The Second Thought of Engels on the State
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[Discussion Article] The Second Thoughts of Engels on the State
For your consideration, an articles published by the International Marxist Humanist. They had contradictions with Engels but they do not have contradiction with Vladimir Lenin
For you consideration. Engels is the favorite toy of one of our member in this forum
I don’t think there is all that of a change in Engels’s position. Right from 1847 Marx and Engels had insisted on the need for socialists to win control of political power and use it to end capitalism. They never envisaged the immediate abolition of the state (the public power of coercion) even though they envisaged its disappearance once the division of society into classes had been ended; socialism would be a stateless society. The question was how long this would take.
One reason they were not in favour of the immediate abolition of the state was that they anticipated that it would be needed to deal with a “slaveholders’ revolt” by the capitalist class. But there were also economic reasons to do with how socialised the productive forces were.
Engels was realistic enough to accept that this might take some time in the 1880s, so there would be a period during which the socialist working class would be in control of the state but not unchanged. As he says in one of the quotes in the article, as soon as they win control the working class should lop off its undemocratic elements and completely democratise it before using it to end class ownership (and deal with any slaveholders’ revolt).
We ourselves have made the point that there is a difference between translating Engels’s German as “withers away” (as favoured by Moscow) and “dies out” (the more literal translation). So that point has been noticed before.
Although for some 20 years from 1984 we were committed to the “immediate abolition of the state” this was finally rescinded in 2004 when Conference passed the following resolution;
“That the 1984 Conference Resolution, ‘This Conference affirms that socialism will entail the immediate abolition and not the gradual decline of the State,’ be rescinded and replaced with; ‘That as the State is an expression of and enforcer of class society, the capture of political power by the working class and the subsequent conversion of the means of living into common property will necessarily lead to the abolition of the state, as its function as custodian of class rule will have ended. Those intrinsically useful functions of the state machine will be retained by socialist society but re-organised and democratised to meet the needs of a society based on production for use.’”
In short, the working class only needs to retain the state for as long as it takes to end class ownership of the means of life, which today needn’t take very long. The purely administrative and non-coercive aspects of the ex-state would then be integrated into the democratic administrative structure of socialist society.
I do not think there is any second thought of Engels about the State. They ( including Raya Dunayevskaya ) always have had problems understanding Engel’s stand regarding the state. Raya was a Russian and ex-Trotskyist and she took the interpretation made by Moscow. Wasn’t that the allegation made by the 16 members who were expelled from the Socialist Party?
PS: They have argued that Engels was a Post Marxist, and they include Lenin as a Post Marxist I do not think that there is any post Marxism or any Post Marxists. Lenin was a distorter of Marx
The occasion for the 1984 resolution was that one of the 16 had written about the “gradual decline” of the state. Most members were opposed to this but the resolution went too far in the other direction by talking of the “immediate abolition” of the state. So it wasn’t just the 16 who voted against it. I did too for instance. But it wasn’t for this that they were to be expelled (it was for repeatedly and deliberately refusing to carry out a conference resolution, backed by a Party poll, on the use of the various names under which the party was known). However, that resolution was a stick they used to beat us, accusing us of having become anarchists. Eventually, after 20 years, those of us opposed to it managed to get it rescinded and the previous, long-standing Party position restored.
Thanks for your clarification because in their arguments they do not mention that particular situation
I always prefer to say socialism will begin the dismantling of the State. An emphasis that it is a process, not an all-encompassing act.
And I usually add that there are some very useful government departments that may very well be preserved and adapted for a role inside socialism as a part of its administration.
If the world working class has common possession of the mean of production the state will be abolished, we would not need an organ to oppress ourselves. The State will be sent to the museum of antiquity as Engels said, therefore, this article about Engels is completely wrong.
Engels: “Along with [the classes] the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquity, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.”
PS: The Grijalbo translation of the works of M & E used the expression: Dies out, and Siglos XXI used the expression: Dies out they did not copy Progress Publisher translation
I have just checked and found I have a copy of the original 1880 French version of Engels’s Socialisme Utopique et Socialisme Scientique, published by a Left Communist group (Le Mouvement Communiste) who comment in their introduction that it does not include the editorial changes Engels made for the German version.
I have to confess it reads better in the context of today. But Engels explains in the text itself of the German edition why he had made the changes — it was to distinguish his position from “the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand” (a better translation would be “overnight”) as well as those who talked of a “free State”.
I also have a French translation of the German version published by the French CP with tendentious subheadings inserted including abolition of the “class State” (to fit in with the official Stalinist position that the Russian State was a non-class one). But even that translates the second reference to the State’s disappearance as “the political authority of the State goes to sleep” (“entre en sommeil”).
The translation of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels in French and Spanish ( from Spain ) are more accurate than the English and Russian version.
People who are able to read in German will read the most accurate version. ( Peter Hudis reads German )
It would be like reading ‘El Quijote De La Mancha” in another language. There are certain Castillian phrases that can not be translated to another language or they must be literally expressed
The Soviets translated several works of M & E to accommodate their own version of own of “socialism” and to preserve their apparatus of oppression. The Chinese just copied the translation made by the Institute of Marxism Leninism from Moscow
Looking for the origins of the problem on Engels will not provide a clear understanding, they rejected Engels but they approved Lenin who distorted Marx concept of the state in his dishonest book titled: The state and the revolution, he twisted expression used by Marx on the 18th Brumaire of Bonaparte
PS https://www.redpepper.org.uk/reading-rosa/. Here we have the evidence that like L Bird they also believe in the unification of idealism and materialism
Engels did the same thing that was done in the Communist Manifesto to distinguish themselves from the Utopian socialist, but in reality, it was not a Communist Manifesto, it contains several reformist and state capitalists meassures, and the original name was the German Manifesto. It looks that some leftists do not the Prefaces
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