Communism Social Organization System Political Science Essay Fonts times new roman 12pt two to three pages. Vladimir Lenin The Proletarian Revolution and t

Communism Social Organization System Political Science Essay Fonts times new roman 12pt two to three pages. Vladimir Lenin
The Proletarian Revolution and the
Renegade Kautsky
(Extracts)
It is natural for a liberal to speak of “democracy” in general; but a
Marxist will never forget to ask: “for what class?”
Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any
laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and
maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.
Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in
comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is
bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise
for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.
In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the
oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic
no less than in the monarchy
As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used
in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force,
it is sheer nonsense to talk of a ’free people’s state’; so long as the
proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of
freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it
becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist
Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their
administration, take freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or
“equality of all citizens before the law,” and you will see at every turn
evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy with which every
honest and class-conscious worker is familiar. There is not a single state,
however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its
constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching
troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in
case of a “violation of public order,” and actually in case the exploited
class “violates” its position of slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish
manner.
Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed people
at every step encounter the crying contradiction between the formal
equality proclaimed by the “democracy” of the capitalists and the
thousands of real limitations and subterfuges which turn the proletarians
into wage-slaves. It is precisely this contradiction that is opening the eyes
of the people to the rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism. It
is this contradiction that the agitators and propagandists of socialism are
constantly exposing to the people, in order to prepare them for revolution!
Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the
forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy
unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for
the exploited and working people.
Under bourgeois democracy the capitalists, by thousands of tricks—which
are the more artful and effective the more “pure” democracy is
developed—drive the people away from administrative work, from
freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, etc. The Soviet government is
the first in the world (or strictly speaking, the second, because the Paris
Commune began to do the same thing) to enlist the people, specifically
the exploited people, in the work of administration. The working people
are barred from participation in bourgeois parliaments (they never decide
important questions under bourgeois democracy, which are decided by the
stock exchange and the banks) by thousands of obstacles, and the
workers know and feel, see and realise perfectly well that the bourgeois
parliaments are institutions alien to them, instruments for the oppression
of the workers by the bourgeoisie, institutions of a hostile class, of the
exploiting minority.
The Soviets are the direct organisation of the working and exploited
people themselves, which helps them to organise and administer their
own state in every possible way. And in this it is the vanguard of the
working and exploited people, the urban proletariat, that enjoys the
advantage of being best united by the large enterprises; it is easier for it
than for all others to elect and exercise control over those elected. The
Soviet form of organisation automatically helps to unite all the working
and exploited people around their vanguard, the proletariat. The old
bourgeois apparatus—the bureaucracy, the privileges of wealth, of
bourgeois education, of social connections, etc. (these real privileges are
the more varied the more highly bourgeois democracy is developed)—all
this disappears under the Soviet form of organisation. Freedom of the
press ceases to be hypocrisy, because the printing-plants and stocks of
paper are taken away from the bourgeoisie. The same thing applies to the
best buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manorhouses. Soviet power
took thousands upon thousands of these best buildings from the exploiters
at one stroke, and in this way made the right of assembly—without which
democracy is a fraud—a million times more democratic for the people.
Indirect elections to non-local Soviets make it easier to hold congresses of
Soviets, they make the entire apparatus less costly, more flexible, more
accessible to the workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and
it is necessary to be able very quickly to recall one’s local deputy or to
delegate him to a general congress of Soviets.
Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any
bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic
than the most democratic bourgeois republic.
Is there a single country in the world, even among the most
democratic bourgeois countries, in which the average rank-and-file
worker, the average rank-and-file farm labourer, or village semiproletarian generally (i.e., the representative of the oppressed, of the
overwhelming majority of the population), enjoys anything approaching
such liberty of holding meetings in the best buildings, such liberty of using
the largest printing-plants and biggest stocks of paper to express his ideas
and to defend his interests, such liberty of promoting men and women of
his own class to administer and to “knock into shape” the state, as in
Soviet Russia?
In Russia, however, the bureaucratic machine has been completely
smashed, razed to the ground; the old judges have all been sent packing,
the bourgeois parliament has been dispersed—and far more accessible
representation has been given to the workers and peasants; their Soviets
have replaced the bureaucrats, or their Soviets have been put in control of
the bureaucrats, and their Soviets have been authorised to elect the
judges. This fact alone is enough for all the oppressed classes to recognise
that Soviet power, i.e., the present form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, is a million times more democratic than the most democratic
bourgeois republic.
If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters inevitably
transform the state (and we are speaking of democracy, i.e., one of the
forms of the state) into an instrument of the rule of their class, the
exploiters, over the exploited. Hence, as long as there are exploiters who
rule the majority, the exploited, the democratic state must inevitably be a
democracy for the exploiters. A state of the exploited must fundamentally
differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, “and a
means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class
means inequality for that class, its exclusion from “democracy”.
If we argue in a liberal way, we must say: the majority decides, the
minority submits. Those who do not submit are punished. That is all.
Nothing need be said about the class character of the state in general, or
of “pure democracy” in particular, because it is irrelevant; for a majority is
a majority and a minority is a minority. A pound of flesh is a pound of
flesh, and that is all there is to it.
Why do we need a dictatorship when we have a majority? And Marx and
Engels explain:
—to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie;
—to inspire the reactionaries with fear;
—to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie;
—that the proletariat may forcibly hold down its adversaries.
Another truth: there can be no real, actual equality until all
possibility of the exploitation of one class by another has been totally
destroyed.
For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue
to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money
(since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable
property—often fairly considerable; they still have various connections,
habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the “secrets”
(customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior
education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live
and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art
of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire
historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish
the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration.
After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters—who had not
expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the
thought of it—throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious
passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery
of the “paradise”, of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families,
who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the
“common herd” is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to “common”
labour . . .).
The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of
dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and,
consequently, the infringement of “pure democracy”, i.e., of equality and
freedom, in regard to that class.
The Soviets are the Russian form of the proletarian dictatorship.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
First Published: February 1848
Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137
Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels,
1888
(Extracts)
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the
powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this
spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and
German police-spies.
The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a
word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of
society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have
patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters,
journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of
oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has
simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved
the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to
communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of
industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same
proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background
every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of
development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding
political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an
armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban
republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in
France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or
the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the
great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern
Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State,
exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing
the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his
“natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of
egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom
— Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has
substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to
with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of
science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the
family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production,
and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first
condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with
their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed
ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy
is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life,
and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the
entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions
everywhere.
Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of
exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic
means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer
able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by
his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce
is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against
modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are
the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is
enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return
put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time
more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing
products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are
periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that,
in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of
over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of
momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of
devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;
industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is
too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry,
too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no
longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois
property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these
conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome
these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society,
endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned
against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also
called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class —
the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the
proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so
long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital.
These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other
article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all
the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman.
He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous,
and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a
workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for
maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore
also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness
of the work increases, the wage decreases.
The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and
peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because
their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern
Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large
capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by
new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all
classes of the population
with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases
in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength
grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and
conditions of life within the ranks of the…
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