IN THE FIFTH chapter of The State and Revolution, Lenin still extensively focuses on a critique of the Gotha program, before approaching the issue of the withering-away of the state and the first phase of communism. At first, this long introduction seems different and less effortless in the context of the economy of his debate, but it is not so. In fact, this discussion is necessary for him to link again the issue of the withering-away of the state with its materialist dimension, which entails an assault on and destruction of the law of value, or, rather, its exasperation and overcoming. His critique of the state is also a critique of socialism.
Lenin begins with the scientific, materialist presentation of the problem at the heart of it:
The whole theory of Marx is the application of the theory of development—in its most consistent, complete, considered and pithy form—to modern capitalism. Naturally, Marx was faced with the problem of applying this theory both to the forthcoming collapse of capitalism and to the future development of future communism. On the basis of what facts, then, can the question of the future development of future communism be dealt with? On the basis of the fact that it has its origin in capitalism, that it develops historically from capitalism, that it is the result of the action of a social force to which capitalism gave birth.1
Therefore, the issue of the transition from capitalism to socialism must be framed in the context of an investigation of the material basis of the transition, by which we mean the dialectics of class relations. Here we perceive an ambiguity: this dialectics, so long as it functions, serves as mediation between the capitalist ability to produce and reproduce capital and the labor force that is dialectically internal to it and thus also capable of presenting itself as an antagonistic force. Therefore, material basis also means revolutionary subject, where the latter is produced as such by capitalist development but is also its spring and core, unless it manages to express its will to make this development hegemonic in antagonism and to push it to the threshold of the revolutionary leap by means of struggle. So long as this does not happen, so long as the labor force inhabits the capital relation (whatever power relation it establishes with command and the organization of capitalist accumulation), so long as accumulation is not interrupted and the working class is not freed from capital, there can be no communism. The hegemony of development is not liberation from development at this stage. Here, one could define the phase where Lenin sees the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat as one of working-class hegemony over development. But a series of problems arises at this point, and we need to confront them immediately. The working-class hegemony over development means socialism, that is to say, the main rules of the capitalist process of production and reproduction are sustained, and to them a criterion of equality and the establishment of the political forms of “democracy” are added (as Lenin observed) because they affirm the dictatorship of the majority of the people (the proletariat) over all other social strata and classes. It is important to note that here socialism means development, and development refers to the capitalist mode of production, the law of value, the proletariat as the basis of the potential and eventual but future communist society. Marx and Lenin are aware of this conditioning of the material basis, which leads them to introduce a particular notion of transition from capitalism to communism.
The realism of Marx’s and Lenin’s analyses leads them to regard the transitory phase as necessarily dominated by the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and as a socialist phase too. Rightly so, because the historical framework in which they both live is one where there must be a long phase of development of capitalism and an affirmation of socialism as hegemony over development and democracy of labor. But this historical framework was never overcome in Marx or Lenin in terms of a political proposal, while it was overcome from the standpoint of a theoretical forecasting of a further phase where communism can develop in synchrony with the paces and forms of struggle, adequate to the structure of workers’ needs as they emerge in struggles, and thus represent the definitive revolutionizing of the conditions of production. In other words, affirmation and critique of socialism go hand in hand in both Marx and Lenin, and cannot but be joined. Similarly, affirmation and critique of the dictatorship of the proletariat go together (and can only go together), just as, when we started discussing the material basis, we could not disjoin the affirmation of development from the identification of a revolutionary subject against the development of capital. Undoubtedly, Marx and Lenin are correct in this analysis of the situation. In fact, the overall condition of the relations of production and of the forces of production, in the absence of a workers’ figure capable of overcoming the limits of professionalism and thus of the concrete relation with fixed capital, made it impossible to forecast a different outcome. A different and politically potential outcome could only emerge when the social unification of the proletariat in terms of abstract labor and the affirmation of a mass productivity through the collective homogeneous practice of the proletariat became the material basis of production. We will return to this later. In Lenin we inevitably see this problem expressed as one of the discrepancy and lack of homogeneity between the communist urge for liberation and the effective possibility of building a socialist state. It is absolutely crucial for this to happen. The State and Revolution is the text of communist restlessness. Socialism is not enough; on the contrary, it is a situation that is as necessary as it is necessary to overcome it. Lenin is fully aware of this and we can find the same awareness in every perceptive proletarian theory, because the transition continues to be a situation of struggle. So long as this bourgeois state exists, whether or not the bourgeoisie is the dominant subject, whether or not its rules are pushed to turn into rules of equality and norms against bourgeois domination, the situation is still absolutely dramatic.
After Lenin, both Stalin and Mao2 interpreted and described, in a manner that was theoretically correct, the situation, and they emphasized the possibility (and necessity?) of an intensification of the struggle between classes in a period of transition. This effectively seems to correspond to the experience of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat far more than do the gradualist and reformist versions offered by other theories and practices. Maoist theory in particular advances on these premises correctly by articulating a framework of the contradictions of the phase of transition that follows the seizure of power and regulating its contents; in the period of the cultural revolution, it finally and genially overturned the terms in which Stalinism had posited and failed to solve the question of the deepening of class struggle and therefore of the state’s resolve against the bourgeois class with the bureaucratic distortions of revolutionary development: the Chinese Communist Party launched the struggle of the masses against the state and completely opened up the revolutionary process to a process of reappropriation of the proletariat’s capacities for leadership again.3 These are very different images from the sweet pictures painted by other theories and practices of the phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its relation with the first experiences of the withering-away of the state. It is very important in this respect to recall the Yugoslav Councils’ theory, also for the unfair destiny it had to face. In this theory, the intensification of class struggle is mystified, and the function of the working class is denied and drawn into the people, with no distinction between the particularity of proletarian interests and the general interests of society.4 Similar theories emerge everywhere in the climate of the betrayal of Leninism and of the triumph of renewed capitalist practices in so-called socialist countries.5 The freedom and spontaneity of the process is opposed to the harshness of class struggle; in Lenin’s words, “the expression ‘the state withers away’ is very well-chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process.”6
This is pure mystification: when Lenin insists on these expressions, he insists on the simplicity and easiness of the shift, and we find plenty of similar statements in the second paragraph of the fifth chapter. But we must be careful when interpreting them because they in no way replace the harsh need for a dictatorship of the proletariat and workers’ command. When Lenin confronts these issues, he is always considering the discontinuity of the process between the rupture of the bourgeois state machine, the seizure of leadership, and then, starting from this, the actualization of the material conditions for the withering-away of the state form itself. Lenin insists on this discontinuity, and we must see it as a definitive feature of his theory. Neglecting this discontinuity means falling into the great mess of theories that see the upsurge of spontaneity as continuity and the withering-away of the state as something caused by the proletarian seizure of power. These theories of the continuity of struggle, the seizure of power, and the phase of dictatorship and withering-away of the state present the idealist and utopian image of a march forward and fail to see the real process of building communism, that is, the fact that the withering-away of the state only goes through the determination (and the struggle for the determination) of favorable and mature material conditions.
What are these conditions in Lenin’s program? In the third paragraph of the fifth chapter, Lenin clarifies his point of view; but before coming to these, let us read two passages that reinstate the concepts we have underlined here and introduce our discussion on the material bases:
No, forward development, i.e., towards Communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way. And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the very first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the moneybags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists.7
And he goes on to write: “Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to Communism.”8
So far so good: proletarian violence discriminates and attacks its adversaries, annihilating the formal criteria of bourgeois democracy; this occurs in the first phase, the phase of destruction. But this is not enough—communism is difficult and class struggle intensifies:
Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to Communism suppression is still necessary; but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the “state,” is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state; it is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage laborers, and it will cost mankind far less.9
In fact, our historical experience has shown how horrible and tragic the repressive conditions of this shift can be, but we cannot forget the place of this writing in the great wave of the revolution of 1917, and we cannot deny that it is animated by great enthusiasm and the feeling that an objective was within reach. However, even from such optimism, it cannot be deduced that there is an organic continuity in the process. Being realistic, we would be better off remembering the miserable and tragic outcomes of many failed experiences than pretending they are irrelevant to the workers’ perspective. If nothing else, because capital makes us pay with our own for every failed experience and every betrayal of the international workers’ movement.
What material conditions make the transition to communism possible? In what way does the proletarian hegemony over development determine these conditions so that a communist society can be born? In my view, the third paragraph of this chapter ought to be read in full:
In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx goes into detail to disprove Lassalle’s idea that under socialism the worker will receive the “undiminished” or “full product of his labor.” Marx shows that from the whole of the social labor of society there must be deducted a reserve fund, a fund for the expansion of production, a fund for the replacement of the “wear and tear” of machinery, and so on. Then, from the means of consumption must be deducted a fund for administrative expenses, for schools, hospitals, old people’s homes, and so on.10
Basically, Marx insists on the absolute need to draw a surplus from the labor supplied. This surplus must be directed toward the costs of reproduction of capital and labor force. Even on pure accounting grounds, Lassalle’s theory of socialism (as an integral revenue for the worker) does not work. However, this initial reasoning only touches on the substance of the problem. Lenin continues:
It is this communist society, which has just emerged into the light of day out of the womb of capitalism and which is in every respect stamped with the birthmarks of the old society, that Marx terms the “first,” or lower, phase of communist society. The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it. “Equality” apparently reigns supreme. But when Lassalle, having in view such a social order (usually called socialism, but termed by Marx the first phase of communism), says that this is “equitable distribution,” that this is “the equal right of all to an equal product of labor,” Lassalle is mistaken and Marx exposes the mistake. “Hence, the equal right,” says Marx, in this case still certainly conforms to “bourgeois law,” which, like all law, implies inequality. All law is an application of an equal measure to different people who in fact are not alike, are not equal to one another. That is why the “equal right” is violation of equality and an injustice. In fact, everyone, having performed as much social labor as another, receives an equal share of the social product (after the above-mentioned deductions). But people are not alike: one is strong, another is weak; one is married, another is not; one has more children, another has less, and so on. And the conclusion Marx draws is: “… With an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, the right instead of being equal would have to be unequal.” The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality; differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production—the factories, machines, land, etc.—and make them private property. In smashing Lassalle’s petty-bourgeois, vague phrases about “equality” and “justice” in general, Marx shows the course of development of communist society, which is compelled to abolish at first only the “injustice” of the means of production seized by individuals, and which is unable at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of consumer goods “according to the amount of labor performed” (and not according to needs). The vulgar economists, including the bourgeois professors and “our” Tugan, constantly reproach the socialists with forgetting the inequality of people and with “dreaming” of eliminating this inequality. Such a reproach, as we see, only proves the extreme ignorance of the bourgeois ideologists. Marx not only most scrupulously takes account of the inevitable inequality of men, but he also takes into account the fact that the mere conversion of the means of production into the common property of the whole society (commonly called “socialism”) does not remove the defects of distribution and the inequality of “bourgeois laws” which continues to prevail so long as products are divided “according to the amount of labor performed.” Continuing, Marx says: “But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged, after prolonged birth pangs, from capitalist society. Law can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.” And so, in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism) “bourgeois law” is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect of the means of production. “Bourgeois law” recognizes them as the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common property. To that extent—and to that extent alone—“bourgeois law” disappears. However, it persists as far as its other part is concerned; it persists in the capacity of regulator (determining factor) in the distribution of products and the allotment of labor among the members of society. The socialist principle, “He who does not work shall not eat,” is already realized; the other socialist principle, “An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor,” is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish “bourgeois law,” which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. This is a “defect,” says Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law. Besides, the abolition of capitalism does not immediately create the economic prerequisites for such a change. Now, there are no other rules than those of “bourgeois law.” To this extent, therefore, there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labor and in the distribution of products. The state withers away insofar as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class can be suppressed. But the state has not yet completely withered away, since the still remains the safeguarding of “bourgeois law,” which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.11
No commentary on the understanding of the text and the consistency of its premises is needed.12 But a first difficulty confronts us here, if we wish to interpret The State and Revolution in contemporary terms, and it is the same difficulty we find reading Marxian and Leninist texts. The problem is that we are faced with an entirely different situation from that in which they raise these question, especially when it comes to the law of value or the rule of equality; their function has changed because the socialization of production has changed; and the transformation of the relation between overall labor force and machinery has changed with the emergence, already under a capitalist regime, of a new generic productivity of capitalist labor, a new general productivity of social labor that can no longer be measured in terms of effectively supplied labor. In the Grundrisse Marx had already identified this situation as it developed within the most advanced capitalism;13 there he defined as “miserable” the calculation relative to the labor supplied when compared with a capital that defines its reproduction no longer in a determinate relationship with single labor, but with the overall social force of production. When it comes to abstract labor, abstracted from its concrete determinations, Lassalle’s idea is no longer even plausible. What interests us, however, is that Marx’s and Lenin’s idea of the state as a bourgeois state and the hypothesis of the possibility, for the proletariat, of appropriating the bourgeois state and using its laws and norms to manage the dictatorship of the proletariat no longer hold. In fact, the bourgeois state no longer exists, in the terms in which Marx and Lenin described it, as a state that applies the laws of the market, the—materially defined—rule of the wage of the exchange between labor power and revenue. Insofar as every relation between individual labor and total mass of products disappears, the classical rule of bourgeois law as one founded on the exchange of wage labor and exchange as it links to the law of value also disappears. What state are we confronted with today, then? A state where the dictatorship of capital is infinitely stronger and more developed than could be seen in the classical bourgeois state; a state where the rule of wage distribution is no longer based on the interchange between labor power and capital, but on the internal organization of the need to reproduce this command, here simply consisting in a rational hierarchy of functions intended for the perpetuation of domination. But while the situation has made the state in general more monstrous and stronger, the state must also allow for the presence of some of the fundamental conditions for the transition to communism and the revolutionary socialization of the proletariat.
From this standpoint, Lenin’s text must be further investigated. In the following paragraph Lenin insists that “so long as the state exists there is no freedom.”14 We are far from the social democratic ideology here, very far from any reformist mystification. Militant and revolutionary communism verifies anarchism: “When there will be freedom, there will be no state.”15 And, again, the power of the program invests and transforms workers’ needs, translating them into projects:
The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high stage of development of Communism that the antithesis between mental and physical labour disappears, when there, consequently, disappears one of the principal sources of modern social inequality—a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists. This expropriation will create the possibility of an enormous development of the productive forces. And when we see how incredibly capitalism is already retarding this development, when we see how much progress could be achieved on the basis of the level of technique now already attained, we are entitled to say with the fullest confidence that the expropriation of the capitalists will inevitably result in an enormous development of the productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this development will proceed, how soon it will reach the point of breaking away from the division of labour, of doing away with the antithesis between mental and physical labour, of transforming labour into “the prime necessity of life”—we do not and cannot know.16
The first condition for this chance to massively develop the productive forces is the abolition of the division between intellectual and manual labor. The second condition is the development of the productive forces, because expropriation alone will already pave the way for a giant quantitative development of the productive forces, which capital is slowing down. The third material condition (included in the first and second affirmation) is the potential qualitative change implicit in the development of the productive forces, which is a socially unified transformation of its effects, given that the product of labor is already presented as associated labor, as manual, physical, and intellectual labor. Only on this premises can the problem of the withering-away of the state become a real one. We have a first definition of the material bases that need to be built in order to wither away the state, and only from this point on can Lenin conceive of the dissolution of the dictatorship.
In our times, this part of Lenin’s analysis must be accepted, and we will start from it to see what has changed. That is to say, in what sense has the development pushed by struggles, this history of the workers’ dictatorship as we have recorded it in recent years, before the formal and state dictatorship of the workers, already radically changed the conditions for a shift to communism? In what sense are the questions of insurrection and dictatorship today relevant to those who look at the question of the withering-away of the state?
NOTES
1. Lenin, The State and Revolution, trans. S. Apresyan and J. Ryordan, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 25:100.
2. J. V. Stalin dwells on the issue of the contradictions of the phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the writings collected in Problems of Leninism (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1976). His views were taken up and corrected in the practice and theory of the Chinese Communist Party.
3. Many are the writings on the Cultural Revolution in China, but it is not important to point to them here: we are more interested in the political significance of the echo of the Chinese experience in the European proletariat.
4. The Yugoslav theory of Councils and its suggested alternatives of transition are some of the most vulgar products of “socialist” theory since the World War II.
5. “Socialism with a human face” and other similar formulas are a revisionist and liberal ideology (in bureaucratic terms, obviously) spreading in popular democracies and, in lesser numbers, in the Soviet Union. Capitalist restoration and demagogy are both features of this ideology.
6. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 25:106.
12. For a bibliography on transition and a comment on Marx’s writings on it, see D. Zolo, La teoria comunista dell’estinzione dello stato [The communist theory of the withering-away of the state] (Bari: De Donato, 1974).
13. For an analysis of this issue, see lesson 24 in this book.
14. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 25:114.
