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The “Associated Producers:” Dictatorship, Proletariat, Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Kostas Papaioannou
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Extract

“Between the capitalist society and the communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the former into the latter. To this there corresponds a period of political transition in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” (19, 28).

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 16 , Issue 64 , December 1968 , pp. 141 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

* Unless otherwise indicated, the figures in parenthese refer to the volume and page number of Marx-Engles, Werke, ed. Dietz, Berlin.

1 Cf. the exhaustive study by Hal Draper, "Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," in Etudes de Marxologie, No. 6, Paris, 1962.

2 Lenin, Contribution à l'histoire de la question de la dictature, 1920; Œuvres, Moscow, 1961, XXXI, p. 366. Two years later, he was to write: "We live in a chaos of illegality" (XXXIII, p. 372).

3 Cf. vol. XVII, p. 555.

4 In the discussion which follows, I take the liberty of referring the reader to my essay L'idéologie froide, Paris, 1967, pp. 15-35.

5 Cf. vol. XVIII, pp. 117, 333, 346, 307.

6 Marx-Engels, Un Complot contre l'International, 1873, vol. 18, p. 400. Today the list can be extended to include biology, cybernetics and psycho-analysis, as well as poetry, novels and music. On the other hand, it is important to note that Bakunin never advocated the imprisonment or the assassination of scholars or artists insufficiently furnished with "class consciousness."

7 Marx, Remarques sur la nouvelle réglementation de la censure prussienne, 1842, vol. I, 3-25; Débats sur la liberté de la presse, 1842, vol. I, pp. 28-77.

8 Vol. 4, pp. 481, 482, 492, 474.

9 Marx, Misère de la philosophie, 1847; Paris, 1947, p. 135.

10 Cf. Débat sur la ligne générale du mouvement communiste, Peking, Foreign Languages Publishing House 1965, p. 438. That is, almost half a millennium…

11 A symbol in the imagery of the 19th century of the non plus ultra of totali tarianism. Thus Marx attributed to Bakunin the sinister intention of wanting to "eternalize dictatorship" in his "barrack-room communism" which would become "more authoritariam than the communism of the most primitive peoples" and which would "go much further than the Jesuit state of Paraguay." 18, pp. 341, 425, 438.

12 Cf. my study: "Etat, bureaucratie, démocratie," Res Publica, Brussels, vol. VII, (1950), No. 4.

13 De Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, Paris, 1951, I, 93; II, 317.

14 Werke, vol. 22, p. 232. Here we find an episode with a certain symbolic value. While denouncing "State socialism," the Erfurt programme demanded the nationalization of a number of prefessions (doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, nurses, etc.), and foresaw the total takeover by the state of social security. Engels did not fail to draw attention to this contradiction (22,237): what would he say of the "Marxists" of today, who demand the maximum extension of na tionalization at the same time as denouncing the State for being the instrument if the monopolies? This did not escape de Tocqueville's keen eye (II, 299): "the majority (of parties) consider that the government acts badly; but all consider that the government must act without ceasing and must take everything in hand…" The appeal to the State "characterizes all the political systems born in our day, and is found at the roots of the oddest utopias…"

15 Marx, Résolution sur les syndicats adopted at the 1st Congress of the inter national workers' association at Geneva in 1866; vol. XVI, pp. 196-7.

16 Marx, Adresse Inaugurale de l'Association internationale des travailleurs, 1864, XVI, p. 11.

17 Marx, Das Kapital, ed. Dietz, 1951, III, p. 422.

18 Marx, Das Kapital, III, pp. 481-2.

19 Marx, Rapport du Comité central de l'Association internationale des travail leurs, 1865, XVI, p. 195 ff.

20 Engels, Letter to Otto von Boenigk, 21.8.1890. What would he say to contemporary Denmark?

21 Cf. Marx, Salaire, prix et profit, 1865, XVI, p. 152.

22 Marx, Letter to Bolte, 23.11.1871. He writes "A partial, local strike is a purely economic movement," whereas the "movement directed towards the destruc tion of the eight-hour rule, etc., is a political movement." What would he say to the gigantic battle of American trade unions for a guaranteed annual wage?

23 Marx-Engels, Le Manifeste Communiste, 1848, IV, p. 481.

24 Marx, Au Président Abraham Lincoln, 1864; XVI, p. 19. For Marx, America was the workers' continent par excellence, the country in which "the worker is master," XVIII, p. 161.

25 Bakunin, Etatisme et Anarchie, 1873, pp. 277-280. Quoted at length by Marx, Marginal Notes on Bakunin, 1874; Werke, 18, p. 633 ff.

26 Engels, Letter to F. Domela Nieuwenhuis, 4.2.1886.

27 Engels, Letter to Bebel, 24 July 1885.

28 Marx, Adresse Inaugurale, 1864, XVI, p. 11.

29 Cf. Marx, Letter to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868.

30 Marx, Das Kapital, I, 375.

31 Ibid., II, 314.

32 Marx, Misère de la Philosophie, 1847; Paris, 1947, pp. 63-4.

33 Lenin, Œuvres, IX, 383.

34 Marx, Das Kapital, III, 286.

35 Marx-Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Dietz, 1953, pp. 584-5.

36 Lenin, L'Etat et la Révolution, 1917; Œuvres, XXV, 454.