Marx and the Political Machinery
A correspondent writes querying our interpretation of the view held by Marx about obtaining control of the political machinery.
To the Editorial Committee,
SOCIALIST STANDARD,
42, Great Dover Street, S.E.1.
Dear Sirs,
In the Socialist Library, No. 11, ” The S.P.G.B. and Questions of the Day,” on page 52, occurs.: —
“The significance …. is the one Marx so constantly stressed, viz., the need to gain control of the political machinery.”
Query: In what work or works of Marx does he stress anything of the sort? Is there even one instance ? Let alone ”constant” stressing!
Yours, etc.,
JOHN HAWKINS.
Reply
Readers who are not familiar with the issue raised by this letter may find some explanation useful.
The S.P.G.B. holds that in order to achieve Socialism the Socialist majority will have to gain control of the political machinery. Our Declaration of Principles covers this point in the clause which follows: —
“That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.”
We know that this is the road to Socialism, and the only road to Socialism, because our every-day experience of the workings of capitalism shows us this beyond the possibility of doubt. Given the other requisite for the building up of Socialism, a majority of Socialists politically organised, conquest of the powers of Government will be the deciding factor. Without it the working class will still be unable to impose the form of social organisation they desire. Every movement which has ignored this truth, and has acted on the assumption, whether explicit or implied, that the State power can be disregarded, has come to disaster. This is true, whether the movement had Socialism as its objective or any other.
In the pamphlet to which our correspondent refers we were illustrating the truth of our case from the experience of the Bolsheviks in Russia. We show (“The S.P.G.B. and Questions of the Day,” Chapter XI) that the Bolsheviks were helpless until they came into control of the political machinery of the Russian State. Until they did that they were not able to carry out the wishes of the discontented non-Socialist masses of workers and peasants who stood behind them.
It must be emphasised that the S.P.G.B. bases its case on the facts of the situation in which we find ourselves. That is the final test of this and every other part of the Socialist case. We are vastly indebted to Marx and Engels for their work in helping us to a proper appreciation of the facts, but it is not our contention in this or any other question that a certain view is the correct one simply because Marx or Engels, or anyone else, held that view. Nevertheless, we do claim that this clause of our Declaration of Principles is in line with the general views of Marx and Engels as to the need to gain control of the political machinery, and we consider that the fact that they did hold this view entitles it to very serious consideration, quite apart from the lessons of experience gained since they died.
The following passages from the writings of Marx and Engels show clearly that this was their view.
Marx and Engels—1847.
”We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”—(Marx and Engels, “Communist Manifesto,” 1847, Whitehead Library Edition, p. 39.)
Engels—1850.
“The working classes will have learned by experience that no lasting benefit whatever can be obtained for them by others, but that they must obtain it themselves by conquering, first of all, political power. They must see now that under no circumstances have they any guarantee for bettering their social position unless by Universal Suffrage, which would enable them to send a Majority of Working Men in the House of Commons.”
”The Ten Hours Question,” by F. Engels (page 376, The Democratic Review, March, 1850).
Maxx—1852.
“But universal suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat form the large majority of the population, where, in a long, though underground, civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of its position as a class, and where even the rural districts know no longer any peasants, but landlords, industrial Capitalists (farmers) and hired labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage in England would, therefore, be a far more Socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent.
“Its inevitable result here, is the political supremacy of the working class.”
(From an article on the Chartists, by Marx, New York Tribune, August 25th, 1852, quoted in Labour Monthly, August, 1929.)
Marx— 1871
In the “Civil War in France” (Chapter III, p. 70, New York Labor News Co., 1920) Marx quoted with approval the following declaration of the Central Committee of the Paris workers in the Commune of 1871 : —
“They have understood that it is their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies by seizing upon the governmental power.”
Engels—1883.
Engels, on April 18th, 1883, one month after the death of Marx, wrote a letter to Van Patten, Secretary of the American Section of the International. It was published last winter by the Marx-Lenin Institute, and was reproduced in the Adelphi (London, June, 1934).
“But it has always been our view that in order to achieve this aim [the withering away of the State] and other far more important objectives of the social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the State, and with its aid stamp out the opposition of the capitalist class and organise society anew…..
“The Anarchists turn things upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by abolishing the political organisation of the State. But the only organisation which the proletariat, after its victory, finds ready at its disposal is just the State. This State may need considerable changes before it is fitted for its new functions. But to destroy it at that moment were to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat could use its newly-acquired power to suppress its capitalist opponents and to carry through that economic revolution of society without which victory must end in renewed defeat and mass-slaughter of the workers, like those after the Paris Commune. Need you my expressed assurance that Marx opposed this anarchist idiocy from the first day it was hatched by Bakunin ?”
(Engels to Van Patten, April 18th, 1883. “Marx-Engels’ Briefe an Dritte,” p. 295.)
Lenin and Tom Mann.
The above passages show what were the views of Marx and Engels. It is also interesting to notice that the teachings of these men and the lessons of experience were not wholly without effect on some of the leaders of the Communist Parties in the present day, although the two individuals referred to below were by no means consistent in their attitude.
Lenin, in his “State and Revolution” (which bears the sub-title, “Marxist Teaching on the State and the task of the Proletariat in the Revolution”) wrote : —
“The proletariat needs the State, the centralised organisation of force and violence, both for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population—the peasantry, the lower middle-class, the semi-proletariat—in the work of economic Socialist reconstruction.” (Published by the B.S.P., October, 1919, p. 30.)
Mr. Tom Mann, who used to hold strong views about the uselessness of controlling the political machinery, wrote as follows in 1922: —
” . . . the experience of the war and after the war has shown conclusively that we can no longer think simply of an industrial struggle, and industrial organisation is not enough. Whatever is done by industrial organisation, the organised State machine will continue to function, and will beyond question be used by the plutocracy in any and every available form against the workers. The dominant ruling class, the plutocracy, have complete control of that highly efficient machine for class purposes ; the interests of the community are ever secondary to the maintenance of power by the master class, and that machine will continue to be theirs until it is wrested from them by the workers.” (Labour Monthly, October, l922. Italics ours.)
ED. COMM.