available means for destruction of counterrevolutionary formations. The non-violent acquisition of power disposed of the left [revolutionary – Ed.] forces to the view that the resistance of the bourgeoisie would not go beyond the democratic framework; this was an historic mistake. And when the bourgeoisie cast aside its democratic mask, the proletariat was simply insufficiently hardened and prepared for mortal class-struggle. Theorists, advocating the peaceful struggle of the proletariat for socialism, would do well to extract the obvious lesson from this. Until such time as the bourgeoisie is decisively weakened, including economically, in the struggle with world socialist forces, all hope for the bloodless victory of socialism remains utopian.
Even the acquisition of political power, even the rapid expropriation of capitalist property, does not provide a reliable guarantee, since expropriated property also exerts its counter-revolutionary organising influence through the hope of its return, through the expectation of receiving benefits from the restored owners.
As long as the bourgeoisie is economically strong, the revolution can assert itself only through the iron terror of a political dictatorship.
Revolutionary Russia fortunately avoided these mistakes. The excesses of the autocracy, the insolence of the landowners, and the unbridled nature of the bourgeoisie prepared Russia’s workers for the harshest struggle, and the October Revolution gave birth to an energetic and decisive dictatorship that managed to survive the struggle against open enemies both external and internal, only to fall a few decades later for entirely different reasons.
The history of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the counter-revolutionary coup in Russia deserves the most in-depth analysis and will likely remain the subject of scholarly research for a long time to come. But fundamental conclusions can and must be reached immediately, for without them, the proletarian movement will reach a dead end.
The counter-revolutionary coup in the USSR occurred so quietly and unexpectedly that no one noticed. For decades, the current dictatorial administration in the USSR has managed to pose as a Marxist-Leninist leadership, fooling the workers with its charade of democracy. Even the international Communist movement, for the most part, hasn’t come close to a true Marxist assessment of what’s happening in Russia. But a counter-revolutionary coup has occurred, and the first thing we must do is establish the fact of the coup.
In 1961, the Program of the CPSU and then finally the Constitution of 1977 recognised the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR as fulfilled and the Soviet Union was declared a “state of the whole people.”
But Marxists have always been clear that as long as a victorious proletariat cannot manage without a state, that state can be nothing other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. And this is not only because the proletariat is the only class capable of assuming the production of all goods and the implementation of all social functions.
The fact is that the proletariat is the only class incapable of securing its own wealth by robbing other classes. Therefore, no matter what its circumstances, the proletariat remains the only class striving for Communism as the highest form of realising its potential and satisfying its interests, and striving for it with historical inevitability.
However, perhaps a people’s state is already a step towards the first stage of a classless Communist society?
A classless society, like any society, cannot exist without production. If some produce goods while others merely consume them, the division into classes will persist. Therefore, a classless society can only be formed on the basis of a producing class. The proletariat is an open class, that is, a class capable of accepting anyone into its fold, without imposing any impossible demands or qualifications.
Only the ruling, privileged position of this open class, exerting a destructive influence on the remaining, deprived strata of society, drawing them into the proletarian environment, is capable of leading to a classless society.
“Class harmony” in a people’s state is possible only if the proletariat renounces its Communist goals, if it slavishly agrees to work for the appropriate interests of other classes. Both Engels and Lenin wrote in detail that a “people’s state” cannot have any other content than bourgeois. And what else could the “alliance of the working-class, the collective farm peasantry, and the people’s intelligentsia” signify, emerging after the proletariat has undivided power, replacing the dictatorship of the proletariat?
During the proletariat’s struggle for political dominance, such an alliance could indicate a coincidence of interests at a certain stage of the struggle. After the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a return to such an alliance can only mean that the proletariat has failed to wield power, that it is once again attracting the bourgeoisie to power, capitulating to it. The proletariat always bends its back for the enrichment of the master, and this capitalist relationship disappears only when the proletariat itself becomes the sole master.
A last hope: perhaps the formula for a people’s state is merely a terminological error? History knows many cases where oppression and tyranny lurked behind the most democratic guise, and where radical movements were forced to hide behind decorous slogans. Perhaps, in the USSR, too, the modest phrase about the leading role of the working-class concealed a firm proletarian dictatorship?
No, that’s not true either!
Is the proletariat in the USSR involved in the distribution of wealth?
Is the class as a whole involved in the development and implementation of economic policy? No more than under capitalism! This is the fundamental answer to this question. We will examine some more arguments that are used as evidence of the proletariat’s special position in the USSR, but we must not forget that these arguments merely add to the arsenal of tricks the ruling Administration resorts to in order to distract the proletariat from the class-struggle and cloud its class-consciousness.
Universal suffrage. But workers enjoy this right in almost all capitalist countries, which in no way prevents the bourgeoisie from maintaining its dictatorship.
Workers’ representation in government bodies, right up to the highest levels. Yes, that’s one of the trump cards that’s often played whenever anyone talks about socialist democracy. But does this give the proletariat any real rights?
The capitalists prefer to seat jurists as the politicians in their parliaments. But does this signify the dictatorship of lawyers, a democracy for attorneys? The power, clearly, lies not with the representatives, but with those who dictate their demands to the representatives, those according to whose will the representatives are hired and fired.
For the highest state body of the USSR, both the criterion for selection and the sole right of all workers and other representatives is unanimous support for all proposals submitted. Unanimity is secondary, even superfluous. What matters is whose proposals are accepted.
So whose proposals are these, and who makes them? These proposals are made only by the highest bodies of the CPSU. By fully assuming responsibility for organising all elections and possessing all the means of mass ideological influence, the CPSU predetermines and dictates the voting results. The CPSU controls, and in essence predetermines, all nominated candidates, i.e., it directly ensures the composition of all elected bodies.
The CPSU subjugates the entire executive system from top to bottom and is always capable of turning it against dissent. The CPSU decides everything.
The CPSU’s leading role in all state affairs of the USSR is enshrined in the 1977 Constitution. The Party’s devotion to the cause of the proletariat and the ideas of Marxism-Leninism is demonstrated by its selfless participation in all the battles that befell Revolutionary Soviet Russia. But is this evidence a guarantee for all eternity?
History would cease to be history if there was room in it for such guarantees!
There is only one guarantee of loyalty to the proletarian cause. A Marxist party will remain Marxist as long as service to the proletariat remains not only its sole guiding idea, but also the sole personal need of its members, satisfied by membership in the party.
A party that promotes the satisfaction of other needs (the acquisition of power, benefits, special privileges) inevitably carries within itself the seed of opportunistic degeneration.
The CPSU has renounced the dictatorship of the proletariat not only in words but also in deeds. The working-class, even that section of it which has joined the Party, has no power whatsoever to influence the actions of the party leadership, the decisions it makes, the theories it constructs, its propaganda, or the social and economic policies it pursues.
Why? Why, during the brutal and dangerous revolutionary period, was the party able to remain proletarian, and why, during the years of economic construction, did its relationship with the proletariat change so dramatically?
Because, in revolutionary opposition to the autocracy and the bourgeois government, waging armed struggle against the counter-revolution, the party could only act in one way; by mobilising, raising the consciousness of the masses, and communicating the revolutionary meaning of Marxist ideas to everyone. Ideas unacceptable to the workers, ideas that found no resonance in their consciousness, were rejected by the very indifference of the masses and were not implemented. This was how spontaneous proletarian class control over all party activities was exercised.
Because in the subsequent period, having direct control of the state, the CPSU lost the need for the mediation of the proletarian masses in implementing its policies and, consequently, freed itself from their control. Likewise, the party leadership, exerting direct influence on the highest state organs, is free from the control of the entire rank-and-file party membership.
Under such conditions, the party leadership has no reason to remain the spokesman and defender of the interests of the proletariat: they are inevitably supplanted by the elite’s own interests, since nothing prevents it from satisfying its own interests at the expense of the proletariat.
The party elite could not rule without relying on a certain social force. This force is the ruling-class — the Administration — which nominates the elite itself, oversees all its decisions, and functions under its direction.
This ruling-class has long since adapted both the party and state apparatus to keep the masses in obedience through silence and promises, lies and violence, not to lead them, but to command them, in order to fence themselves off from the disturbing movement of the masses.
Accordingly, the Administration not only appropriates goods to satisfy its own needs but also supplies them to the entire administrative-party layer. And within the depths of this bureaucratic system — again, under the Administration’s supervision — the question of prices and wages, the distribution of labour — that is, how to provide the proletariat with at least a minimum amount of goods to keep it subservient — is decided. This is the true master; it is in whose private interests, without any class control over the entire proletarian mass, that the entire economic system functions.
A counter-revolutionary coup is evident.
How and when did this coup occur? What forces brought it about? Why was it so silent?
Pre-revolutionary Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was saturated with the struggle of various political currents. The proletariat had much to compare and choose from. And it unerringly chose Bolshevism, identifying it as the movement that most consistently pursued Marxist — and therefore proletarian — ideas.
One page is missing here. It was also lost in the original. Here’s the surviving portion:
In the struggle for connection with the proletarian masses and the implementation of Marxist-Leninist ideas, the core of the party was formed; a group of genuine leaders whose personal recognition by the proletarian masses united not only the party ranks but the entire class. The principle of democratic centralism did not advance these individuals: they emerged from the collectives they themselves organised, the initial condition for whose formation was the approval and support of the ideas propagated by the leaders…
…and this was a historical inevitability, since the ruling party no longer met the criterion of serving the proletariat.
The penetration of bourgeois tendencies could not have been immediately apparent, because at the centre of the Party lay — and the most important policy issues were directed by — leaders valued and recognised by the proletariat even before the revolution. Lenin — and after his death, Stalin — pursued policies in the interests of the proletariat, reflecting the views of the proletariat and relying on the strength of the proletariat. Even at lower levels of leadership, there remained cadres drawn, educated, and advanced by the revolutionary struggle. But as time passed, they were inevitably replaced by other cadres attracted by the Party’s ruling position.
Through the Party’s efforts, all elements of the state system were formed, encompassing the management of Russia’s vast economy. At the same time, the state apparatus and the Party merged at all key levels, from top to bottom. Inevitably, current economic and state objectives increasingly dominated the Party’s ideological work.
The pursuit of proletarian policy was greatly facilitated, and in many ways decisively determined, by the atmosphere of constant political debate within the Party centre itself. Victory in the struggle depended on the support of the proletarian masses, and this compelled the leaders to be extremely sensitive to their sentiments.
In turn, the proletariat had the opportunity to choose, to identify, based on the position they took in the discussion, the leader who best represented the interests of the proletariat, even if only from the narrow circle that constituted the Party centre. It is no coincidence that Stalin, with his profound mastery of Marxist theory, consistently prevailed in such discussions and was always prepared to resolve issues by appealing to the proletariat.
The debatable atmosphere within the Party intensified political development and the growth of Party ranks. But it also had a highly disruptive effect on the state apparatus, which, through its strong ties to the Party, was drawn into these debates. As the economy stabilised, this harmful effect became increasingly noticeable.
Between 1935 and 1937, the opposition was finally expelled from the Party. This had a number of significant consequences.
Firstly, the party-state system acquired an extraordinary monolithic character, which, perhaps, was the only thing that allowed the USSR to survive the battle with fascism.
Secondly, the proletariat was completely deprived of the opportunity to identify leaders and influence their nomination: from that moment on, the interests of the proletariat were protected to the extent that they were represented by Stalin personally.
Thirdly, Stalin lost the opportunity to test his political decisions with the support of the masses.
The dictatorship of the proletariat did not cease to exist, for Stalin, to the best of his ability, was devoted to the interests of the proletariat and steadfastly embodied them in his policies. But the conditions for the reproduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat were completely lost; it was destined to die with Stalin’s death.
The years 1935-1953 were not even the period of death, but the mortification of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR.
Why then could subsequent events not produce a leader equal to Stalin or even superior to him in defending the interests of the proletariat?
By this time, the structure of society in the USSR was already such that it completely precluded proletarian democracy and the possibility of free expression of the will of the organised proletariat. The monolithic party-state apparatus, adapted solely to the implementation of ideas from above and essentially purely executive in nature, simultaneously possessed all the means of direct suppression, complete control over all means of mass ideological influence, and complete control over all social organisations. Naturally, this apparatus had no intention of allowing the dissemination of any ideas that offended its interests, no matter how necessary these ideas were to the proletariat. And all ideas reflecting the interests of the proletariat posed a danger to it, at least insofar as they demanded dynamism and constant effort aimed at achieving the goals of the proletariat. However, this apparatus was prepared to act in its own interests — expanding its rights, benefits, and privileges without burdening itself with additional obligations.
Under these conditions, the proletariat had neither the opportunity to organise nor the ability to identify a new leader, for leaders who carried proletarian ideas had no way to establish mass connections with the proletariat. Moreover, it was perfectly clear that the consciousness of society, the consciousness of the proletariat, was completely unprepared to perceive and comprehend such a widespread and profoundly significant change, concentrated simply in the death of its leader. Society reacted with terrifying indifference to the reprisals against the last Marxist revolutionaries and the slanderous campaign to expose the cult of personality.
Such a sharp and horrific turn of events had no parallel in history, and historical distance was needed for the public consciousness to properly assess it.
The party-state elite, the Administration, separated from the proletariat by a layer of secondary administrative officials, gained the ability to nominate a leader from among its ranks and, in accordance with its own interests, rotated them (Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev) until it settled on the most suitable. The Administration had previously cautiously resisted the leader’s dictates — and this was its resistance to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Having freed itself from the dictatorship of the proletariat, it immediately demonstrated that it had no intention of recognising any dictatorship at all, and henceforth intended to dictate the fundamental directions of policy to any leader. It was no coincidence that Leonid Brezhnev assumed his post under the slogan: “Stop reshuffling personnel, give people the opportunity to work in peace.” This was the guarantee the elite needed to secure its position.
The counter-revolutionary coup had occurred. Given the profoundly capitalist nature of the social order it had engendered, the form of society and its structure acquired highly distinctive characteristics. Relations between the Administration and the workers instantly degenerated to feudal levels. Absolute power in the distribution of goods and absolute control over the entire national economy freed the Administration from the threat of any competitive economic pressure, meaning the pursuit of maximum profit and the accompanying development of production became unnecessary.
The Administration’s concern was that its serfs could somehow feed themselves, ensure the reproduction of the labour force, but — most importantly — fully satisfy the needs of the owner; the Administration.
At the same time, the distribution of wealth expropriated from the proletariat within the very top echelons of the dictatorial Administration is complicated by the accumulation of meaningless formal demands, a legacy of previous stages of state development. The inevitable struggle for the distribution of wealth within the administrative milieu itself therefore takes on a petit-bourgeois, penny-pinching character, with millions upon millions wasted for the sake of personal, meagre gain, precisely because it belongs to “nobody” and cannot be converted into personal property. This unnatural situation is fraught with inevitable crises, the resolution of which, step by step, leads to the revelation and legitimisation of the capitalist essence, i.e., to the alignment of form with content.
This strange, previously unseen form of capitalism is misleading many, both within the country and abroad. This is greatly facilitated by the lack of a truly socialist model for comparison, the widespread propaganda (indeed overwhelming within the country) of pseudo-Marxist theoretical fabrications from the elite, and the isolation and detachment of the socialist world from capitalist problems, the causes of which are interpreted as peculiarities of socialism, but in fact are predetermined by the feudal structure. But despite the tinsel of grand decorations and interpretations, capitalism remains capitalism.
If we imagine a committed Marxist who accidentally found himself at the head of the CPSU and set out to return the country to the path of Communist development, a path that followed the interests of the proletariat, we can imagine the insurmountable difficulties he would face and the resistance he would encounter from the Administration. Even if this leader had the support of the masses, he would hardly have been able to achieve decisive change — the Administration’s wall of defence is too jealous to prevent any organised contact with the masses.
Of course, a Marxist couldn’t possibly have found himself at the head of the system that had taken shape in the USSR, even by chance. Yet history offers the opportunity to examine this situation through factual evidence. This is precisely the position Mao Zedong found himself in.
Until the mid-1950s, China’s political development rapidly replicated the Soviet Union’s experience. Perhaps other factors, or perhaps the events surrounding the emergence of Nikita Khrushchev, forced Mao Zedong to question the viability of a system capable of promoting such figures to the top leadership. An analysis of the situation in China confirmed his worst fears: with some national deviations (which, incidentally, exacerbated the situation), the Chinese system was a carbon copy of the Russian one. And in China, the Party was already clearly detached from the masses, its elite becoming a parasitic organism.
Clearly, this degeneration, like any concession made by the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, could only be overcome through revolution, through the mobilisation of the masses for revolutionary struggle. The time when such a revolution could have served as a continuation of the previous one had already passed. The dilemma of going to the grassroots to organise a new revolutionary movement or maximising his personal position, popularity, and remaining power over the administrative system to raise the revolutionary consciousness of the masses — this dilemma, in the given circumstances, offered Mao Zedong the only rational solution. And Mao Zedong energetically set about implementing it.
The ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy was an attempt to ignite mass initiative and awaken their conscious attitude toward current events through a relatively “peaceful” approach. Awakening consciousness would have offered hope for its development into proletarian control over the governing system, but the policy failed to achieve success. Obedience, not awareness, remained the decisive factor.
Then the ‘Cultural Revolution’ was a direct call for reprisals against the established bureaucracy, an attempt to demonstrate to the masses, through brutal facts, that they were the masters of the situation in the country, that they were omnipotent in their collective actions. And when, finally, this process also failed to achieve decisive revolutionary shifts, special attention was paid to the theory of regular revolutionary upheavals: Marx’s doctrine of the continuity of revolution all the way to Communism.
Mao Zedong failed to spark a new wave of revolution; another reminder that revolutions are not made to order. But what Mao Zedong accomplished for the development of consciousness among the Chinese proletariat is difficult to overstate. The destabilised situation in China even after Mao Zedong’s death ensures a continued rise in consciousness, forcing people to seek support for their chosen position. Even if this process fails to culminate in a new revolutionary movement and the authorities succeed in stabilising the situation in the country, the memory of the Cultural Revolution will continue to spark renewed outbreaks of revolutionary sentiment.
The death of Mao Zedong for China, just as the death of Stalin for the USSR, marked the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The first grand wave of proletarian revolutions, which lasted six decades, had passed, and a worldwide crisis of the workers’ movement had set in.
What does the experience of the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat in these two largest countries give us?
The first is that the victory of the socialist revolution and even the complete establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, coupled with the liquidation of the bourgeoisie as a class, does not guarantee a definitive turn toward Communism. If the proletariat fails to find a way to assume the most important social functions, if it fails to find organisational forms that allow for control over the distribution of goods by the entire class, then the bourgeoisie is born again and again, and once again assumes its privileged position in society.
Secondly, capitalism has proven its resilience, proven that it is present, like a virus, in any socialist society, ready to wage its quiet struggle for the peaceful end of the revolution, for the transformation of the system, for its own silent victory. This must be understood as follows: the administrative intelligentsia, to whom the proletariat is forced to entrust many important social functions, having escaped control, is striving to establish itself as a class, and this class is bourgeois.
Third, a crucial connection between the fundamental categories of the proletarian movement has been revealed. It was previously clear that proletarian democracy is unthinkable without the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the history of proletarian states has also proven the opposite: the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot exist without proletarian democracy.
The proletariat proved capable of capturing power and defending it in battles against obvious enemies. But another task came to the fore: maintaining the fighting capacity of the proletarian dictatorship in the corrosive environment of commodity-money relations.
It turned out that the proletariat cannot fully trust any social forces, even those generated by the proletarian environment itself. In order to exercise control over them, it is absolutely necessary to maintain a certain level of independent organisation. of the proletariat as a whole, a constant capacity for general proletarian class action against any isolated forces, including against the state.
Communism is a society of the highest and entirely spontaneous organisation.: its sole source is the spontaneous organisation. of the working-class, shaped by mass action. Therefore, to consolidate its position on the path to Communism, the proletariat must ascend another level to a higher level of consciousness. Having achieved major victories in the battles against capitalism, the proletariat subsequently suffered equally crushing defeats in a silent struggle. Nowhere is the proletariat so disenfranchised as in “socialist” countries, where all workers’ organisations are placed under the strictest control of the ruling-class — or rather, are simply subservient to the ruling elite, and dissent and any independent action are categorically suppressed. Nowhere, moreover, does the ruling-class so brazenly arrogate to itself the exclusive right to represent the entire people, drumming into the proletariat’s heads with its newspaper drums that this is precisely its proletarian interests. Nowhere else is the material situation of the working-class so blatantly disproportionate to the level of production. Nowhere else than in socialist countries are the proletariat’s poverty and lack of rights so hypocritically addressed in terms of rising material well-being and cultural development; nowhere else are appeals to virtue and labour exploits so sanctimonious; nowhere else are the sacred slogans of Marxism so uttered with terrifying cynicism.
The crisis of the socialist movement has led to the degeneration of proletarian socialism into one of the most ugly forms of socialism; the decaying, predatory, jackal-like socialism of the administrative elite, robbing the proletariat not so much to satisfy personal needs and appropriate wealth, but to destroy everything else. Waging its petit-bourgeois internecine struggle over the spoils, the ruling-class cares nothing for what remains for the proletariat, and through its mismanagement, indifference, and disregard, it festers and wastes the incredible amount of labour invested by the proletariat.
The fact that this is disguised behind beautiful phrases like “both according to Marx and Lenin,” that it is substantiated by theoretical developments that “renew” Marxism, should not mislead anyone. And capitalism, whatever form it might take, never neglects any means of ideological pressure in its struggle against the growth of the proletarian masses. And this new bourgeois-feudal form of socialism will never in any significant way retreat from its capitalist essence.
Marx and all his faithful followers fought not simply for socialism, but for proletarian socialism, which means the omnipotence of the proletariat, democracy for the proletariat. And the proletariat must always remember that only its own unquestioned and indivisible dictatorship is the necessary condition for progress, for the development of society toward Communism.
The proletarian movement of the entire world in the 20th century, voluntarily or involuntarily, is decisively influenced by events in socialist countries.
The proletariat’s victory in the October Revolution sparked a revolutionary upsurge even in countries far removed from Russia, contributing to the emergence of numerous Communist parties and the consolidation of Marxist ideas in various working-class movements. A wave of revolutionary struggles swept across every continent, but nowhere was the proletariat sufficiently organised or strong enough to seize and retain power. After a series of retreats, the bourgeoisie managed to hold its ground and regain its positions. The international development of the revolutionary process was halted.
The victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia served as a powerful emotional boost for the international proletariat, particularly contributing to the rise of extreme leftist sentiments. This effect could not be long-lasting.
The collapse of ultra-left adventures, insufficiently prepared to deal with the real situation, inevitably brought sobering reflection and demanded a more profound assessment from the working-class. This was also facilitated by developments in Russia itself. With the revival of certain forms of capitalist relations in the USSR (New Economic Policy) and the turn to concessionary policies, the proletarian gains lost their visibility, and their perception shifted from the emotional to the analytical. Evaluations of the USSR’s economic successes began to play an increasingly important role, and their development had been significantly delayed by the devastation caused by the World War and the Civil War, as well as the complexities of the revolutionary process itself.
Socialist construction in the USSR continued to arouse the interest of all workers, but now as a grand experiment, the results of which determined the direction of their own actions and their activity in the class-struggle.
The Soviet people’s heroic resistance to German fascism and its complete victory over it injected a new emotional current into the international proletarian movement and spurred a strengthening of class solidarity. However, the proletariat’s actions did not have a directly revolutionary focus. By actively resisting fascism and supporting the USSR, international proletarian forces defended their right to a social experiment, upon which many of their hopes were pinned, and defended their interest in a general test of Marxist ideas on a practical scale, through the experience of the socialist state in the USSR. Meanwhile, the USSR, having suffered colossal losses in World War Two, was once again forced to rebuild its economy and was again thrown back in its economic development. The emergence of people’s democracies in the postwar period and the rise of the socialist camp expanded the scope of the experiment but did not change its essence.
It’s no coincidence that the main locus of the revolutionary movement in recent years has shifted to countries liberated from colonial rule. Their economic backwardness often precluded any hope of success in the bourgeois competition with industrially developed countries — the socialist path protected them from ruthless plunder. However, it’s equally no coincidence that those with a sufficiently developed national bourgeoisie chose the path of cooperation with the capitalist world, encountering little resistance from the working classes.
This seemingly “abnormal” shift in revolutionary activity from the most developed countries to the backward ones, not foreseen by theory, allows us to understand that the decisive factor in the activity of the revolutionary proletarian movement throughout the world at the present historical stage is the economic situation of workers in socialist countries and, first and foremost, in the USSR.
Two factors always motivate a person to act: the desirability of the goal and the assessment of the costs involved in achieving it. Whether we like it or not, the class activity of the proletariat, its readiness for revolutionary action, is determined by the same factors. Beyond the constructiveness of guiding ideas, — that is, beyond their ability to be translated into action — the proletariat must also see the significance and meaningfulness of the outcome they will lead to, that is, a real change in the political, economic, and social status of the workers.
If, at the beginning of the 20th century, the difference in the political, economic, and social status of the working-class and the bourgeoisie served as a measure of the proletariat’s revolutionary potential, then after the victory of October, such a measure became a comparison of the situation of workers under capitalism and under socialist conditions. This is why the development of a socialist economy became a decisive factor in the global revolutionary movement.
The loss of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the bourgeois degeneration of the socialist camp, and the resurrection of feudal relations within it continue to remain hidden from proletarians worldwide. The consequences of this degeneration, through the combined efforts of both bourgeois and socialist propaganda, are interpreted as a natural, entirely “Marxist” development of proletarian gains. And although the Chinese propaganda system has expended considerable effort to reveal the true situation, its claims lack credibility due to China’s own economic backwardness. The plight of workers in the USSR continues to be perceived by the proletariat of all countries as a normal result of the implementation of Marxist ideas. It is not surprising that the struggle to achieve such a result fails to evoke revolutionary enthusiasm among workers in developed capitalist countries.
The leaders of the Communist parties of the leading capitalist countries have long since realised the unpopularity of ideas associated with a repetition of the Russian experience among the proletarian masses, but instead of subjecting real facts to materialistic analysis, instead of separating the tasks and direction of the proletarian revolution from the errors and distortions that led to the collapse of the dictatorship of the proletariat in socialist countries, instead of delving into theory, the Communist parties themselves succumbed to superficial propaganda influences, took opportunist positions, and felt themselves “free from Marxism.” The economic stagnation of socialist countries, compared to the relative successes of the most developed countries in the capitalist camp, inevitably gives rise to a tendency among the proletarians of less developed countries toward a social movement toward an “improved,” or perfected, capitalist system. This tendency has nothing in common with Marxism or the interests of the proletariat, yet it is precisely this tendency that is exploited by the most numerous Communist parties, such as the French, Italian, and several others. It is precisely this tendency that forms the basis of “new models” of socialism with an overtly bourgeois content; it is precisely this tendency that has dictated the extensive pseudo-Marxist “theoretical” literature; it is precisely this tendency that is the source and support of pseudo-Communist propaganda.
This signifies not only a crisis of proletarian theory, but also a global crisis of philosophy and political economy in general. In our time — a time of general capitalist crisis — the global political situation is changing with astonishing speed, as capitalism is constantly forced to invent new practical stratagems to protect itself from complete collapse. Under such conditions, any idealistic philosophical system is shattered in a matter of months by the sharp turns of reality. Moreover, any predictions of its inevitable collapse, based on a shift in perspective toward materialism, are immediately confirmed. No positive platform appears viable or manages to prove its validity; on the contrary, the validity of negative, refuting constructs is invariably asserted. It is no coincidence that more and more often, formulations of a “philosophy of universal negation” are appearing in print, sometimes embellished, at the whim of the authors, with chaotic practical recommendations.
And the only theory that can understand and explain all the twists and turns of capitalist society remains on the sidelines.
This theory is Marxism.
It’s understandable why the ruling-class avoids it; it continues to predict its inevitable demise. The reasons for Marxism’s unpopularity among the left, critically minded are less obvious. But they stem from the fact that all attempts at a Marxist, materialist understanding of modernity begin with the desire to grasp, on this basis, the laws of existence of socialist countries and to grasp them precisely as laws of socialist development. Instead of understanding their capitalist essence, seeing it in its extraordinarily complex, tangled, and camouflaged form, Marxism is violated, “developed” and “enriched” to the point of fitting the countries of the socialist camp into the framework of socialist theoretical concepts.
After such “improvement,” Marxist theory, or what it becomes, becomes such an ineffective tool that it can be used to prove the socialist nature of bourgeois states, the harmony of classes in capitalist society, or the transfer of revolutionary spirit to the intelligentsia. You can prove anything you like, but this tool is of no use in understanding the real processes taking place in the world.
Thus are born numerous constructions of “true,” orthodox, “authentic” Marxism, remarkable in that they reject the core of Marxism — its materialist foundation — and absorb a mass of idealistic hodgepodge, from the “ethical foundations of Marxism” to “Marxistised” fideism. And this only adds to the ranks of numerous idealistic theories, mercilessly shattered by life.
While underdeveloped countries are still capable of waging a struggle, driven by the desire to overcome their own backwardness, the rest of humanity is currently experiencing a great social crisis. This crisis combines the general crisis of capitalism with a crisis of philosophy, a crisis of Marxism with a crisis of the workers’ movement. The depth of this crisis stems from the fact that, when capitalism had almost completely exhausted its social resources, the only real alternative (socialism) proved untenable. This untenability stems from socialism’s failure to present economic evidence that would convince the masses.
The fact that this crisis is a crisis born of mass delusion, that proletarian socialism cannot present its evidence for a single, but valid, reason — because it simply does not exist in reality, but exists in a deluded imagination — will not be realised by humanity anytime soon.
A decisive argument is needed. And such an argument, offering a way out of the protracted social crisis, can only be the establishment of a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat in one country, the realisation of its economic advantages, and, based on this, fundamental changes in the social status of workers. Only a clearly defined gap in the political, economic, and social status of workers can revolutionise the proletariat of the most advanced capitalist countries and show them the path to struggle.
At present, once again, only one country is capable of assuming this historic mission. That country is Russia. The revolutionary spirit of the Russian proletariat, again dictated by the disparity in the situation of the working classes and the ruling-class, has already reached socially decisive proportions and continues to grow. The deepening crisis of the Soviet economy urgently demands a solution — the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat could provide such a solution. But the Russian proletariat is weakly organised, finding it extremely difficult to organise and establish an exchange of ideas. If the moment for a repeat of the proletarian revolution is missed, the crisis in Russia will culminate in the mundane transformation of the failing state economic system into a private capitalist one, which will sharply complicate the proletarian political struggle and relegate Russia to the faceless ranks of second-rate capitalist powers.
History hasn’t been particularly generous with opportunities for decisive victories for the proletariat. But defeats and setbacks also contribute to the accumulation of valuable experience, the development of a worldview and proletarian class-consciousness, and, consequently, the overcoming of the last misconceptions on the path to ultimate victory.
4: Proletarian Dictatorship and Proletarian Democracy
Having achieved political victory, that is, having firmly seized power, the proletariat fundamentally alters the essence of all social values. The means of production, housing, land, natural resources, works of art, monuments—all of this becomes the property of the proletariat. It becomes property immediately — without waiting for nationalisation or any acts of confiscation and transfer — from the very moment power is established.
History, it would seem, is ready to provide facts contradicting this assertion. A proletarian revolution occurs, but petit-bourgeois peasant farms persist, artisans produce and sell their goods, the owners of non-nationalised enterprises continue their pursuit of profit… All this is true. But this is only a form, an appearance, a shadow of the former capitalism.
From the moment of the proletariat’s victory, the fundamental law of socialism comes into force. To maintain the functional integrity of society, the victorious proletariat requires the activity of the most diverse strata of the population, and therefore must stimulate this activity. The nature of property fundamentally changes with the victory of the proletariat, but people’s consciousness is incapable of responding to this victory with equally rapid changes. This consciousness is not yet ready to recognise new incentives; it lives by bourgeois notions, it still evaluates the results of activity solely by bourgeois standards, and strives for bourgeois individualistic goals.
The proletariat is forced to reckon with this. The form of profits, the form of their defence in law; this is how the activity of those layers of the population, as yet unready for the socialist reorientation, are stimulated. This is neither capitalism nor a remnant of it. It is simply a superficial similarity, an external simulation of capitalist relations in the form of stimuli understood by definite segments of society, which draw them in to activity useful to society. This form of stimulation can be supplanted by another form. It can also be generally abolished, if the proletariat can either take upon itself or generally liberate itself from the functions fulfilled by such layers of society. This form can change where this is advantageous to the proletariat, where it corresponds to its interests and for so long as it continues to correspond to them.
Everything is subordinate to the interests of the proletariat. Such is the legal foundation of socialist society [the dictatorship of the proletariat – Ed.]. All other legislation is its direct consequence. And when discussions are raised about democracy for non-proletarian layers, there is no point in searching for support in historical precedent (there just isn’t any). The proletariat must not share real power with anyone. Whatever democratic opportunities for the expression of the opinions and interests of non-proletarian groups and classes are permitted, this is only in order that, by taking stock of these interests and changes in them, a dynamic restructuring of the system of stimuli can take place. This permits the direction of the activities of the non-proletarian strata toward maximal effectiveness in the service of the proletariat. Thus the dictatorship of the proletariat must not, even to the slightest extent, be taken as a political system which provides authentic democracy to any class or layer except the proletariat itself. In questions of law and politics, in economic and social decisions, the proletarian dictatorship must be self-consciously a true, sovereign dictatorship. It must rule in the exclusive interests of the proletariat, through the provision and elimination of specific freedoms for the non-proletarian strata, exactly as in the question of the liquidation of private property in the means of production.
This does not mean unbridled tyranny or monarchical arbitrary rule against the non-proletarian segment of society: recklessness is not in the interests of the proletariat, and the proletarian dictatorship must carefully create conditions for all strata that will allow their activities to be fully devoted to the benefit of the proletariat. But in both its concerns and its restrictions and repressions, the dictatorship of the proletariat must be guided by the interests of the class, without the slightest regard for the conflicting interests of other strata.
The socialist system [dictatorship of the proletariat – Ed.] is the highest form of democracy not because it is prepared to grant universal suffrage to the bourgeoisie or certain bourgeois privileges to the intelligentsia, but because for the first time in history, the ruling-class becomes an open class, and every member of society has the opportunity to join this class, acquiring all the associated privileges and assuming the corresponding responsibilities. The only real form of democracy in a socialist society is democracy for the proletariat, and this is sufficient for society to gradually transform into a classless society, and for proletarian democracy to become democracy for all.
Proletarian democracy is the only class democracy that can be transformed into a democracy for all. But for this to happen, it is absolutely essential that the proletariat — the only open class of all the classes that have historically struggled for social dominance — remain the ruling-class. To achieve this, the dictatorship of the proletariat, throughout the entire path to Communist society, must not only inevitably triumph in the struggle against other classes, but must also suppress the emergence and development of all other classes, as long as the conditions for such emergence and development exist in society.
So what is the dictatorship of the proletariat?
How should the working-class exercise its dictatorship?
To say that a dictatorship is state power is not enough. Yes, a socialist [transitional – Ed.] state cannot be anything other than a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. But the state and the proletariat are distinct, differently organised social entities, and for their interests to be identical, even over a period of history, certain conditions must be met.
The state and class dictatorship are not identical in another respect either. The state, as a functioning mechanism, is a means of implementing dictatorship, a means of exerting targeted coercive influence on society. But for this means to be an instrument of a particular class, to govern society in the interests of that class, it is necessary that this class — the class itself, and not its individual representatives — holds certain levers, certain forces that compel the state to perceive the interests of that class as its own.
A class dictatorship is a system of social relations that provides the ruling-class with control over society, including the suppression of political initiatives of other classes that threaten the dictatorial position of the ruling-class.
The bourgeoisie advances the most democratic principles for the formation of state power; it transfers colossal sums of money to the state in the form of profit taxes without fear that this will be used against it. It demands one thing from the state: the unconditional protection of private property, for its strength lies in this property. It is property, through its organising power, granting the right to distribute wealth and thereby ensuring the existence of the hired organisations that serve the bourgeoisie, that guarantees the bourgeoisie its ruling position and its control over the state.
The proletariat, as a collective body of workers, lacks the ability to build its own dictatorship on a similar foundation. The proletariat is propertyless; the worker has no means of raising funds to influence government decisions. Just as slaves in ancient Rome rebelled against some slave owners to promote others, just as peasants in Russia rebelled for a “good Tsar,” so too the proletariat, by promoting power, entrusting it with the distribution of goods, and losing, relinquishing all means of control over it, promotes new masters, a new bourgeoisie. This would be the case, were it not for one circumstance. This circumstance is the proletariat’s capacity for self-organisation, born of the social nature of production.
It is precisely this capacity for self-organisation that allows the proletariat, at a certain historical juncture, to become master of the situation. But by realising this capacity, the proletariat ceases to be a simple aggregate of workers — it now functions as a class, as a unified social subject, and as such becomes the most colossal force in society. By achieving victory in the class-struggle, the proletariat, once again as a unified subject, becomes the owner of all the wealth of society, but it cannot simply dispose of it, use it for its own subjective class interests. To do this, it is forced to construct a rather complex social system, building it from the material provided by history, on the basis of the relationships that have developed in society to date—but restructuring and reshaping these relationships so that they become the basis for a proletarian class dictatorship. A system of social relations based on the proletariat’s capacity for self-organisation — that is, based on the proletariat’s spontaneous organisation — can exist only if, through its functioning, it satisfies specific proletarian interests, namely, organisational, collectivist, social interests that coalesce into class interests. In this system, the state plays the role of a social mechanism, coercing and stimulating individuals to pursue a specific course of action and, accordingly, regulating the satisfaction of their personal, individualistic needs. From this it is easy to understand that if other ties to the entire system are weakened, if the state is confined to this role, to this range of functions, it begins to function in the interests of its own apparatus, and this apparatus transforms into a parasitic organism, forcing all of society to serve it. At the same time, the satisfaction of those interests of the workers that are of a social nature ceases, the satisfaction of their spiritual needs ceases — and this leads to a weakening of the self-organisation of the proletariat and directly contributes to the formation of the state apparatus, the highest officials, into a ruling-class that exploits the working masses.
The task of the organised revolutionary proletariat is to prevent such isolation and closure of the state. The proletariat must utilise the state mechanism to implement its class will — that is, to play on the individualistic interests of society’s members, direct their activity toward satisfying public interests, and to reinforce the demands of society’s interests in social relations and in the consciousness of individuals. To make this possible, to make it a reality, the proletariat must also resolve a number of other tasks. This includes suppressing state initiatives directed against the proletariat. This includes modifying the functions of the state and its assigned tasks in accordance with the changing, developing interests of the proletariat. This includes categorically denying the state any ability to impede the free development of proletarian interests. Without resolving these tasks, without building an entire system of relations that ensures the consistent realisation of the developing, revolutionary, and socially renewing interests of the proletariat, any talk of a dictatorship of the proletariat is out of the question.
The state confronts society and, in this confrontation, enjoys considerable advantages. Even the bourgeois state, whose economic capabilities are determined by the will of capitalists, possesses a colossal amount of goods and distributes a significant share of social wealth. The socialist state assumes the responsibility for distributing all goods, and there are not, nor can there be, any forces in society comparable to the state in this regard. This means that the entire power of paid social organisations is directed toward protecting the interests of the state. How can society, under these conditions, protect itself from exploitation by the state?
But the state has its weaknesses. First of all, its organisation is paid for, stimulated by material goods, meaning that the actions of members of individual links in this mechanism in defence of its common interests are driven by economic dependence, not dictated by the fundamental interests of its members. Secondly, each member of the state apparatus not only receives the opportunity to appropriate a certain amount of goods, but is provided with them under certain conditions — and in this sense, is subject to the control of society. Thirdly, the very system by which the state mechanism is organised is shaped not by the state, but by society as a whole; it is this system that imposes on each member of the state apparatus certain conditions dictated by the interests of society.
Weaknesses exist, and these weaknesses must be exploited for proletarian society’s control over the proletarian state, but exploiting them is far from easy. The spontaneous actions of the proletariat cannot ensure such control. The state would immediately slip out of control, reorganising itself and eliminating its vulnerabilities. For society’s control over the state to be effective, society must counter the state with a force capable of thwarting any attempts by the state to restructure itself into a system separate from society, capable of intervening wherever the state seeks to free its elements from public control, and capable, ultimately, of destroying the entire state system if that system can no longer be subordinated to public interests through partial corrections.
Society must resist the state in an organised manner. And such organisation can only come from the spontaneous organisation of the proletarian masses, an organisation that is more durable simply because it is based on the unity of the fundamental interests of the workers.
The state must be opposed by a society organised by an independent proletarian party.
An independent proletarian party is that form of self-organisation of the proletariat, with the help of which it can force the state mechanism to serve its proletarian interests, to be a means of realising the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Everything is important here. The party must be self-governing, that is, voluntary, attracting people solely through their collective, public interests, promising no personal gain, and bound by conscious discipline and personal enthusiasm. The party must be proletarian, for only the proletariat’s unique relationship to the aggregate product produced by society can ensure the distribution of wealth and labour in the interests of society as a whole. And it must be a party, for only a party can ensure subordination to a single policy, a single worldview, and control over all links of the state mechanism. Only a party is capable of organising and directing the masses’ efforts to correct and transform this mechanism.
But that’s not all. Such a party, a powerful organisation enjoying the support of the proletarian masses, will inevitably have the ability to assume full power and control over society.
This is something it must not do! The party must remain in opposition to the state; it must act on the state only through the proletarian masses. In other words, every party decision must be assessed by the support of the entire class, its readiness for class action. A party serving the interests of the proletariat must not link its activities to those of the state; it must remain in constant opposition to the state.
The following pattern of social relations then emerges. The state governs society, including the proletariat as a whole. The party controls the state. The proletariat as a class controls party decisions when they are implemented through mass actions aimed at changing the state system. And vice versa: the proletariat delegates its most advanced ideas to the party; the party achieves the implementation of these ideas in state forms, and the state consolidates the affirmation of these ideas in society.
This is the only scheme of social relations that ensures the existence and constant reproduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat in society.
Having assessed the overall balance of forces corresponding to the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must examine the specific tasks of the Communist Party in greater depth. Unlike other components of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the party must always be clearly aware of both its fundamental goal and the tasks of each specific stage. This does not mean that the party should be the brain of society. No, rather, the party is destined to be a sensitive organ, keenly perceiving reality and initiating mass movement with its impulses. But before being embodied in specific changes, every impulse must be comprehended by the gigantic brain; the consciousness of the proletariat, only its approval gives it effectiveness. A party that deviates from the interests of the proletariat or detaches itself from its capabilities will immediately sense it.
In setting its goal of building a Communist society and developing social relations to Communist levels, the party must understand the sharp discrepancy between its own tasks and the tasks of the proletarian state.
Although the proletarian state generally plays a positive role during the movement toward Communism, being the sole means of realising this movement, each specific form of the proletarian state at its historical moment is the most backward element of proletarian society, for it is always preoccupied not with the search for the new, but with the affirmation of what has already been achieved, surpassed by the consciousness of society. The state, having become proletarian, displays its advanced qualities only externally, only in relation to the non-proletarian environment. In relation to the proletariat, it always remains bourgeois and therefore withers away as it loses its reliance on the individualistic qualities of the proletarians themselves and all members of society.
The party encourages this withering away with all the means at its disposal, its ideological work secures definite changes in the consciousness of society and the organised movement of the proletariat for consolidation by the state of the changes which have take place. The state is incapable of embodying a worldview which outstrips the current level in this way; it changes and progresses only under pressure from the masses, and it loses its function to the extent that the masses transform their consciousness on the path to communist social consciousness. The growth of communist social consciousness, generally speaking, consists not in the mastery of culture, nor in the assimilation of the theory of social development, although all this is useful, but quite simply in the predomination of collectivist over individual consciousness. But the development of the collectivist interests of each member of society depend directly on their level of satisfaction; it flowers in victory and withers in defeat. This is where the party and its theoretical armaments play a decisive role, securing the selection of paths to victory and organising the masses for victory. Continuous interaction on the basis of common interests, alone can guarantee the establishment in each individual of the principal communist idea that the social position of the individual is determined by the degree of his collectivism. Incidentally, this is why all attempts to “implant” communism by the state or by a party-state ruling system are futile; one ought not to hope for the development of collectivist characteristics from individualistic incentives. To each concrete, historical form of the socialist state the masses must liberally offer their recognition but not their respect; and it is exactly this the party must worry about, crushing conservative complacency with its inexhaustible enthusiasm.
Even when subordinated to society, the state serves its majority, while progressive ideas that ensure progress are born in the minds of a minority. These ideas can become the property of all society and the guiding ideas of the state only if they are supported by the party, if, through its ideological work, they become the ideas of the majority. Without the organised support of the party, no minority, nor any of its ideas, will withstand the well-oiled state machine.
The opposition between party and state in socialist society is the most direct, the most naked expression of the fundamental contradiction of socialism — the contradiction between the Communist and the bourgeois, the social and the personal, the collectivist and the individualist. This contradiction is the source of the development toward Communism, and the more clearly the opposing forces are defined, the more precisely the causes of their clashes are determined in their specific historical sequence, the more effectively will the process of overcoming contradictions proceed, and the more directly will society’s path to Communism be.
The party and the state represent two structures that organise society, two types of social organisation: leadership and management. These types exist at opposite poles of social life. Management is the coordination of actions; leadership is the coordination of consciousness. Management influences the individual through constraints and incentives; leadership appeals to understanding and influences through public opinion. Management appeals to the individual, who knows no other means of social affirmation than economic affirmation. Leadership reveals to the individual direct opportunities for social affirmation unrelated to economic status. Management draws on centuries of past experience; leadership seeks support in the future.
Society serves as a source of constant nourishment for both the party and the state. How does this happen?
The proletariat, under the leadership of the party, seizes power, and the party inevitably becomes the ruling party. It is forced to play the most decisive role in affirming the victory of the proletariat, in eliminating the defeated forces of capitalism, in destroying the old state apparatus and building a new one. And the new state apparatus can only be composed of party cadres, people who have proven their devotion to the proletarian cause. Where is the resistance?
But maybe it’s not supposed to be like this? No, it must be like this! Surely we can’t hand over power to “outsiders” who are far removed from the goals of the proletariat? And anyway, the nascent state has only one possibility, one basis for asserting its power: the full support of all proletarian forces, cemented by the party.
The solution, it would seem, is predetermined. And yet, a proletarian party that ties itself to the state is only deceived by the apparent ease of realising revolutionary goals through the mechanism of the state. In this way, the victory of the proletariat and its dominance over other classes may be affirmed, but questions of the proletariat’s further development and its class-consciousness are thereby excluded from the party’s sphere of activity, becoming inaccessible to it. Having become the ruling party, the party may remain proletarian, but even then it will no longer be the vanguard of the proletariat, but will instead represent its most backward strata.
Only an opposition party can lead the conscious movement of society, one that builds its work on an appeal to the collectivist qualities of workers, organising the consciousness of proletarians for collective activity — as opposed to management, which binds society with a system of coercive incentives.
So what? A two-party (or multi-party) system? And let social contradictions be resolved through a struggle between the ruling and opposition parties?
But at the same time, the fundamental contradictions of society — the source of its development — are obscured, complicated, or even completely supplanted by party rivalries for power; that is, by secondary contradictions that divert much energy but do nothing to advance society. Furthermore, a multi-party system inevitably leads to social stratification and a divided interest, thus serving as an additional obstacle to the transformation of a classless society.
No, the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be solved by breaking out of the confines of historical (and very alien to the proletariat) precedents, only by freeing ourselves from the shackles of habitual schematisation.
It is not the confrontation between the ruling and opposition parties, but the direct confrontation between the party and the state that ultimately exposes social contradictions, and that is what the proletariat should strive for.
Yes, the party must lead the proletariat in the struggle for power. Yes, the party, leading the proletariat, must seize that power. Yes, it must destroy the state apparatus and build a new one. It must promote its most experienced organisers, leaders, and chieftains to leading government posts — and it must also immediately expel them from the ranks of its full members.
That’s the only way. This doesn’t mean a complete break, but it does represent a radical restructuring of relations, completely eliminating state interference in party affairs and the direct influence of state interests on the party’s activities.
The party must maintain control over its protégés, understand their state concerns, and provide direct assistance by organising the masses to support state measures. However, the party should do this not under the dictates of the state, but based on its own goals and objectives. Naturally, this support will be most energetic and powerful in the initial period, when the guiding ideas of the party and the state are still almost completely aligned, when the state is renewing itself and needs assistance most. But even during this period, the party should not bind itself with any promises.
While delegating its best cadres, leading forces, to government posts, the proletariat must clearly recognise that this will not solve all the problems of social development. Sooner or later, the interests of the state apparatus will conflict with the developing interests of the proletariat, the established structure of the state will become a burden, and some of its functions will lose their meaning. Then a new revolution will be required, one that will translate the shifts that have occurred in society’s consciousness to the state level. Only such continuous revolutionary development leads to the creation of a Communist society.
Having wrested power from the bourgeoisie at the cost of the lives of its best fighters, the proletariat must ensure that the revolution can continue without bloodshed. It must deprive the state of the ability to create any organisations against the proletariat. It must constitutionally secure for itself the right to democratically transform the state in the future. These rights are as follows:
- Freedom of independent organisation of the proletariat and state support for this freedom by providing premises, means of mass propaganda, etc.;
- Prohibition of direct participation of government officials in public political organisations;
- Limitation of independent activity of non-proletarian strata.
But most importantly, the proletariat must remember that, even if included in the constitution, these rights are not guaranteed by any other guarantee than the proletariat’s own willingness to defend them with the utmost determination. If the proletariat is unable to defend its freedoms, its privileges, and its proletarian party, then its consciousness has not yet matured to the point of socialism. If, however, the proletariat is capable of defending these rights without concessions, steadfastly, and, if necessary, with arms in hand, then these rights will ensure its free movement toward Communism. Socialism is possible only when the class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat grow to the point of readiness to seize power at any moment.
Only by ensuring the fusion of its social, collectivist interests in the activities of the proletarian party, only by reducing to a minimum the organisation, and therefore the opposition of other social strata, can the proletariat feel itself master of the situation, can it keep the entire state mechanism in obedience and restructure it as needed.
Being master of the situation means being in charge of the distribution of wealth. And although numerous decisions on this matter will inevitably be entrusted to the state apparatus, the proletariat must recognise that the final word always rests with it, for any government official, including the highest, can be removed from office and deprived of material rewards by the will of the proletariat. With the presence of a proletarian party organising its mass actions, this right ceases to be a fiction; it becomes a real means of governing the state.
For its part, the party, even if given the opportunity, must refuse to participate in the distribution of wealth, but must make the most resolute efforts to bring all state activity in this area under the control of the entire class, the entire proletarian mass. For if the distribution of wealth is not controlled by the entire proletariat, it becomes prey to the new bourgeoisie, whatever form it may take.
Thus, the state apparatus, at least its key component, must be formed from people trained in party organisational work, must be controlled by the party in all its activities, and must bear direct responsibility to the ruling-class; the proletariat. The party, in turn, must be formed directly from the proletarian masses. And this has its own conditions.
The party is the highest form of proletarian organisation. Serving the proletariat must be not only the guiding idea of the party, but also the sole need of its members, satisfied by their membership. While the state serves the proletariat, motivated by the share of benefits allocated to it, for the party, serving the proletariat remains both its goal and its incentive. Accordingly, they serve each other differently.
Serving the proletariat, satisfying its current needs, following its current interests, creating conditions for cultural and creative development; these are the duties of the state.
The party has other tasks.
Constantly explain to the proletariat, in word and deed, that its current interests are false interests, that they hang on the proletariat as the weight of centuries-old, feudal, bourgeois history and in no way correspond to the far-reaching possibilities of society, that the proletariat has the right to demand much more from the life that it itself is building.
To help the proletariat use the opportunities available to it for cultural development, truly for cultural development, that is, for inclusion, for penetration into the general system of worldview being formed by humanity, for mastering the greatest possibilities of human society.
To cultivate in the proletariat, from the interests of today, the interests of tomorrow, enriched by the spirit of mutual trust and collectivism, increasingly emphasising the direct dependence of social status on social, rather than economic, factors.
To act as an organiser of the struggle of the masses for revolutionary social change, for the embodiment of the new and advanced in state forms, for its rooting in the minds and views of the masses, that is, for the transformation of tomorrow’s interests into today’s reality.
To meet these challenges, the party must be composed not of those who have once proven their ability to serve the proletariat, but of people who demonstrate this with every action, every day of their lives. To achieve this, the party must not only attract enthusiastic youth to its ranks but also be able to free itself from its own conservative tendencies.
The party must purge itself not only of those who live in the past, but also of those who live in the present. For their time has come to move from ideological work to the practical affirmation of their own ideas — and the party must promote them to state work, while simultaneously freeing itself from their influence.
Yes, in modern society, not even all workers are capable of devoting their entire lives, all their strength, to selfless service to the proletariat. But there is a period in the life of almost everyone when the social takes precedence over the personal, when actions are dictated by collective interests rather than personal gain. It is during this period that their dedication must be united within the party, within the framework of achieving the party’s objectives.
It is only when the consciousness of a human being has risen above its prejudices and biological instincts, only in the period of its highest spiritual elevation, it is only then that the individual is worthy of membership in the party, is suitable for party work, capable, together with the party, of placing before society the problems of the future. But the party cannot rely upon lifelong enthusiasm, and this is why no one can be guaranteed lifelong trust.
Party work is not the only way to serve society: the state offers citizens other forms of service, encouraged by the satisfaction of personal needs. Those who have outlived their elevation, in whom the individualistic has prevailed, the party must exile from its activities; exile without reproach but with respect and recognition of merit; pityless exile, yet not a severing of all ties.
And first and foremost, all those whose work involves making state decisions must distance themselves from party affairs, for in proletarian society there is not a single internal problem on which the party and the state can reach a unified decision. The development of social consciousness also includes the recognition that each individual resolves such contradictions for himself, in his own consciousness, and that no one may resolve them for him, at the state level.
The decisions suggested by the party and adopted individually by the majority of proletarian society represent revolutionary changes, shifts in each individual consciousness; at the same time, they mark a definite turning point in social, class-consciousness. The renewed class-consciousness of the proletariat takes on concrete forms of expression, being most clearly and concentratedly reflected in the individual consciousness of the leaders. At the same time, new class interests are again expressed in the form of ideas determined by historical conditions, penetrating the individual consciousness of workers and exerting decisive organisational significance, mobilising the proletariat for coordinated action in the name of achieving class goals.
The ideas articulated by leaders reflect the needs of the class; they are not identical to the interests generated by the existence of individual individuals. Therefore, they cannot be accepted as a personal program, but are assimilated only with an awareness of personal dependence on the collective and collective action. The leaders’ ideas do not immediately reach everyone’s consciousness. Each time, they must traverse the same arduous path — overcoming yet another barrier of individualism, breaking through the shell of conservative complacency. They are first adopted by those most prepared for it, and through them, they gain wider dissemination. In fact, the direct dissemination of ideas within society is an impossible process altogether: society is sufficiently conservative and indifferent to innovation that any ideas become mired in it. But having captured even a very small minority, advanced ideas set this minority into action, and the movement of the minority itself disturbs the peace of society, forces those around it to somehow determine their attitude to what is happening, that is, it sets them into action, and the action expands, spreading, carrying ideas on its wave.
The dissemination of ideas is accompanied by their concretisation and, most importantly, by the concretisation of the forms of action associated with them. As they become increasingly defined, the forms of implementing ideas in action acquire the character of a social movement, becoming entrenched in the form of traditions accepted by society’s consciousness — that is, becoming a factor in the life of society, requiring state recognition and legitimisation. Society’s demands on the state change, leading to changes in state policy and its structure; leaders aligned with new forms of social consciousness are promoted to the state apparatus.
Thus, by creating a constant revolutionary pulsation in society, promoting new leaders and new ideas, and generating and consolidating new forms of social movement, the party must interact with the state. By constantly renewing and restructuring the state apparatus, and at the same time relentlessly renewing its own composition and structure, the party plays a decisive role in the development of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
But, in examining the relationship between the proletariat, its party, and the state, do we forget that the state is a special organisation of force for suppression and coercion? Everything is clear here when we consider the state as a means of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat over other classes. But the state also remains a state in relation to the proletariat itself, and here the question is not so simple.
Representing the interests of the proletariat as a class, the public interest, against the individualistic interests of all proletarians, the state utilises its entire system of coercion for its intended purpose. Even when we speak of incentives, rewards, and bonuses for members of society fulfilling certain conditions, we are talking about nothing other than coercion, about restricting access to benefits for those members of society who do not fulfil these conditions. Considering that incentives are the specific opportunities that ensure an individual’s existence, while coercion is the threat of partial or complete deprivation of access to these opportunities, it is clear that there is no difference between them in the relationship between society and the individual. Since the foundation of socialist society is the stimulation of individual activity in the interests of society as a whole, it is perfectly clear that to achieve this, the state requires certain means of coercion, forces capable of enforcing certain restrictions.
But possessing the power to coerce the entire society, the state has the ability to alienate itself from society and place itself above it. Moreover, the history of the 20th century demonstrates numerous cases in which the army places itself above society and the state, and, by forming a new state, cedes power to a different class.
How can the proletariat avoid such a danger?
History itself shows that, in carrying out a coup, the army can hand power not to any class, but to one of the most organised classes, strengthening it with its organised support. Therefore, one of the guarantees is that the level of organisation of the proletariat in a socialist state is incomparably higher than that of other classes. To achieve this, the proletariat must limit the organisational initiatives of other classes and, especially, the exploitation (for organisational purposes) of economic opportunities inaccessible to the proletariat. This ensures not only the weakening but also the gradual destruction of all classes opposing the proletariat and reliably protects the proletariat from all internal enemies, except the state itself.
The socialist state is a powerful enough and sufficiently bourgeois organisation that, in its quest for independence, it can, using the forces under its control, transform itself into an independent class, a new bourgeoisie. The only reliable guarantee against this is a situation in which the entire state force consists solely of the armed people, the armed proletariat. But while the state itself is necessary, it is equally essential that it be an armed people organised in a state-like manner. This is not quite the same as simply an armed people; it presupposes the use of state-distributed goods for organisational purposes, i.e., it makes organised forces directly dependent on the state.
No definitive solutions can be given for this issue. Therein lies a real difficulty, arising from the contradictory nature of the very position of a socialist country in a capitalist environment. However, this problem does not appear insoluble: solutions must be found not at the level of principles, but at the level of specific organisational forms, taking into account all the specific features of the development of society’s consciousness.
It should be borne in mind that in all external issues — issues of relations with other states and with one’s own non-proletarian strata — the interests of the socialist state and the proletariat completely coincide.
This is precisely why the institution of political commissars in the army, which was necessarily born out of the Civil War in Russia, lost its significance in foreign wars.
Therefore, the proletariat’s attention must be focused on control over the army, internal affairs agencies, and political security, specifically in the context of internal conflicts. The position of the proletarian party and its interests on all domestic issues coincide with those of the proletariat. However, this does not mean that a complete coincidence of interests on foreign and domestic issues allows the forces of repression to be directly subordinated to the party. Such subordination would itself lead to a change in the party’s interests, their “nationalisation.” However, in matters of control over the armed forces, the proletariat can fully trust the party — just as it does in matters of control over the state in general.
Various measures can be applied to facilitate such control. For example, the decentralisation of control of the armed forces in correspondence with the immediacy of the external threat, stricter accountability of the internal organs in activities affecting the interests of the proletariat, and so forth; all such measures of an organisational nature, and their alteration at each concrete stage, must be determined by the extent to which they are essential for the maintenance of the supremacy of the proletariat, in proportion to the internal and external dangers.
The history of the Soviet Union, where during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat these problems did not give rise to insurmountable difficulties, proves that a socialist country, economically independent of the capitalist environment, is capable of containing these contradictions of the state structure for a sufficiently long time, and perhaps for as long as desired — especially since they fade and weaken as the organisation of the proletariat and its organising influence on the whole of society grows.
5: Classes and Class-Struggle Under Socialism
Classes are those groups of people between whom all the productive forces of society are divided. On this basis the production relations between classes are formed. With the appearance of owners of a certain fraction of the productive forces, arises the possibility of their influencing all movement of the social product and their exploitation of this resource in the struggle with other classes for social position. The very existence of classes is linked to the existence of private property in productive forces (not just the means of production) and this is why, quite apart from the existence of barter or commodity-money relations, the significance of any particular productive force varies and the roles of the classes vary correspondingly with particular classes obtaining supremacy over the rest.
In conditions of commodity-money relations, social position is wholely and completely defined by economic circumstances, that is the share of social wealth appropriated and distributed by the given class. This is what classes struggle for.
Productive forces include three basic elements: land with all its natural resources; the means of production, which are the embodiment of past labour; and labour-power. The historical change in modes of production and the corresponding change in socio-economic formations is linked to the level of organisation and the organising influence of these elements on society.
In addition to classes, society includes people who are not owners of productive forces and who do not participate in social production with any of their property. According to their social role, they can be divided into groups: the intelligentsia, the army, the lumpenproletariat, and so on. All of them are forced, in one way or another, to serve those classes that allocate them a share of the goods necessary for their existence — that is, primarily those classes that currently occupy a dominant position. Despite the fact that their indirect influence on production can be colossal for society, and despite a certain organisation within social groups, these groups do not play a decisive role in the development of society, as they lack the organically united interests inherent to classes. Historically, all attempts by such social groups to influence the development of society have resulted in them, by appropriating a portion of the productive forces, becoming a class in society or in the rise of the class they, perhaps unknowingly, served. This is precisely why the social interests of such groups are extremely diffuse and do not form any socially significant unity.
The class policy of a victorious proletariat is determined primarily by the conditions under which it achieves victory. In other words, it must take into account the level of development of productive forces and the corresponding class composition of society.
The seizure of power typically results from the joint actions of the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petit-bourgeoisie. However, if the proletariat does not have a decisive advantage in this alliance, the revolution is not socialist in nature; it remains bourgeois democratic.
The true victory of the proletariat — the socialist revolution — is always marked by the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry and other strata of society has no other content than the needs of the proletariat for the functioning of these strata, at least for some period, in order to preserve the integrity of the entire complex of functions necessary for the existence of society.
The proletariat’s policy toward other classes and strata is then entirely dictated by the need to stimulate their socially useful activity. It is bound up with organisational forms borrowed from the capitalist past, to the extent necessary to ensure the clarity and effectiveness of the incentives offered. But at the same time, the proletariat and the proletarian state must also be concerned with incentives that contradict these outdated forms, break them, and direct the development of all strata along socialist lines.
The complete expropriation of the expropriators is crucial here: it destroys the psychological assumption that an individual’s social position depends on capital, on their private property. However, once completed, this expropriatory activity must not cease. Commodity-money relations inevitably generate a tendency toward enrichment, and therefore, throughout their existence, this tendency must be combated. One of the most important social tasks is to affirm the idea that personal wealth, whatever its nature, guarantees not strengthening, but, on the contrary, instability of one’s position in society. This assumption, naturally, contradicts the notion that a socialist society must build a number of its most important relations on a purely bourgeois foundation. However, by preserving bourgeois relations, a socialist society has no intention of making them more stable than those of capitalist society itself; it offers no guarantee against ruin, against the dangers of competition, etc. The preservation of bourgeois relations precisely requires a socialist society to develop policies to combat them.
These are the most complex questions of the domestic policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The progress of socialist society toward Communism as a whole depends to a significant degree on their correct resolution at every step of history. And, first and foremost, this is linked to building relationships with such a class as the peasantry and with such a social stratum as the intelligentsia.
But before the question of the peasantry is considered, it is absolutely necessary to understand the relations between the proletariat and the intelligentsia.
What is the difference between the intelligentsia working for hire and hired workers?
We’ve already established the difference in economic essence: the intelligentsia doesn’t sell labour-power or labour; it sells its monopoly on knowledge. But the line between physical and mental labour has long since lost its former clarity. How, then, can we practically separate the activities of workers from those of the intelligentsia?
Let’s take a more specific category: reproductive labour.
Reproductive labour is the creation, with the help of known means of production and known methods, of things that are, in practical terms, completely identical to the same things created earlier.
Reproductive labour can be simple or complex: complex labour requires higher qualifications and more developed skills. And it is precisely reproductive labour that constitutes the value of any object, i.e., the socially necessary labour in any object is no more than that required for its reproduction by modern methods at the current level of development of productive forces.
Almost everything consumed by humanity in the material sphere is the result of its reproductive labour. It is precisely this reproductive labour that is crucial to the existence and reproduction of humanity.
Labour that is the opposite of reproductive labour and is the content of a wide variety of activities, but is not directly expressed in the reproduction of things, is creative labour. In this sense, creativity also includes mastering reproductive skills, organising activities, and creating new technologies — it’s just that the social significance of these types differs.
Those who earn a living by creative activity, including a certain category of people engaged in physical labour, considered blue-collar workers but valued and paid for their ability to find unique technological solutions, are not proletarians. They constitute the intelligentsia, a distinct social stratum.
Reproductive labour is the curse of mankind. Day and night humanity brings its influence to bear on the planet. Its labour has one single objective; it destroys one thing, creates another and in so doing changes the conditions of its own existence, all to secure the resources for the satisfaction of its needs.
Reproductive labour — the reproduction of consumables — creates food, clothing, shelter, warmth, light, and the material forms through which our spiritual needs are satisfied. Reproductive labour reproduces the machines consumed in the creation of consumer goods, as well as the machines necessary for their reproduction. Reproductive labour changes the face and essence of the earth. The value created by this labour is a change in the value of the globe as a source of existence for all humanity, taking into account the goods consumed and produced — in the near future, this very principle will become the foundation of human political economy.
Reproductive labour is the basis of human existence, the basis of living intelligence on earth.
But humanity doesn’t simply want to exist; it wants to exist better and better. For this purpose, it has been given reason, consciousness: that immense, ideal force capable of purposefully and harmoniously mobilising all physical forces. And, moving through history, stepping from one formation to another, humanity wages its own internal struggle for the most wise use of its physical powers.
Creative labour, increasingly organised and enriched by experience, increasingly influences reproductive labour, facilitating and improving it. True, much creative energy is directed toward something entirely different — the confrontation and defence of private (individual, group, or class) interests — and is dispersed and destroyed in this petty struggle. To liberate this enormous creative energy from internecine struggles and utilise it entirely for the benefit of human society — such are the interests of humanity. But this cannot be achieved through utopian “reasonable agreements”; for this, all private interests must be overcome. This is possible only with the complete subordination of creative labour to the tasks of reproductive labour, that is, only with the consistent dictatorship of the proletariat. And the point, of course, is not to subordinate all creative activity to the applied goal of facilitating reproductive labour, but rather to ensure that this goal, in its most general form, defines the highest humanistic content of all creativity.
This universal human task (to achieve complete coordination of one’s mind with one’s strength) determines the relationship between the proletariat and the intelligentsia, and the nature of the development of these relations.
The intelligentsia, as a concentrate of social reason, has existed since time immemorial. The very social essence of humanity, separating it from animals, is linked to reason and consciousness. It’s no surprise that the ability of some people to generalise facts and engage in abstract thought distinguished these individuals from the masses, defining their special position in society. This special position wasn’t always, and for everyone, a superior position relative to others; it simply distinguished them from others in the totality of their relationships with society.
A long period in the life of human society, spanning several social formations, is characterised by the fact that the social status of its members is directly dependent on their economic status. Throughout almost this entire period, intellect, the capacity for abstract thought, played a secondary role, and only in the final stage — the capitalist socio-economic formation — did its position change significantly. This, again, was not a direct recognition of the social significance of reason; it merely signified that intellect had matured to the point of actively influencing economic status. And capitalism immediately recognised this, calling upon the intelligentsia to serve its interests. The intelligentsia became an important factor in capitalist competition and an object of that struggle.
The economic recognition of capitalism — the increasing reward, due to competition, for the intellect that reveals secrets — has also given rise to social recognition, recognition through economic status. This secondary nature has always tormented the intelligentsia; it longs for a society where intellect is recognised in its own right, seen as a social asset. But since most intellectuals are unable to separate social recognition from economic recognition, this plunges them into the depths of utopian constructs, where they combine the incompatible, imagining themselves mistresses of both souls and wealth. The fact that the best minds of humanity manage to break free from these eclectic fetters, comprehend the direct connection between this contradiction and the fundamental contradictions of capitalist society, and finally recognise their place in society, and that this state leads to a transition to the class position of the proletariat—this does not resolve the issue for the entire intelligentsia. In the pursuit of recognition, the intelligentsia cannot be united.
The struggle of the proletariat, the social activity of the proletariat always attracts part of the intelligentsia to its side.
Some immediately see the power of the proletariat as a means to achieve their own goals. This is a liberal flirtation with the proletariat.
Others join the ranks of the proletariat as equals among equals. The next step is: we are the more educated among equals; we bear the responsibility for defining goals and choosing the path. These become consummate opportunists who lead the proletariat toward their goals.
Still others choose unconditional service to the proletariat. Helping the proletariat understand its own goals, illuminating the path before it with the torch of theory, so that it does not make mistakes in choosing its own proletarian path — these are the tasks these still others set for themselves.
And with them the proletariat goes to its victories.
And what next? The victorious, hegemonic proletariat requires the active participation of the entire intelligentsia. But this cannot be done without losses. The fire of revolution inflames hegemonic aspirations in a section of the intelligentsia and pushes them to take corresponding actions — this section must become the target of proletarian terror. But the remaining section, too, has no intention of working for the proletariat for free, for nothing.
The proletariat as a class, as the sole owner of the means of production — and therefore as a capitalist in relation to all non-proletarian strata — must also act like a capitalist. It must hire as many intellectuals as it needs, and on terms that are, if possible, no worse than those of the bourgeoisie.
He can also hire some of the bourgeoisie, preserving the semblance of capitalist profit in their wages. The proletariat must rationally manage all of society’s creative resources.
The proletariat, as dictator, must resolutely deny political recognition to all intellectuals hired under bourgeois conditions. While assuming the protection of individual rights in the individual relations of non-proletarian strata, the proletariat must leave these strata with no more than the semblance of any rights in their relations with the proletarian state.
All of this naturally stems from the interests of the proletariat. All of this naturally creates uncertainty and instability in the intelligentsia’s social position. The more clearly this is defined, the more precisely and definitively it will point out and explain to the intelligentsia the futility of their utopian hopes.
The contradictions in the minds of the intelligentsia, reflecting the contradictions of capitalism, must be laid bare with utmost clarity under socialism, compelling the intelligentsia to reflect acutely on its place in life. These contradictions must propel the intelligentsia into action, spur it on. Toward what?
Creative work is a need for every person. Everyone regularly engages in creative activity. When the results of creativity acquire social significance, this need becomes even more compelling, as it combines with the desire to enhance personal social significance.
Reproductive labour is a necessity. It is recognised as a social need, and this occurs only when each person recognises their own belonging to society, their inseparability from it. The intelligentsia must also recognise this, but it can only achieve this by sensing that the worker’s social position is superior to its own and that the difference is not compensated for by the material benefits it receives.
This process cannot be accelerated by economic pressure on the intelligentsia, although such an opportunity is always within the power of the proletariat. The proletariat remains an open class under any circumstances, and this virtue conceals certain dangers.
By exerting pressure on the intelligentsia, the proletariat can force it to join its own ranks, and thus be left without an intelligentsia, like a blind man without a guide. This is why it is forced to speak to the intelligentsia in the language of bourgeois privilege. But the proletariat cannot maintain this situation forever. What, then, should it counter with?
The proletariat must produce its own intelligentsia. But the point here is not at all that this intelligentsia must be of proletarian origin, but that this intelligentsia must give its labour to society free of charge, without economic incentives, satisfied only with social recognition and the benefits received for its reproductive labour. Let this not be for life, but rather for a certain period, after which this intelligentsia will, if it so chooses, transition to the status of a bourgeois intelligentsia, losing its social privileges and acquiring economic ones. But let it carry with it a yearning for the respect of its class brothers.
And then, increased production efficiency, leading to a reduction in reproductive labour standards and an increase in the material well-being of the proletariat, will complete the process, and the new intelligentsia will be completely unwilling to sever its ties with the proletariat and with reproductive labour. The intelligentsia will cease to exist as a social group, intellect will become the sole property of the proletariat, and creative labour will be carried out according to ability. It goes without saying that this will not happen until the supply of such labour exceeds proletarian society’s needs for creative labour.
Now that the directions of development of relations between the proletariat and the intelligentsia have been outlined with sufficient clarity, it is easier to imagine the movement of relations with the peasantry.
Farmers’ labour appears reproductive only in its outward form. Of course, plowing, sowing, weeding, harvesting, fertilising, and watering are all purely reproductive in nature. But all of this must be done at the right time and in moderation — and determining this time and moderation, depending on fluctuating weather conditions, is a purely creative task, and its solution primarily determines the yield of the crop. Agriculture deals with living nature and must always creatively monitor and respond to its demands. Separating creative labour from reproductive labour is much more difficult here than in industrial production.
But there is no other way. Creative labour must be separated from reproductive labour, for only by separating itself does it acquire the social breadth necessary for a new society.
The development of agronomic and zootechnical sciences and the maximum industrialisation of agriculture, completely liberating the need for individual creativity, and the strictest separation of the agricultural intelligentsia from agricultural workers; this is what the proletariat will have to focus its efforts on. And although it is obvious that the separation of creative labour and its return to the proletariat will be expressed here in a very different way than in industry, it is nevertheless essential.
A clear separation of the agricultural proletariat from the intelligentsia and its fusion with the industrial proletariat may also suggest new forms of reproductive labour that take into account the non-seasonal nature of industrial labour and the seasonal nature of agricultural labour. Regardless of this, however, the industrialisation of agriculture remains one of the most important tasks of the industrial proletariat and the dictatorship of the proletariat, for without it, economic limitations cannot be overcome and the overall level of production efficiency that will fully resolve society’s economic problems cannot be achieved. Therefore, the technical and economic tasks of the proletariat in relation to the countryside coincide fundamentally. Here, it is particularly important that the technical course toward industrialisation, while of course of enormous significance, not overshadow political objectives. Without the most serious attention to political issues, — even in the search for technical solutions — age-old traditions cannot be overcome, and therefore the gap between city and countryside cannot be closed. The city must clearly introduce its industrial thinking into agriculture, and only this will free man’s natural attraction to the land from feudal and bourgeois strata.
Are the tasks of the proletariat in relation to the peasantry and the intelligentsia a continuation of the class-struggle carried over from capitalist society?
Yes, but we shouldn’t look for its core here. Beyond the socialist revolution, the proletariat brings the quintessence of its struggle against the bourgeoisie. This fundamental contradiction should be viewed from this perspective: on the one hand, the collective, collectivist aspirations of the proletariat; on the other, the extreme individualism personified by the bourgeoisie, with its private property-based economic privileges and its insistence on the direct dependence of social status on economic status. But capitalist society fosters individualistic aspirations for social privileges not only among the bourgeoisie, but also among all strata and classes of society. And the proletariat, while liquidating the bourgeoisie as a class and private property as the basic economic privilege that serves as the basis for obtaining many social privileges, cannot completely liquidate all aspirations for individualistic privileges, for the whole of society, even without the bourgeoisie, including the proletarian masses themselves, is permeated through and through with such aspirations.
The fundamental contradiction of socialism is the contradiction between the individual and society. The essence of this contradiction is the same: the individual, contrary to the interests of society, strives to gain individual privileges, seeking to receive from society more than he or she gives. But here, the backward, dying side of the contradiction is each individual, each member of society, while the advanced side is that same society, bound by collectivist class-proletarian interests. Neither side can be destroyed in this struggle, for that would mean the self-liquidation of society.
Moreover, society and the proletariat cannot solve their economic problems without stimulating the activity of their members by providing certain privileges — and thereby sustaining the individual struggle for privileges, preventing it from dying out. Society is forced to grant the greatest privileges where the most pressing problems of a particular historical period are being resolved. Offering privileges allows problems to be resolved quickly, but at the same time, society also seeks and finds a different, collectivist solution to the same problems. This creates the basis for rejecting previous privileges.
As society develops, privileges become concentrated among certain strata under the dictates of this development. And when society finds a different solution to its problems, it inevitably advocates the elimination of previous privileges. Then a new hotbed of social struggle erupts, where the side defending its privileges defends nothing less than its bourgeois right to these privileges; that is, it continues the cause of the bourgeoisie in this continuation of class-struggle.
The emergence of such exacerbations of class-struggle is inevitable along the entire path from capitalism to Communism, and overcoming the resistance of the privileged strata is precisely the continuous revolution that alone leads to the development of Communist consciousness. Naturally, only the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of an open class that grants equal privileges to all (or, what amounts to the same thing, the absence of any privileges), ensures the consistent identification of all obstacles to social movement, the relentless struggle against them on all fronts, and victory in this struggle.
History has taught us how to fight for and achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat. History also teaches us to learn from defeats. Where capitalism cannot overcome the proletariat by force of arms, it hides and re-emerges, clinging to the slightest privilege granted to it, and by deceiving and fooling the workers, seizing all that was lost. The proletariat cannot hope that any individual or any force will protect it from the resurgence of capitalism. Only its own tireless vigilance can serve as a guarantee. The proletariat cannot rely on its best representatives either, for, separating from the class, they begin to act according to their individual strengths. The proletariat cannot trust even the party it itself has created if it takes power; power is a privilege that only the proletariat itself cannot corrupt or embourgeoisify.
Only the constant readiness of the entire class to defend its rights and interests, if necessary with arms in hand, only constant class control over all social processes, only the eternal enthusiasm of independent proletarian organisation can ensure the proletariat’s hegemony. That is why, without ceasing our call for the unification of the proletarians of all countries, we proclaim the main slogan of our time:
HAIL THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!
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