THE REVOLUTION AND THE PROLETARIAT
A revolution is an open contest of social forces in their struggle for
political power.
The state is not an end in itself. It is only a working machine in the
hands of the social force in power. As every machine, the state has its
motor, transmission, and its operator. Its motive power is the class
interest; its motor are propaganda, the press, influences of school and
church, political parties, open air meetings, petitions, insurrections;
its transmission is made up of legislative bodies actuated by the
interest of a caste, a dynasty, a guild or a class appearing under the
guise of Divine or national will (absolutism or parliamentarism); its
operator is the administration, with its police, judiciary, jails, and
the army.
The state is not an end in itself. It is, however, the greatest means
for organizing, disorganizing and reorganizing social relations.
According to who is directing the machinery of the State, it can be an
instrument of profoundest transformations, or a means of organized
stagnation.
Each political party worthy of its name strives to get hold of political
power and thus to make the state serve the interests of the class
represented by the party. Social-Democracy, as the party of the
proletariat, naturally strives at political supremacy of the working
class.
The proletariat grows and gains strength with the growth of capitalism.
From this viewpoint, the development of capitalism is the development of
the proletariat for dictatorship. The day and the hour, however, when
political power should pass into the hands of the working class, is
determined not directly by the degree of capitalistic development of
economic forces, but by the relations of class struggle, by the
international situation, by a number of subjective elements, such as
tradition, initiative, readiness to fight....
It is, therefore, not excluded that in a backward country with a lesser
degree of capitalistic development, the proletariat should sooner reach
political supremacy than in a highly developed capitalist state. Thus,
in middle-class Paris, the proletariat consciously took into its hands
the administration of public affairs in 1871. True it is, that the reign
of the proletariat lasted only for two months, it is remarkable,
however, that in far more advanced capitalist centers of England and the
United States, the proletariat never was in power even for the duration
of one day. To imagine that there is an automatic dependence between a
dictatorship of the proletariat and the technical and productive
resources of a country, is to understand economic determinism in a very
primitive way. Such a conception would have nothing to do with Marxism.
It is our opinion that the Russian revolution creates conditions whereby
political power can (and, in case of a victorious revolution, _must_)
pass into the hands of the proletariat before the politicians of the
liberal bourgeoisie would have occasion to give their political genius
full swing.
Summing up the results of the revolution and counter-revolution in 1848
and 1849, Marx wrote in his correspondences to the New York _Tribune_:
"The working class in Germany is, in its social and political
development, as far behind that of England and France as the German
bourgeoisie is behind the bourgeoisie of those countries. Like master,
like man. The evolution of the conditions of existence for a numerous,
strong, concentrated, and intelligent proletariat goes hand in hand
with the development of the conditions of existence for a numerous,
wealthy, concentrated and powerful middle class. The working class
movement itself never is independent, never is of an exclusively
proletarian character until all the different factions of the middle
class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large
manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodeled the State
according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable conflict
between employer and the employed becomes imminent, and cannot be
adjourned any longer."[1] This quotation must be familiar to the reader,
as it has lately been very much abused by scholastic Marxists. It has
been used as an iron-clad argument against the idea of a labor
government in Russia. If the Russian capitalistic bourgeoisie is not
strong enough to take governmental power into its hands, how is it
possible to think of an industrial democracy, i.e., a political
supremacy of the proletariat, was the question.
[1] Karl Marx, _Germany in 1848_. (English edition, pp. 22-23.)
Let us give this objection closer consideration.
Marxism is primarily a method of analysis,--not the analysis of texts,
but the analysis of social relations. Applied to Russia, is it true
that the weakness of capitalistic liberalism means the weakness of the
working class? Is it true, not in the abstract, but in relation to
Russia, that an independent proletarian movement is impossible before
the bourgeoisie assume political power? It is enough to formulate these
questions in order to understand what hopeless logical formalism there
is hidden behind the attempt to turn Marx's historically relative remark
into a super-historic maxim.
Our industrial development, though marked in times of prosperity by
leaps and bounds of an "American" character, is in reality miserably
small in comparison with the industry of the United States. Five million
persons, forming 16.6 per cent. of the population engaged in economic
pursuits, are employed in the industries of Russia; six millions and
22.2 per cent. are the corresponding figures for the United States. To
have a clear idea as to the real dimensions of industry in both
countries, we must remember that the population of Russia is twice as
large as the population of the United States, and that the output of
American industries in 1900 amounted to 25 billions of rubles whereas
the output of Russian industries for the same year hardly reached 2.5
billions.
There is no doubt that the number of the proletariat, the degree of its
concentration, its cultural level, and its political importance depend
upon the degree of industrial development in each country.
This dependence, however, is not a direct one. Between the productive
forces of a country on one side and the political strength of its social
classes on the other, there is at any given moment a current and cross
current of various socio-political factors of a national and
international character which modify and sometimes completely reverse
the political expression of economic relations. The industry of the
United States is far more advanced than the industry of Russia, while
the political role of the Russian workingmen, their influence on the
political life of their country, the possibilities of their influence on
world politics in the near future, are incomparably greater than those
of the American proletariat.
In his recent work on the American workingman, Kautsky arrives at the
conclusion that there is no immediate and direct dependence between the
political strength of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of a country
on one hand and its industrial development on the other. "Here are two
countries," he writes, "diametrically opposed to each other: in one of
them, one of the elements of modern industry is developed out of
proportion, i.e., out of keeping with the stage of capitalistic
development; in the other, another; in America it is the class of
capitalists; in Russia, the class of labor. In America there is more
ground than elsewhere to speak of the dictatorship of capital, while
nowhere has labor gained as much influence as in Russia, and this
influence is bound to grow, as Russia has only recently entered the
period of modern class struggle." Kautsky then proceeds to state that
Germany can, to a certain degree, study her future from the present
conditions in Russia, then he continues: "It is strange to think that it
is the Russian proletariat which shows us our future as far as, not the
organization of capital, but the protest of the working class is
concerned. Russia is the most backward of all the great states of the
capitalist world. This may seem to be in contradiction with the economic
interpretation of history which considers economic strength the basis of
political development. This is, however, not true. It contradicts only
that kind of economic interpretation of history which is being painted
by our opponents and critics who see in it not a _method of analysis_,
but a _ready pattern_."[2] These lines ought to be recommended to those
of our native Marxians who substitute for an independent analysis of
social relations a deduction from texts selected for all emergencies of
life. No one can compromise Marxism as shamefully as these bureaucrats
of Marxism do.
[2] K. Kautsky, _The American and the Russian Workingman_.
In Kautsky's estimation, Russia is characterized, economically, by a
comparatively low level of capitalistic development; politically, by a
weakness of the capitalistic bourgeoisie and by a great strength of the
working class. This results in the fact, that "the struggle for the
interests of Russia as a whole has become the task of _the only powerful
class in Russia_, industrial labor. This is the reason why labor has
gained such a tremendous political importance. This is the reason why
the struggle of Russia against the polyp of absolutism which is
strangling the country, turned out to be a single combat of absolutism
against industrial labor, a combat where the peasantry can lend
considerable assistance without, however, being able to play a leading
role.[3]
[3] D. Mendeleyer, _Russian Realities_, 1906, p. 10.
Are we not warranted in our conclusion that the "man" will sooner gain
political supremacy in Russia than his "master"?
* * * * *
There are two sorts of political optimism. One overestimates the
advantages and the strength of the revolution and strives towards ends
unattainable under given conditions. The other consciously limits the
task of the revolution, drawing a line which the very logic of the
situation will compel him to overstep.
You can draw limits to all the problems of the revolution by asserting
that this is a bourgeois revolution in its objective aims and inevitable
results, and you can close your eyes to the fact that the main figure in
this revolution is the working class which is being moved towards
political supremacy by the very course of events.
You can reassure yourself by saying that in the course of a bourgeois
revolution the political supremacy of the working class can be only a
passing episode, and you can forget that, once in power, the working
class will offer desperate resistance, refusing to yield unless
compelled to do so by armed force.
You can reassure yourself by saying that social conditions in Russia are
not yet ripe for a Socialist order, and you can overlook the fact that,
once master of the situation, the working class would be compelled by
the very logic of its situation to organize national economy under the
management of the state.
The term _bourgeois revolution_, a general sociological definition,
gives no solution to the numerous political and tactical problems,
contradictions and difficulties which are being created by the mechanism
of a _given_ bourgeois revolution.
Within the limits of a bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth
century, whose objective was the political supremacy of capital, the
dictatorship of the _Sans-Culottes_ turned out to be a fact. This
dictatorship was not a passing episode, it gave its stamp to a whole
century that followed the revolution, though it was soon crushed by the
limitations of the revolution.
Within the limits of a revolution at the beginning of the twentieth
century, which is also a bourgeois revolution in its immediate objective
aims, there looms up a prospect of an inevitable, or at least possible,
supremacy of the working class in the near future. That this supremacy
should not turn out to be a passing episode, as many a realistic
Philistine may hope, is a task which the working class will have at
heart. It is, then, legitimate to ask: is it inevitable that the
dictatorship of the proletariat should clash against the limitations of
a bourgeois revolution and collapse, or is it not possible that under
given _international conditions_ it may open a way for an ultimate
victory by crushing those very limitations? Hence a tactical problem:
should we consciously strive toward a labor government as the
development of the revolution will bring us nearer to that stage, or
should we look upon political power as upon a calamity which the
bourgeois revolution is ready to inflict upon the workingmen, and which
it is best to avoid?