Chapter 11 – Results and Prospects
Part 1
In
1848, the revolutionary bourgeoisie, across Europe, which had pulled
along a developing working-class with it, in opposition to the old
feudal ruling class, took fright at the thought that this
working-class might turn the bourgeois revolution into a permanent
revolution, going beyond the aims of overthrowing feudal private
property, and its limitations, to overthrowing all private property
and its limitations.
The
result was a vicious counter-revolution and the coming to power of
Bonapartist regimes. Objectively, what those Bonapartist regimes
did, whether it was Louis Bonaparte in France, or Bismark in Germany,
was to protect the political power of the old ruling class, whilst
simultaneously developing the productive forces and relations of
capitalism. They achieved, across Europe, what effectively the
period of liberal bourgeois democracy had achieved in Britain.
As
Marx, says in relation to this role of the state,
“All revolutions perfected
this machine instead of breaking it.
The parties, which alternately contended for domination, regarded the
possession of this huge state structure as the chief spoils of the
victor.
But
under the absolute monarchy, during the first Revolution, and under
Napoleon, the bureaucracy was only the means of preparing the class
rule of the bourgeoisie. Under the Restoration, under Louis Philippe,
under the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling
class, however much it strove for power of its own.”
Lenin,
in his writings on Economic Romanticism, from the 1890's and early
1900's, makes a similar point, in relation to the Tsarist state, and
the development of capitalism in Russia.
And,
nor could it have been different. Once capitalist production has
been established, in Britain, and led to its global dominance, it
forced all other nations to follow suit.
“The
bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication,
draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The
cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it
batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the
barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to
capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to
adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to
introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to
become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after
its own image.”
Marx
– The Communist Manifesto
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Society
had to pass through an historical phase of Mercantilism,
before it could transition from feudalism to capitalism. Even in societies such as Russia, China, and India, as well as Egypt, where
development took a different historical route, via the Asiatic
Mode of Production, rather than feudalism, this was true, in the
sense that these societies were first opened up to merchant capital
from outside, including via colonialism, which laid the basis for a
transition to capitalist production.
When
asked by Vera Zaulich whether Russia could skip over the phase of
capitalism, and convert its existing system of village communes and
communal production into socialism, Marx responds, diplomatically, that this is theoretically
possible, in the same way that Russia skipped the earlier period of
development of machines to be able to introduce the latest machinery.
“...the
rural commune, still established on a national scale, can
gradually extricate itself from its primitive characteristics and
develop directly as an element of collective production on a
national scale. It is only thanks to the contemporaneity of
capitalist production that it can appropriate from it all its
positive acquisitions without passing through its hideous
vicissitudes. Russia does not live isolated from the modern world;
neither is it the prey of a foreign conqueror, like the East
Indies.
If
the Russian admirers of the capitalist system deny the theoretical
possibility
of such an evolution, I would put to them the question: In order
to exploit machinery, steamships, railroads, etc., was Russia
forced, like the West, to pass through a long period of incubation
of machine industry? Let them further explain to me how they
managed to introduce in their midst, in the twinkling of an eye,
the whole mechanism of exchange (banks, credit societies, etc.),
whose elaboration cost the West centuries?
Letter
to Zasulich
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But,
as Marx also points out in his reply, the Russian village commune did
not exist in a vacuum, and these external forces of capitalism
operating on a global scale were not standing still, waiting for such
a revolution to occur in Russia. Those very same forces were
operating inside Russia, and already acting to dissolve the village
commune, in the same way they had done via colonialism, more
brutally, elsewhere. In the end, what Marx is saying here is that
Russia could move directly from the village commune to socialism,
only on condition that socialism had been established elsewhere
already, and was able to facilitate that development, in the same way
that the establishment of capitalism in Britain and France had
facilitated the development of capitalism in India, and in the
colonies via colonialism. It is a process of combined and uneven development.
“In
my opinion the colonies proper, i.e. the countries occupied by a
European population – Canada, the Cape, Australia – will all
become independent; on the other hand, the countries inhabited by
a native population, which are simply subjugated – India,
Algeria, the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions – must be
taken over for the time being by the proletariat and led as
rapidly as possible towards independence. How this process will
develop is difficult to say. India will perhaps, indeed very
probably, make a revolution, and as a proletariat in process of
self-emancipation cannot conduct any colonial wars, it would have
to be allowed to run its course; it would not pass off without all
sorts of destruction, of course, but that: sort of thing is
inseparable from all revolutions. The same might also take place
elsewhere, e.g. in Algeria and Egypt, and would certainly be the
best thing for us. We shall have enough to do at home. Once Europe
is reorganised, and North America, that will furnish such colossal
power and such an example that the half-civilised countries will
of themselves follow in their wake; economic needs, if anything,
will see to that. But as to what social and political phases these
countries will then have to pass through before they likewise
arrive at socialist organisation, I think we today can advance
only rather idle hypotheses. One thing alone is certain: the
victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any
foreign nation without undermining its own victory by so doing.
Which of course by no means excludes defensive wars of various
kinds.”
Engels
letter to Kautsky (1882)
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Similarly,
it seems likely that society will need to pass through a phase of
social-democracy before it can transition to socialism. Marx notes
that philosophy had its origins in theology, and became its negation.
Bourgeois ideology has its origins in Mercantilism, and similarly by
the development of industrial capitalism, becomes the negation of
Mercantilism, and thereby of feudalism, the negation of the negation.
Socialised capital, and the social-democracy that arises from it, is
the negation of private capital, and the liberal bourgeoisie
democracy that arises from it, whilst socialism is the negation of
the socialised capital, and the social-democracy.
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