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was created by the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this "alienation." As we shall see later, Marx very definitely drew this theoretically self-evident conclusion from a concrete historical analysis of the tasks of the revolution (p. 10). (Note: The inner quotation relative to "alienation" is from Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Chapter IX, Cf. p. 155 of the 1942 International Publishers, N. Y., edition.)

The substitution of the proletarian state for the bourgeois 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" (pp. 21-22).

The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat, as the particular class whose economic conditions of existence train it for this task and provide it with the opportunity and the power to perform it

(p. 25).

The doctrine of the class struggle, as applied by Marx to the question of the state and of the socialist revolution, leads inevitably to the recognition of the political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i. e., of power shared with none and relying directly upon the armed forces of the masses. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming transformed into the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organising all the toiling and exploited masses for the new economic order.

The proletariat needs state power, the centralised organisation of force, the organisation of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population--the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians in the work of organising socialist economy (p. 26).

Marx's theory: "The state, i. e., the proletariat organised as the ruling class," is inseparably bound up with all he taught on the revolutionary role of the proletariat in history. The culmination of this role is the proletarian dictatorship, the political rule of the proletariat (p. 26).

* * * the conclusion is most precise, definite, practical and palpable: all the revolutions which have occurred up to now have helped to perfect the state machine, whereas it must be smashed, broken.

This conclusion is the chief and fundamental thesis in the Marxian doctrine of the state. * * *

*

The Communist Manifesto gives a general summary of history, which compels us to regard the state as the organ of class rule and leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the bourgeoisie without first capturing political power, without attaining political supremacy, without transforming the state into the "proletariat organised as the ruling class"; * * (pp. 27-28). (Note: The "conclusion" to which Lenin refers is expressed in Marx's book, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, ch. VII. Cf. p. 108 of the International Publishers (New York) edition, no date, which was printed in the U. S. S. R.)

A Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of the class struggle to the acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is where the profound difference lies between a Marxist and an ordinary petty (and even big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and acceptance of Marxism should be tested * * * (p. 33).

Marx's idea is that the working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it (p. 36).

The words, to smash the bureaucratic-military state machine," briefly express the principal lesson of Marxism on the tasks of the proletariat in relation to the state during a revolution * * * (p. 37).

The Commune is the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state machine and it constitutes the political form, "at last discovered," which can and must supersede the smashed machine (p. 53).

Democracy for an insignificant majority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society (p. 80).

*

But from this capitalist democracy inevitably narrow, tacitly repelling the poor, and therefore hypocritical and false to the core-development does not proceed simply, smoothly, and directly to "greater and greater democracy,' as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, development-towards communism-proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat; it cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

But the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e., the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage-slavery; their resistance must be broken by force; it is clear that where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy (pp. 80-81).

Democracy is of great importance for the working class in its struggle for freedom against the capitalists. But democracy is by no means a boundary that must not be overstepped; it is only one of the stages in the process of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to communism (p. 91).

* * at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first rallies the proletariat as a revolutionary class against capitalism, and gives it the opportunity to crush, to smash to atoms, to wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and bureaucracy; to substitute for all this a more democratic, but still a state machine in the shape of the armed masses of workers who become transformed into a universal people's militia (pp. 91-92).

As we have seen, Marx wanted to say that the working class must smash, break, blow up (Sprengung the expression used by Engels) the whole state machine. But according to Bernstein it would appear as though Marx in these words warned the working class against excessive revolutionary zeal when seizing power.

A cruder and uglier distortion of Marx's idea cannot be imagined (p. 98). From 1852 to 1891, for 40 years, Marx and Engels taught the proletariat that it must smash the state machine * * * (p. 99).

The workers, having conquered political power, will smash the old bureaucratic apparatus, they will shatter it to its very foundations, they will not leave a single stone of it standing * * (p. 101).

*

* * at was Marx who taught that it is not enough for the proletariat simply to conquer state power in the sense that the old state apparatus passes into new hands, but that the proletariat must smash, break this apparatus and substitute a new one for it.

Kautsky abandons Marxism for the opportunists, because precisely this destruction of the state machine, which is utterly unacceptable to the opportunists, completely disappears from his argument, and he leaves a loophole for them which enables them to interpret "conquest" as simply winning a majority (p. 105).

Opposition and the political struggle in general are beside the point; we are concerned with revolution. Revolution means that the proletariat will destroy the "administrative apparatus" and the whole state machine, and substitute for it a new one consisting of the armed workers (p. 106).

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* * * we shall go forward to a split with these traitors to socialism, and we shall fight for the complete destruction of the old state machine in order that the armed proletariat itself shall become the government * * (p. 110). We shall go forward to a split with the opportunists; and the whole of the class concious proletariat will be with us-not for the purpose of "shifting the relation of forces," but for the purpose of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, destroying bourgeoise parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (p. 110).

Lenin also discussed Engels' admission of an exception to the law of violent revolution. He states that Engels "admits that in republican or very free countries 'one can conceive' (only 'conceive') of a peaceful development toward socialism Note the emphasis Lenin places on the point that peaceful development is only conceivable (Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 65). It may be of interest to note in addition that William Z. Foster uses the word "thinkable" when speaking of such an exception to the rule of violence (Foster, In Defense of the Communist Party and the Indicted Leaders, p. 22). These are very mild words, indeed, when compared with the statements of Lenin and Stalin asserting that violent proletarian revolution is necessary, and ruling out "exceptions" as being invalid.

C. TEACHINGS OF STALIN

At the outset of this paper William Z. Foster was quoted as saying that Stalin's Foundations of Leninism was one of the books which spoke frankly and forthrightly concerning force and violence. Furthermore, he stated that the party circulated that book daily. Accordingly, quotations from Stalin will be limited to those taken from that work.

The Communist Party, USA, regards Leninism as beingthe only Marxism of the imperialist epoch, only true science of social development

*

the most advanced and

Leninism, which enriched and further extended Marxism in the epoch of imperialism, is in its main laws and concepts universally applicable. It is as native to the United States as is the American working class, as the class struggle raging in our country (Political Affairs, January 1950, pp. 5, 9).

Stalin defines Leninism as the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He declares that this dictatorship is one of violence and that it comes into being in the process of violent proletarian revolution.

Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular * * * (Joseph Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, p. 10. (New York, International Publishers, 1939)).

The question of the proletarian dictatorship is above all a question of the main content of the proletarian revolution. The proletarian revolution, its movement, its scope and its achievements acquire flesh and blood only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the instrument of the proletarian revolution, its organ, its most important mainstay, brought into being for the purpose of, firstly, crushing the resistance of the overthrown exploiters and consolidating the achievements of the proletarian revolution, and, secondly, carrying the proletarian revolution to its completion, carrying the revolution to the complete victory of socialism. The revolution can vanquish the bourgeoisie, can overthrow its power, without the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the revolution will be unable to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to maintain its victory and to push forward to the final victory of socialism unless, at a certain stage in its development, it creates a special organ in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as its principal mainstay.

"The fundamental question of revolution is the question of power." (Lenin.) Does this mean that all that is required is to assume power, to seize it? No, it does not mean that. The seizure of power is only the beginning. For many reasons the bourgeoisie that is overthrown in one country remains for a long time stronger than the proletariat which has overthrown it. Therefore, the whole point is to retain power, to consolidate it, to make it invincible (ibid., pp. 47, 48).

* * *

*

* * * it is evident that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a mere change of personalities in the government, a change of cabinet, etc., leaving the old economic and political order intact. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a mere change of government, but a new state, with new organs of power, both central and local; it is the state of the proletariat, which has arisen on the ruins of the old state, the state of the bourgeoisie (ibid., pp. 51, 52, 53).

The dictatorship of the proletariat arises not on the basis of the bourgeois order, but in the process of the breaking up of this order after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, in the process of the expropriation of the landlords and capitalists, in the process of the socialization of the principal instruments and means of production, in the process of violent proletarian revolution. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary power based on the use of force against the bourgeoisie.

Briefly: the dictatorship of the proletariat is the rule-unrestricted by law and based on force of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, a rule enjoying the sympathy and support of the labouring and exploited masses (The State and Revolution) (Ibid., p. 53). The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as

the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic machine, the bourgeois police (Ibid., p. 54).

In this same work, Stalin describes our current epoch as one of preparation for world revolution; he states that the Bolshevik Revolution has passed through two stages and is now in its third:

Third stage: Commenced after the October Revolution. Objective: to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country, using it as a base for the overthrow of imperialism in all countries. The revolution is spreading beyond the confines of one country; the period of world revolution has commenced * * * (Ibid., p. 91).

IV. "PEACEFUL MEANS" SPECIFICALLY REJECTED BY LENIN AND STALIN

Communists sometimes seek to confuse the issue by pointing out that at one time Marx admitted the possibility of the achievement of socialism by peaceful means.

William Z. Foster attempted this in 1949. He declared:

The great Communist theoreticians, however, have never taken the position that it was impossible, under any conceivable conditions, to achieve Socialism by peaceful means. On the contrary, they distinctly foresaw such possibilities.

Thus Marx, estimating the situation three generations ago in Great Britain and the United States, said: "If, for example, the working class in England and the United States should win a majority in Parliament, in Congress, it could legally abolish those laws and institutions which obstruct its development" (Briefe an Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky und Andere, pp. 516, 517, Moscow, 1933) (William Z. Foster, In Defense of the Communist Party and the Indicted Leaders, p. 22. (New York: New Century Publishers, July, 1949.) Notes: 1. The German title of the 1933 Moscow publication is translated: "Letters to Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky and Others." The quotation also appears in Marxism and the Democratic Tradition, by A. Landy, p. 173. (New York: International Publishers, 1946.) 2. The use of this quotation in The Communist, February 1944, p. 130, indicates it was written by Marx in 1878-thus falling within the "seventies,' and coming within the scope of Lenin's reference below.)

Lenin vehemently denounced those who tried to make out a case for the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism on the basis of Marx's statement during the "seventies."

(The argument that Marx in the "seventies" granted the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism in England and America is the argument of a sophist, or, to put it bluntly, of a swindler who juggles with quotations and references. First, Marx regarded this possibility as an exception even then. Secondly, in those days monopoly capitalism, i. e., imperialism, did not yet exist. Thirdly, in England and America there was no military then-as there is now-serving as the chief apparatus of the bourgeois state machine) (V. I. Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky," Collected Works, vol. XXIII, pp. 233234. This is an article by Lenin concerning his pamphlet of the same title.)

Marx had made earlier (1871, 1874) statements concerning the possibility of an exception to the rule of violent revolution. Lenin eliminated the 1871 statement, specifically, in the following manner. In a letter written in London, April 12, 1871, Marx wrote concerning the uprising of the workers who formed the Paris Commune:

If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and that is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent. * * * (Karl Marx, Letter to Kugelmann April 12, 1871, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels-Selected Correspondence (1846–95), p. 309.)

66* * *

Lenin points out that Marx's exception (expressed in the phrase on the Continent," i. e., of Europe) is no longer valid. It is interesting to note two particular points in the above-quoted passage in Marx's argument. First, he confines his conclusions to the Continent. This was natural in 1871, when England was still the model of a purely capitalist country, but without militarism and, to a considerable degree, without a bureaucracy. Hence, Marx excluded England, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, could be conceived of, and was then possible, without the condition of first destroying the "ready-made state machinery."

Today, in 1917, in the epoch of the first great imperialist war, Marx's exception is no longer valid. Both England and America, the greatest and last representatives of Anglo-Saxon "liberty," in the sense that militarism and bureaucracy are absent, have today plunged headlong into the all-European, filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic-military institutions to which everything is subordinated and which trample everything under foot. Today, both in England and America the "essential" thing for "every real people's revolution" is the smashing, the destruction of the "ready-made state machinery" (brought in those countries, between 1914 and 1917, to general "European" imperialist perfection).

Secondly, particular attention should be paid to Marx's extremely profound remark that the destruction of the military and bureaucratic state machine is "essential for every real people's revolution" (V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 37 (New York: International Publishers, 1943)).

In Europe, in 1871, there was not a single country on the Continent in which the proletariat constituted the majority of the people. A "people's" revolution, that swept actually the majority in its stream, could be such only if it embraced the proletariat and the peasantry. Both classes then constituted the "people." Both classes were united by the fact that the "bureaucratic-military state machine" oppressed, crushed, exploited them. To smash this machine, to break it up-this is what is truly in the interests of the "people," of the majority, the workers and most of the peasants, this is what is "essential" for the free alliance between the poor peasantry and the proletarians; without such an alliance democracy is unstable and the socialist reformation is impossible (Ibid., p. 38).

Stalin, too, discusses Marx's statements concerning the possibility of using peaceful means. He follows Lenin closely in dismissing the matter as an exception which is no longer valid. The only exception which he admits is one in which, Communist power having spread widely throughout the world, some capitalist governments may decide to yield power "voluntarily" rather than fight. It is interesting to note that Stalin himself puts quotation marks around the word "voluntary"-clearly indicating that the act of submission would not be truly voluntary, i. e., completely free. (An example of this type of "peaceful development" toward socialism might be the following: If the United States-the "citadel of world capitalism"-were to be overthrown and conquered by the Communists, other countries in this hemisphere might choose "voluntarily" to accept Communist rule.)

In a preface to The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote, quoting from The Civil War in France:

"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machine and wield it for its own purposes" (Marx, Selected Works, vol. I, p. 190)).

In a letter to Kugelmann (1871) Marx wrote that the task of the proletarian revolution is "no longer as before, to transfer the bureaucratic military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and that is a preliminary condition for every real people's revolution on the Continent" (Marx, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 528).

Marx's qualifying phrase about the Continent gave the opportunists and Mensheviks of all countries a pretext for proclaiming that Marx had thus conceded the possibility of the peaceful evolution of bourgeois democracy into a proletarian democracy, at least in certain countries outside the European continent (England, America). Marx did in fact concede that possibility, and he had good grounds for conceding it in regard to England and America in the seventies of