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From: liljoe.radical@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 16:29:53 -0800
Subject: [laborpartypraxis] Re [Mwananchi] Another Failed State?
Let us being with the most popular of Engels' works, The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State, the sixth edition of which was published in
Stuttgart as far back as 1894. We have to translate the quotations from the
German originals, as the Russian translations, while very numerous, are for the
most part either incomplete or very unsatisfactory.
Summing up his historical analysis, Engels says:
“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without;
just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the image and reality
of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain
stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled
in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable
antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these
antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not
consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to
have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the
conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and this power, arisen out of
society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from
it, is the state." (Pp.177-78, sixth edition)[1]
This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the
historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a
manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises
where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled.
And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms
are irreconcilable.
It is on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion of
Marxism, proceeding along two main lines, begins.
On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois,
ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to
admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class
struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an
organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could
neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile
classes. From what the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists
say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it appears that the
state does reconcile classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class
rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of
“order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the
conflict between classes. In the opinion of the petty-bourgeois politicians,
however, order means the reconciliation of classes, and not the oppression of
one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means reconciling classes and
not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to
overthrow the oppressors.
For instance, when, in the revolution of 1917, the question of the significance
and role of the state arose in all its magnitude as a practical question
demanding immediate action, and, moreover, action on a mass scale, all the
Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks descended at once to the petty-bourgeois
theory that the “state” “reconciles” classes. Innumerable resolutions and
articles by politicians of both these parties are thoroughly saturated with this
petty-bourgeois and philistine “reconciliation” theory. That the state is an
organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its
antipode (the class opposite to it) is something the petty-bourgeois democrats
will never be able to understand. Their attitude to the state is one of the most
striking manifestations of the fact that our Socialist- Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks are not socialists at all (a point that we Bolsheviks have always
maintained), but petty-bourgeois democrats using near-socialist phraseology.
On the other hand, the “Kautskyite” distortion of Marxism is far more subtle.
“Theoretically”, it is not denied that the state is an organ of class rule, or
that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or glossed
over is this: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class
antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and “alienating itself more
and more from it", it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is
impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the
destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling
class and which is the embodiment of this “alienation”. As we shall see later,
Marx very explicitly drew this theoretically self-evident conclusion on the
strength of a concrete historical analysis of the tasks of the revolution. And —
as we shall show in detail further on — it is this conclusion which Kautsky has
“forgotten” and distorted.
2. Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc.
Engels continues:
“As distinct from the old gentile [tribal or clan] order,[2] the state, first,
divides its subjects according to territory...."
This division seems “natural” to us, but it costs a prolonged struggle against
the old organization according to generations or tribes.
“The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power which
no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed
force. This special, public power is necessary because a self-acting armed
organization of the population has become impossible since the split into
classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of
armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion
of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing...."
Engels elucidates the concept of the “power” which is called the state, a power
which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more
and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special
bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command.
We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public
power which is an attribute of every state “does not directly coincide” with the
armed population, with its “self-acting armed organization".
Like all great revolutionary thinkers, Engels tries to draw the attention of the
class-conscious workers to what prevailing philistinism regards as least worthy
of attention, as the most habitual thing, hallowed by prejudices that are not
only deep-rooted but, one might say, petrified. A standing army and police are
the chief instruments of state power. But how can it be otherwise?
From the viewpoint of the vast majority of Europeans of the end of the 19th
century, whom Engels was addressing, and who had not gone through or closely
observed a single great revolution, it could not have been otherwise. They could
not understand at all what a “self-acting armed organization of the population”
was. When asked why it became necessary to have special bodies of armed men
placed above society and alienating themselves from it (police and a standing
army), the West-European and Russian philistines are inclined to utter a few
phrases borrowed from Spencer of Mikhailovsky, to refer to the growing
complexity of social life, the differentiation of functions, and so on.
Such a reference seems “scientific”, and effectively lulls the ordinary person
to sleep by obscuring the important and basic fact, namely, the split of society
into irreconcilable antagonistic classes.
Were it not for this split, the “self-acting armed organization of the
population” would differ from the primitive organization of a stick-wielding
herd of monkeys, or of primitive men, or of men united in clans, by its
complexity, its high technical level, and so on. But such an organization would
still be possible.
It is impossible because civilized society is split into antagonistic, and,
moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic classes, whose “self-acting” arming would
lead to an armed struggle between them. A state arises, a special power is
created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the
state apparatus, shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the
ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it,
and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind,
capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters.
In the above argument, Engels raises theoretically the very same question which
every great revolution raises before us in practice, palpably and, what is more,
on a scale of mass action, namely, the question of the relationship between
“special” bodies of armed men and the “self-acting armed organization of the
population". We shall see how this question is specifically illustrated by the
experience of the European and Russian revolutions.
But to return to Engel's exposition.
He points out that sometimes — in certain parts of North America, for example —
this public power is weak (he has in mind a rare exception in capitalist
society, and those parts of North America in its pre-imperialist days where the
free colonists predominated), but that, generally speaking, it grows stronger:
“It [the public power] grows stronger, however, in proportion as class
antagonisms within the state become more acute, and as adjacent states become
larger and more populous. We have only to look at our present-day Europe, where
class struggle and rivalry in conquest have tuned up the public power to such a
pitch that it threatens to swallow the whole of society and even the state."
This was written not later than the early nineties of the last century, Engel's
last preface being dated June 16, 1891. The turn towards imperialism — meaning
the complete domination of the trusts, the omnipotence of the big banks, a
grand-scale colonial policy, and so forth — was only just beginning in France,
and was even weaker in North America and in Germany. Since then “rivalry in
conquest” has taken a gigantic stride, all the more because by the beginning of
the second decade of the 20th century the world had been completely divided up
among these “rivals in conquest", i.e., among the predatory Great Powers. Since
then, military and naval armaments have grown fantastically and the predatory
war of 1914-17 for the domination of the world by Britain or Germany, for the
division of the spoils, has brought the “swallowing” of all the forces of
society by the rapacious state power close to complete catastrophe.
Engels' could, as early as 1891, point to “rivalry in conquest" as one of the
most important distinguishing features of the foreign policy of the Great
Powers, while the social-chauvinist scoundrels have ever since 1914, when this
rivalry, many time intensified, gave rise to an imperialist war, been covering
up the defence of the predatory interests of “their own" bourgeoisie with
phrases about “defence of the fatherland", “defence of the republic and the
revolution", etc.!
3. The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class
The maintenance of the special public power standing above society requires
taxes and state loans.
“Having pubic power and the right to levy taxes,” Engels writes, “the officials
now stand, as organs of society, above society. The free, voluntary respect that
was accorded to the organs of the gentile [clan] constitution does not satisfy
them, even if they could gain it....” Special laws are enacted proclaiming the
sanctity and immunity of the officials. “The shabbiest police servant” has more
“authority” than the representative of the clan, but even the head of the
military power of a civilized state may well envy the elder of a clan the
“unrestrained respect” of society.
The question of the privileged position of the officials as organs of state
power is raised here. The main point indicated is: what is it that places them
above society? We shall see how this theoretical question was answered in
practice by the Paris Commune in 1871 and how it was obscured from a reactionary
standpoint by kautsky in 1912.
“Because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but
because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these
classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant
class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically
dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the
oppressed class....” The ancient and feudal states were organs for the
exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, “the modern representative state
is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital. By way of exception,
however, periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other so nearly
that the state power as ostensible mediator acquires, for the moment, a certain
degree of independence of both....” Such were the absolute monarchies of the
17th and 18th centuries, the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires in
France, and the Bismarck regime in Germany.
Such, we may add, is the Kerensky government in republican Russia since it began
to persecute the revolutionary proletariat, at a moment when, owing to the
leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats, the Soviets have already become
impotent, while the bourgeoisie are not yet strong enough simply to disperse
them.
In a democratic republic, Engels continues, “wealth exercises its power
indirectly, but all the more surely", first, by means of the “direct corruption
of officials” (America); secondly, by means of an “alliance of the government
and the Stock Exchange" (France and America).
At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have “developed” into an
exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving effect to the
omnipotence of wealth in democratic republics of all descriptions. Since, for
instance, in the very first months of the Russian democratic republic, one might
say during the honeymoon of the “socialist” S.R.s and Mensheviks joined in
wedlock to the bourgeoisie, in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky
obstructed every measure intended for curbing the capitalists and their
marauding practices, their plundering of the state by means of war contracts;
and since later on Mr. Palchinsky, upon resigning from the Cabinet (and being,
of course, replaced by another quite similar Palchinsky), was “rewarded” by the
capitalists with a lucrative job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per annum —
what would you call that? Direct or indirect bribery? An alliance of the
government and the syndicates, or “merely” friendly relations? What role do the
Chernovs, Tseretelis, Avksentyevs and Skobelevs play? Are they the “direct” or
only the indirect allies of the millionaire treasury-looters?
Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic
republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on
the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best
possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained
possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs,
Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no
change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic
can shake it.
We must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage as
well an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, obviously
taking account of the long experience of German Social-Democracy, is
“the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be
anything more in the present-day state."
The petty-bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the social-chauvinists and
opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this “more” from universal suffrage.
They themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion
that universal suffrage “in the present-day state" is really capable of
revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its
realization.
Here, we can only indicate this false notion, only point out that Engels'
perfectly clear statement is distorted at every step in the propaganda and
agitation of the “official” (i.e., opportunist) socialist parties. A detailed
exposure of the utter falsity of this notion which engels brushes aside here is
given in our further account of the views of Marx and Engels on the
“present-day” state.
Engels gives a general summary of his views in the most popular of his works in
the following words:
“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies
that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain
stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of
society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split. We are
now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the
existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will
become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as they arose at an
earlier stage. Along with them 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
a museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe."
We do not often come across this passage in the propaganda and agitation
literature of the present-day Social-Democrats. Even when we do come across it,
it is mostly quoted in the same manner as one bows before an icon, i.e., it is
done to show official respect for Engels, and no attempt is made to gauge the
breadth and depth of the revolution that this relegating of “the whole machinery
of state to a museum of antiquities” implies. In most cases we do not even find
an understanding of what Engels calls the state machine.
4. The “Withering Away” of the State, and Violent Revolution
Engel's words regarding the “withering away” of the state are so widely known,
they are often quoted, and so clearly reveal the essence of the customary
adaptation of Marxism to opportunism that we must deal with them in detail. We
shall quote the whole argument from which they are taken.
“The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into
state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the
proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and
abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class
antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular
exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production,
and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited
class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production
(slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official
representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible
corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class
which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient
times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal
nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real
representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon
as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as
class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present
anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this
struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing
necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the
state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the
taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also
its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations
becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself.
The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by
the conduct of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers
away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free people's state',
both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of
view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called
anarchists' demand that the state be abolished overnight." (Herr Eugen Duhring's
Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03, third German edition.)[3]
It is safe to say that of this argument of Engels', which is so remarkably rich
in ideas, only one point has become an integral part of socialist thought among
modern socialist parties, namely, that according to Marx that state “withers
away” — as distinct from the anarchist doctrine of the “abolition” of the state.
To prune Marxism to such an extent means reducing it to opportunism, for this
“interpretation” only leaves a vague notion of a slow, even, gradual change, of
absence of leaps and storms, of absence of revolution. The current, widespread,
popular, if one may say so, conception of the “withering away" of the state
undoubtedly means obscuring, if not repudiating, revolution.
Such an “interpretation”, however, is the crudest distortion of Marxism,
advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. In point of theory, it is based on
disregard for the most important circumstances and considerations indicated in,
say, Engels' “summary” argument we have just quoted in full.
In the first place, at the very outset of his argument, Engels says that, in
seizing state power, the proletariat thereby “abolishes the state as state". It
is not done to ponder over over the meaning of this. Generally, it is either
ignored altogether, or is considered to be something in the nature of “Hegelian
weakness” on Engels' part. As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly
express the experience of one of the greatest proletarian revolutions, the Paris
Commune of 1871, of which we shall speak in greater detail in its proper place.
As a matter of fact, Engels speaks here of the proletariat revolution
“abolishing” the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away
refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution.
According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not “wither away", but is
“abolished” by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers
away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state.
Secondly, the state is a “special coercive force". Engels gives this splendid
and extremely profound definition here with the utmost lucidity. And from it
follows that the “special coercive force” for the suppression of the proletariat
by the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must
be replaced by a “special coercive force” for the suppression of the bourgeoisie
by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is precisely what
is meant by “abolition of the state as state". This is precisely the “act” of
taking possession of the means of production in the name of society. And it is
self-evident that such a replacement of one (bourgeois) “special force” by
another (proletarian) “special force” cannot possibly take place in the form of
“withering away".
Thirdly, in speaking of the state “withering away", and the even more graphic
and colorful “dying down of itself", Engels refers quite clearly and definitely
to the period after “the state has taken possession of the means of production
in the name of the whole of society", that is, after the socialist revolution.
We all know that the political form of the “state” at that time is the most
complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the opportunists, who
shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is consequently speaking here of
democracy “dying down of itself", or “withering away". This seems very strange
at first sight. But is is “incomprehensible” only to those who have not thought
about democracy also being a state and, consequently, also disappearing when the
state disappears. Revolution alone can “abolish” the bourgeois state. The state
in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only “wither away".
Fourthly, after formulating his famous proposition that “the state withers
away", Engels at once explains specifically that this proposition is directed
against both the opportunists and the anarchists. In doing this, Engels puts in
the forefront that conclusion, drawn from the proposition that “the state
withers away", which is directed against the opportunists.
One can wager that out of every 10,000 persons who have read or heard about the
“withering away” of the state, 9,990 are completely unaware, or do not remember,
that Engels directed his conclusions from that proposition not against
anarchists alone. And of the remaining 10, probably nine do not know the meaning
of a “free people's state” or why an attack on this slogan means an attack on
opportunists. This is how history is written! This is how a great revolutionary
teaching is imperceptibly falsified and adapted to prevailing philistinism. The
conclusion directed against the anarchists has been repeated thousands of times;
it has been vulgarized, and rammed into people's heads in the shallowest form,
and has acquired the strength of a prejudice, whereas the conclusion directed
against the opportunists has been obscured and “forgotten”!
The “free people's state” was a programme demand and a catchword current among
the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. this catchword is devoid of all
political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous
philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a
democratic republic, Engels was prepared to “justify” its use “for a time” from
an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it
amounted to something more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also
failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in
favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat
under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of
the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every
state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class.
Consequently, every state is not “free” and not a “people's state". Marx and
Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies.
Fifthly, the same work of Engels', whose arguments about the withering away of
the state everyone remembers, also contains an argument of the significance of
violent revolution. Engels' historical analysis of its role becomes a veritable
panegyric on violent revolution. This, “no one remembers". It is not done in
modern socialist parties to talk or even think about the significance of this
idea, and it plays no part whatever in their daily propaganda and agitation
among the people. And yet it is inseparably bound up with the 'withering away"
of the state into one harmonious whole.
Here is Engels' argument:
“...That force, however, plays yet another role [other than that of a diabolical
power] in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the
midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one, that it is the
instrument with which social movement forces its way through and shatters the
dead, fossilized political forms — of this there is not a word in Herr Duhring.
It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will
perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economy based on exploitation —
unfortunately, because all use of force demoralizes, he says, the person who
uses it. And this in Germany, where a violent collision — which may, after all,
be forced on the people — would at least have the advantage of wiping out the
servility which has penetrated the nation's mentality following the humiliation
of the Thirty Years' War.[4] And this person's mode of thought — dull, insipid,
and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary party that
history has ever known! (p.193, third German edition, Part II, end of Chap.IV)
How can this panegyric on violent revolution, which Engels insistently brought
to the attention of the German Social-Democrats between 1878 and 1894, i.e.,
right up to the time of his death, be combined with the theory of the 'withering
away" of the state to form a single theory?
Usually the two are combined by means of eclecticism, by an unprincipled or
sophistic selection made arbitrarily (or to please the powers that be) of first
one, then another argument, and in 99 cases out of 100, if not more, it is the
idea of the “withering away” that is placed in the forefront. Dialectics are
replaced by eclecticism — this is the most usual, the most wide-spread practice
to be met with in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation
to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it was
observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In falsifying
Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics
is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction;
it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of
development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it
provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social
development at all.
We have already said above, and shall show more fully later, that the theory of
Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the
bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the
dictatorship of the proletariat) through the process of 'withering away", but,
as a general rule, only through a violent revolution. The panegyric Engels sang
in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx's repeated statements (see the
concluding passages of The Poverty of Philosophy[5] and the Communist
Manifesto,[6] with their proud and open proclamation of the inevitability of a
violent revolution; see what Marx wrote nearly 30 years later, in criticizing
the Gotha Programme of 1875,[7] when he mercilessly castigated the opportunist
character of that programme) — this panegyric is by no means a mere “impulse”, a
mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of systematically imbuing
the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the
root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by
the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself
strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation.
The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible
without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of
the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering
away".
A detailed and concrete elaboration of these views was given by Marx and Engels
when they studied each particular revolutionary situation, when they analyzed
the lessons of the experience of each particular revolution. We shall now pass
to this, undoubtedly the most important, part of their theory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnotes
[1] See Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1973, pp.
326-27).
Further below, on pp. 393-95, 395-99 of the volume, Lenin is quoting from the
same work by Engels (op. cit., pp. 327-30).
[2] Gentile, or tribal, organisation of society-the primitive communal system,
or the first socio-economic formation in history. The tribal commune was a
community of blood relatives linked by economic and social ties. The tribal
system went through the matriarchal and the patriarchal periods. The
patriarchate culminated in primitive society becoming a class society and in the
rise of the state. Relations of production under the primitive communal system
were based on social ownership of the means of production and equalitarian
distribution of all products. This corresponded in the main to the low level of
the productive forces and to their character at the time.
For the primitive communal system, see Karl Marx, Conspectus of Lewis Morgan's
“Ancient Society", and Frederick Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3,
Moscow, 1973, pp. 204-334).
[3] See Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, Moscow, 1969, pp. 332-33.
Further down, on p. 404 of this volume, Lenin is quoting from the same work by
Engels (op. cit., p. 220).
[4] Thirty Years' War (1618-48), the first European war, resulted from an
aggravation of the antagonisms between various alignments of European states,
and took the form of a struggle between Protestants and Catholics. It began with
a revolt in Bohemia against the tyranny of the Hapsburg monarchy and the
onslaught of Catholic reaction. The states which then entered the war formed two
camps. The Pope, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Catholic princes of
Germany, who rallied to the Catholic Church, opposed the Protestant
countries--Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, and a number of German
states that had accepted the Reformation. The Protestant countries were backed
by the French kings, enemies of the Hapsburgs. Germany became the chief
battlefield and object of military plunder and predatory claims. The war ended
in 1648 with the signing of the Peace Treaty of Westphalia, which completed the
political dismemberment of Germany.
[5] See Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1973, pp. 151-52.
[6] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1973, p.
137.
[7] Gotha Programme--the programme adopted by the Socialist Workers' Party of
Germany in 1875, at the Gotha Congress, which united two German socialist
parties, namely, the Eisenachers-led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht and
influenced by Marx and Engcls-and the Lassalleans. The programme betrayed
eclecticism and was opportunist, because the Eisenachers had made concessions to
the Lassalleans on major issues and accepted Lassallean formulations. Marx in
his Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Engels in his letter to Bebel of March
18-28, 11475, devastated the Gotha Programme, which they regarded as a serious
step backwards compared with the Eisenach programme of 1869.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Experience of 1848-51
The State and Revolution Index
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: George Ayittey
Date: Jan 1, 2010 3:52 PM
Subject: [Mwananchi] Another Failed State?
To: Mwananchi@yahoogroups.com
Folks,
Here is a quizz for the New Year. Below is an editorial about a failed state. I
have blocked out the name of the state. See if you can name it. Will provide the
answer tomorrow.
_________________________
xxxxx should be appalled at their failed state government, particularly their
corrupt and clueless Legislature. Scandal and irresponsibility have been xxxxx’s
creed for decades. This year, the gang added another outrage to the list:
complete fiscal incompetence.
The only solace is this: The entire Legislature is up for re-election in 2010.
And unless there is a sudden turnaround — and, so far, we see few signs of it —
xxxxxx have no choice but to vote out all the lawmakers and start over.
_____________________
Can you name which African state is that?
George Ayittey,
Washington, DC
__._,_.___
