How Should Socialists Organise?
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Following is a discussion on the page titled: How Should Socialists Organise?.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!Interesting reply by presumably a leading exponent of the historical revisionist school that claims "Lenin wasn't as bad as portrayed both by his supporters (Stalin, Mao) and opponents (eg us)" but was just a militant leftwing Social Democrat.I noticed two things in particular. First, that he claims at one point that Lenin was in favour of fuller freedom of discussion within the Russian Social Democratic party than his Menshevik opponents were, but that was only because at that time the Bolsheviks were a minority within the party. When he got to power he was later (1921) in favour of suppressing "factions" within the Bolshevik party.Second, this:
Quote:Needless to say, Luxemburg misrepresents much of what Lenin himself wrote about and advocated.Not quite sure what the "needless to say" is supposed to imply. Surely not that Rosa Luxemburg was in the habit of misrepresenting others' views?A final thought. He says that "Leninism" is still relevant in the 21st century, but if Lenin was just an orthodox Marxist as he claims, why would there need to be a separate doctrine called "Leninism"?
stevead1966 wrote:I have just tried to post something but have been refused, lost all what I typedThat's a shame, Steve. Don't suppose you fancy trying again but this time type your text in a separate window and then copy and paste it into the appropriate RevLeft thread.
SteveHegel1844 response on RevLeft forum:Le Socialiste: "Lenin; in fact it can be argued that he, among other major theorists of the period, drew inspiration from Marx and Engels"-SteveHegel1844: The ideas of Lenin in What Is To Be Done? are in contrast to what Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848 where they described the proletarian movement as 'the self conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority.’ Marx drafted the general rules of the International Working Men's Association in 1864 which began categorically with the line 'that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.’ In 1879 Marx and Engels felt the need to distribute a circular where they stated: 'when the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry; the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.'Le Socialiste: "There are many reasons to criticize some of what emerged from Lenin and other theorists of the period, but these criticisms shouldn't have to hide behind false representations of what these figures said and did" -SteveHegel1844:Dictatorship of the Bolshevik (Communist Party) over the ProletariatPrivilege of Party membership leading to elitism and NomenklaturaWar Communism prohibited strikes -the only weapon the proletariat have against bosses (Even bolshevik bosses)New Economic Policy – market economy – state capitalismRed Terror – repression, setting up of Cheka, NKVD, OGPU – implemented by Dzerzhinsky on September 5, 1918, described by the Red Army journal Krasnaya Gazeta: "Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood"Suppression of Kronstadt (the reddest of reds) rebellion – Emma Goldman: "The dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous, that does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes"Suppression of peasant anarchist army of Makhno in UkrainePersecution/prohibition/imprisonment/execution/exile of all non bolsheviks, left opposition, anarchists"Lenin's own words in a speech on Economic Construction in 1920 were also revealing when he said: 'the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principal relation toward one person rule was not only explained a long time ago but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee.'Le Socialiste:"Revolutionary socialists, it is understood, must be inseparable from and responsive to the real shifts, struggles and movements of the working-class" and "The vanguard is not some monolithic, omniscient entity, subordinating its members (indeed, the working-class itself) to its “leadership.” The party plays the role of a guiding organization in relation to the self-emancipatory activity of the masses. As Trotsky noted: "Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam." SteveHegel1844: Lenin wrote that: 'Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness', and that socialist ideas came from 'the educated representatives of the propertied classes' or 'revolutionary socialist intellectuals.', Luxemburg identified 'the two principles on which Lenin’s centralism rests are precisely these: the blind subordination, in the smallest detail, of all party organs to the party centre which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. The rigorous separation of the organised nucleus of revolutionaries from its social-revolutionary surroundings.'Again: the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves (Marx) – Martov:'the proletarian class considered as a whole is the only possible builder of the new society.'Marx 'Theses on Feuerbach': The materialist doctrine that men are the products of conditions and education, different men therefore the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men and that the educator has himself to be educated. This doctrine leads inevitably to the ideas of a society composed of two distinct portions, one of which is elevated above society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.'Martov correctly pointed out that if this thesis is applied'. . . to the class struggle of the propertyless, this means the following. Impelled by the same ‘circumstances’ of capitalist society that determine their character as an enslaved class, the workers enter into a struggle against the society that enslaves them. The process of this struggle modifies the social ‘circumstances.’ It modifies the environment in which the working class moves. This way the working class modifies its own character. From a class reflecting passively the mental servitude to which they are subjected, the propertyless become a class which frees itself actively from all enslavement, including that of the mind.'Le Socialiste: "I do not think Leninism is a dead-end"SteveHegel1844: if Lenin was just an orthodox Marxist as he claims, why would there need to be a separate doctrine called "Leninism"?Leninism is a dead end, it leads into cul de sacs filled with numerous trotskyite splinters, Stalinists, Maoists, worshippers of Che, Castro, state capitalism, the wages system and commodity production, the proletariat still being robbed of their surplus valueThe three things that ruined the working class in Europe and the World in the 20th century; Social Democracy ie Labour Party reformism in Britain and elsewhere, secondly, the First World War, and thirdly probably the most insidious – Leninism and the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917 – diverted the working class away from the socialist message of Marx and Engels into a stalinist cul de sac.
Superb, Steve ! PS. If anyone feels like wading in here on libcom and helping out they'd be more than welcome… http://libcom.org/forums/announcements/forum-zeitgeist-movement-norwich-28092010
Letter received from Laurens Otter about this article:Steve Clayton puts too much emphasis on the spilt between the bolsheviki & the mensheviki; they only spilt half way through the "Unity Conference" by which time they had together expelled the "economists" (those fighting the economic battles.) The difference between the Bolsheviki & Mensheviki was just that the latter accepted work within party-supported caucuses as party work, whereas Lenin (initially with the support of Plekhanov, who only went to the Mensheviki alter the conference, ) insisted that only work done under the express control of party committees was. It mattered since all party members were expected to do so many hours of party work in any given time.Most of the "economists" were no doubt Labour Party-type reformists, so Steve (& you or I) would hardly prefer them, But in Sukhanov's account of the conference there is a record of one delegate – whose name did not appear in the "short" translation I read, (the Russian original was seven volumes, the translation published in the '50s was in one volume,) – & he objected (also before the bolshevik/menshevik split) that the draft party statements “treated the party as subject, and the [working] class only as object." Which he rightly said was a fundamental departure from Marxism. It has been suggested that the delegate concerned was Sukhanov himself.Moreover – as your party used to emphasize – both Mensheviki & Bolsheviki were at the time agreed that socialism was not on the order of the day; they then both held to the "stages" theory, whereby Russia needed to have a bourgeois-democrat revolution first, & only after it would socialism be on the agenda. They both believed that Russian capitalists were too cowardly to make their own revolution, & wanted to push the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) & Octobrists into so doing. Lenin & Martov subsequently differed as to just how far they might intervene directly in the bourgeois revolution. Both at that stage were equally shocked by Parvus & Trotsky's suggestion of "Permanent Revolution," – that the working class should pose its own demand for power as soon as the bourgeoisie had achieved its.Then in 1916, alter writing his Philosophic notebooks & the publication of "The State & the devolution," (a pamphlet which went counter to all his previous thinking on the role of the party leadership,) he broke with the internal Leadership of the Bolshevik Party, was indeed expelled from the party. He said, in 1917, "the party-masses are a myriad times more revolutionary than the party leadership, and the non-party masses a myriad times wore so than the party-masses," that totally inverted everything he had said about the role & make-up of the party. Unfortunately no doubt, after the Revolution he made it up with his party & reverted to his former theories.But as your party (up until the beginning of the 1950s, ) used to insist, Lenin – after the revolution – stressed that what had been achieved was "workers' -dominated state capitalism, in transition to socialism," he believed the Soviets gave political power to the workers, & that it was possible for a short-time that this could override the long-term capitalist control; he argued that the transition could only be made if there was a socialist revolution in the West. If this seems a contradiction of Marx, I refer you to the latter's approval of Lassalls's "Qu'est-que c'est qu'une Constitution;” wherein that author says that under the conditions of an insurrection when the working class is fully mobilized, it is possible that for a short-time political & economic power are divorced and that workers may exercise political power even though they lack economic control.It is obvious that revolution did not happen in the West. Given that when Lenin died 83% of property in the Soviet Union was still in private hands, the Communists did not claim that Russia was socialist until Stalin's 1929-35 ("Third Period") nationalizations. Given that these were done at the very time when Stalin was banning all trade unions, & party purges, it is ironic that even his bolshevik-leninists critics accepted that that was a time of socialist transition. Before he died, Lenin, had in the controversy with Trotsky on the T. U, question, redefined his term as "workers '-dominated state capitalism, in transition to socialism, but with severe bureaucratic deformations. " Rakovskl , before being broken into submission by Stalin's torturers, said Russia had become a bureaucratic state with residual working class features.It is worth remembering that in the State & the Revolution Lenin predicts that the time must come, (if socialism is to be achieved, ) when the working class will rebel against the workers' state.
Firstly, Lenin always opposed the First World War unlike reformists in the Second International in Western Europe. He promised to take Russia out of the First World War and he kept that pledge in 1918. Lenin's article 'The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism' from 1913 is a concise exposition of Marxism and well worth reading, he concludes it with “Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism”Mr Otter: “Steve Clayton puts too much emphasis on the spilt between the Bolshevik & the Menshevik”.Steve: Emphasis on the split between the Bolshevik and Menshevik cannot be underestimated. Lenin argued that an effective political party must have a sound and clearly defined theoretical basis. Lenin quotes Lassalle letter to Marx of 1852: "Party struggles give a party strength and life … the best proof of the weakness of a party is its diffuseness and the blurring of clearly defined borders … a party becomes strongest by purging itself.". Lenin in 1901 had the mistaken high opinion about the German SPD which combined a socialist objective with a programme of popular immediate demands (reformism). The SPGB has been described by a Leninist party as “Menshevik” in contrast to 'Bolshevik'. Some of the Menshevik Programme of July 1919: peasants should retain, on a collective or individual basis as they may freely decide, the public and privately owned lands which they seized and parcelled out at the time of the Revolution; the state should retain control of major industrial enterprises that are fundamental to economic life; Workers’ unions should be wholly independent of any state bodies; Freedom of the press, of assembly and of association should be restored; Terror shall be done away with as an instrument of government; the death penalty be abolished , and likewise all investigatory and punitive organs independent of the courts, such as the Extraordinary Commission (CHEKA); Party institutions and cells should be deprived of state authority, and party members of all material privileges. Also please see Martov criticism of Bolshevism in his 1919 work 'The Ideology of Sovietism'.Mr Otter: “in Sukhanov's account of the conference there is a record of one delegate – whose name did not appear in the "short" translation I read, (the Russian original was seven volumes, the translation published in the '50s was in one volume,) – & he objected (also before the Bolshevik/Menshevik split) that the draft party statements “treated the party as subject, and the [working] class only as object." Which he rightly said was a fundamental departure from Marxism. It has been suggested that the delegate concerned was Sukhanov himself”Steve: I have not read the minutes of the conference. I agree that this would be a departure from Marxism. The ontological basis of Marx's philosophy is the overcoming of the subject-object divide see 1844 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts' (EPM). Feuerbach said “Man is himself at once an I and Thou”. The overcoming of alienation is the reconciliation of the relationship between Subject and Object. Marx in EPM: “ The eye has become a human eye when its object has become a human, social object, created by man and destined for him… in effect, I can only relate myself in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man”. The proletariat are the future of humanity, the overcoming of the subject-object divide – proletarian class consciousness is the subject-object of history. Lukàcs: only the practical class consciousness of the proletariat possesses the ability to transform things.Mr Otter: “It is worth remembering that in the State & the Revolution Lenin predicts that the time must come, (if socialism is to be achieved, ) when the working class will rebel against the workers' state”Steve: Lenin's belief in the future is; 'if socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see socialism for at least five hundred years.'Mr Otter: “Lenin – after the revolution – stressed that what had been achieved was "workers' -dominated state capitalism, in transition to socialism”, Steve: I question that this state capitalism is workers-dominated but is run by a Party elite/bureaucracy, a Nomenclature. Lenin's introduction of the NEP (New Economic Policy) in 1920 is a market economy, it is State Capitalism which is the wages system under new management, profit, commodity production and workers still being robbed of their surplus value. Lenin in 'The Chief Task of Our Times': “Reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us”.Socialist Standard, August 1918: ‘Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for socialism? Are the hunters of the north, the struggling peasant proprietors of the south, the agricultural wage slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity and equipped with the knowledge required, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life? Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is “No!” ’. Marx 1859 Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy: “No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself”. The Russia of 1917 was not an advanced industrial capitalist nation ripe for transformation to socialism. Lenin's 1917 April Theses argues that Russia is "passing from the first stage of the revolution which, owing to insufficient class consciousness of the proletariat placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry, "it is not our immediate task to 'introduce' socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.". Again, the Russia of 1917 was not an advanced industrial capitalist nation ripe for transformation to socialism.Mr Otter: “workers '-dominated state capitalism, in transition to socialism, but with severe bureaucratic deformations”Steve: The 'severe bureaucratic deformations' include the following; Privilege of Party membership leading to elitism and Nomenclature, War Communism prohibited strikes -the only weapon the proletariat have against bosses (Even Bolshevik bosses), Red Terror – repression, setting up of Cheka, NKVD, OGPU – implemented by Dzerzhinsky on September 5, 1918, described by the Red Army journal Krasnaya Gazeta: "Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood", suppression of Kronstadt rebellion – Emma Goldman: "The dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous, that does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes", Lenin is father to Stalinism.Mr Otter: “ Then in 1916, after writing his (Lenin) Philosophic Notebooks & the publication of "The State & the Revolution," (a pamphlet which went counter to all his previous thinking on the role of the party leadership,) he broke with the internal Leadership of the Bolshevik Party, was indeed expelled from the party. He said, in 1917, "the party-masses are a myriad times more revolutionary than the party leadership, and the non-party masses a myriad times wore so than the party-masses," that totally inverted everything he had said about the role & make-up of the party. Unfortunately no doubt, after the Revolution he made it up with his party & reverted to his former theories” Steve: I do not know if Lenin was expelled from the Party in 1916. In 1915, in Switzerland, at the Zimmerwald Conference he led the minority who failed, against the majority pacifists to achieve the conference adopting Lenin's proposition of transforming the imperialist war into a class war At the next conference in 1916 at Kienthal Lenin presented a like resolution and the conference concluded a compromise manifesto. (Christopher Read biography of Lenin). Lenin's 'Philosophic Notebooks' contain the fragment 'On the Question of Dialectics' where he writes “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence (one of the “essentials,” one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics.” This idea was used by Chinese communist philosophers to develop their 'One Divides Into Two' philosophical concept in 1964 which looked at the uniting of capitalism with socialism. This idea received short shrift in the Maoist Cultural Revolution after 1966 but after Mao's death in 1976 and up to today we have the restoration of full market capitalism in the Chinese 'communist' state, all justified by 'One Divides Into Two' from Lenin's 'Philosophic Notebooks'. Lenin 'The State and the Revolution' contains the iniquitous statements regarding work in socialism: According to Lenin “He who does not work shall not eat” is a necessary principle under socialism, (from St Paul II Thessalonians 3:10 “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat”). This leads to Stalin and the 1936 USSR Constitution; “The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.". Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed follows St Paul and Lenin as well: “it is necessary to resort to the customary norms of wage payment – that is, to the distribution of life's goods in proportion to the quantity and quality of individual labour”. St Paul, the founder of Christianity, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, the USSR Constitution, and Thatcher, arch class warrior for the capitalist class, in her notorious 'Sermon on the Mound' in Edinburgh in 1988: ““We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. 'If a man will not work he shall not eat'”. As socialists we say “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”.Martov: “One day you will understand the crime in which you are taking part “ in response to Trotsky's “Go where you belong from now on into the dustbin of history".
Well said, Steve. Now looking forward to your response to Ismail on RevLeft http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2616014&postcount=6
SteveHegel1844 wrote:"Lenin's own words in a speech on Economic Construction in 1920 were also revealing when he said: 'the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principal relation toward one person rule was not only explained a long time ago but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee.”Lenin speech of 16 March 1920 to the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party:Section 4 on Economic Development“Soviet socialist democracy and individual management and dictatorship are in no way contradictory, and that the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary. At any rate, the attitude towards the principles of corporate management and individual management was not only explained long ago, but was even endorsed by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee”The translation used by SteveHegel1844 is not exact replica of translation used in Marxists.org/archive but on a practical interpretative basis it is identical.Lenin uses extracts from his article 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government' of April 1918 in his speech of 16 March 1920: “Large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will … unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry. “We must learn to combine the ‘public meeting’ democracy of the working people—turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring nood with iron discipline while at work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work.”, the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during the work. . . .”Ismail wrote: “management in Soviet industries, calling for the combination of democracy and discipline with regards to directives and decisions made, This has nothing to do with the Party and its leadership. He was speaking of the necessity of discipline (never divorced from the objective needs and control of the working-class) to rehabilitate the economy”SteveHegel1844: The foundation of socialism or in this instance of Bolshevik Russian 'State Capitalism' in the economy has everything to do with democracy, the Party, leadership.Fundamentally, as socialists we believe in the democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, for if everyone owns, then everyone must have equal right to control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.
The Nikolai Sukhanov that Laurens Ottter mentions seems to have been a good bloke, though I don't think he would have been a delegate to the 1903 Conference of Russian Social Democrats at which the Bolshevik/Menshevik split took place, if only because at the time he was not a Social Democrat but associated rather with the non-Marxist (Populist) Social Revolutionary party. (And Laurens Otter is notorious for getting his facts wrong). It is true, however, that in 1917 he did become a Menshevik-Internationalist (i.e Menshevik opponent of the First World War) along with Martov. He was one of the victims of Stalin's Show Trials and was executed in 1940.Sukhanov wrote a 7-volume Notes on the Revolution. This was the basis of one of the best, readable accounts in English of the Russian Revolution, Joel Charmichael A Short History of the Russian Revolution that came out in 1964.When Lenin read it he was moved to exclaim:
Quote:You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country by the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving toward socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible?Gotcha, you anti-Marxist!. Since the answer of course is: everywhere in Marx and Engels.
Reply on RevLeft Forum:The SPGB Way Forward by SteveHegel1844: The Socialist Party of Great Britain believe that parliament can, and should, be used in the course of establishing such a socialist society. This position is based on our understanding that before socialism can be established there has to be a majority actively in favour of this, and that it is essential for this majority to win control over the machinery of government/ the state before trying to establish socialism. Since control of parliament is obtained via elections based on universal suffrage, a socialist majority can win control of the machinery of government through winning a parliamentary majority via the ballot box. Two ideas prominent to liberal democratic political ideology are that we live in a society which is both democratic and free. If this is not the case but if we live in a society where there is a semblance of democracy and freedom, what better way is there to challenge that ‘democracy and freedom’ than by using the accepted legitimate channels and thereby being able to call its bluff. Capitalism cannot be gradually reformed into socialism. There is no gradual parliamentary road to socialism through a series of piecemeal reform measures introduced by a reformist government. Anarchists are right to say this. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain say it too. The socialist political party (of which the SPGB is just a potential embryo) will not be something separate from the socialist majority. It will be the socialist majority self-organised politically, an instrument they have formed to use to achieve a socialist society. There is nothing to prevent workers who want socialism selecting one of their number to stand as a candidate to go to parliament as a socialist delegate, pledged to take instructions from socialists voting for them organised in the socialist political party. The dangers of a capitalist class coup ? On the eve of a socialist election victory most workers would already be convinced of the need for socialism and would have organised themselves in unions and other bodies ready to keep production and administration going after the election victory. Socialist ideas would also have penetrated into the armed forces. Should some of the pro-capitalists think of staging a coup: any wavering elements, especially in the armed forces, would tend to side with those who have the undisputed democratic legitimacy, i.e. in this instance those who want socialism. Even the anti-parliamentarian Anarchist Federation in 1996: “ The majority of military personnel are working class, and however indoctrinated they are, we doubt that they will be prepared on the whole to shoot down their friends, neighbours and relatives. Examples from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the Romania of 1990 show that the army will switch sides when it becomes clear that the people will no longer tolerate their government and are prepared to take to the streets to prove it” (Beyond Resistance, p. 19).The Socialist Party of Great Britain believe that Socialism will entail the immediate abolition of the State. Marx wrote of "storming heaven" which is the break up of the bourgeois political state, in this instance he was talking of the 1871 Paris Commune. The State in the example of the Paris Commune of 1871 offers many examples of the working class taking over and what is effectively the abolition of the bourgeois state; Engels: “Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” – run by the workers in the interests of the workers, Commune no longer a state, absence of a standing army, self-policing of the quartiers. Bakunin on the Commune: “a bold, clearly formulated negation of the state”Kropotkin: “by proclaiming the free commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an essential anarchist principle, which was the breakdown of the state”. The working class conquest of political power will entail what Marx wrote to Dr Kugelman it will “smash the bureaucratic military state machine”I will quote Lenin now… Lenin in Lessons of the Commune: “the Proletariat, which had seized power, carried out the democratisation of the social system, abolished the bureaucracy, and made all official posts elective”and “Commune replaced the smashed state machine with a fuller democracy, transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy”.Parliament can, and should, be used in the course of establishing such a socialist society, the majority of the working class will win control over the machinery of government/ the state before trying to establish socialism and proletarian socialist democracy.Marx wrote in 1872: “All socialists understand this by Anarchy: once the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes has been attained, the state power which serves to keep the great productive majority under the yoke of an exploiting minority small in numbers, disappears, and the governmental functions are transformed into simple administrative functions”. In 1847 'The Poverty of Philosophy', Marx writes:“there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society”.Edouard Vaillant, Communard:“If socialism wasn't born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime”
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