The lower peasants and petty-bourgeoisie, in the 19th century, only became potentially revolutionary, as a consequence of this continued process, which leads to them being thrown into the ranks of the organised, industrial proletariat. Its not poverty that leads to them becoming revolutionary, but the change in their social position, and joining the organised workers. It was to this layer that the workers had to address themselves as potential allies, as Lenin describes. In the process, they would draw out the conclusions from the increasing differentiation of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie.
What 1848 had shown was that the proletariat cannot rely on any alliance with the bourgeoisie and democratic petty-bourgeoisie, because, whilst they have a shared interest in opposing the old landed aristocracy, beyond that the interests of these classes are diametrically opposed. They have to oppose the old ruling class together, weapons in hand, but there can be no shared political programme between them. And, to the extent that the workers, and the poorer peasants then find themselves in a position of forming a potential majority in parliament, the bourgeoisie and its allies will recoil, seeking to prevent any further forward movement that might see its own property and privileges under threat. As Marx put it in his 1850 Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League,
“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”
Even where the proletariat was able to establish its own parties, this alliance against the landed aristocracy was one based upon a parliamentary alliance, or Popular Front. So long as the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie represented a majority, even military forces at the disposal of parliament, were dominated by those classes, as was the case during the English Civil War, for example, and the same was seen again in 1848, as well as in 1917 in Russia, and 1936 in Spain. In each case, when the bourgeoisie has defeated the old ruling class, it turns those forces against the workers, and if required against parliament.
The Paris Commune created a new type of political regime and state. The Commune directly elected its representatives, as against the indirect, representative democracy typical of bourgeois-democracy. Those representatives were directly the representatives of the town proletariat and petty-bourgeoisie, which means the question of the political and organisational independence from the bourgeoisie does not arise. The same is true of the Workers and Peasants soviets established in Russia in 1905. These bodies are both legislative and executive, and with its members directly elected, and subject to immediate recall, any failure to legislate or execute in the interests of the commune, results in its members being replaced. That ensures a far more meaningful sovereignty of the people than is possible under a system of representative democracy. Moreover, in place of a state that is separated from, and standing above, the commune, it is identical to it. The whole of the Commune is armed as a militia, and so, not only polices itself, but protects itself against its enemies. This is the answer, provided by history, to the problem that Engels confronted in his essay on Prussian Military Policy, when faced with the reality of a class state that operates a monopoly of armed force in the interests of the ruling class.
But, even in 1905, this solution provided by history is not truly recognised. The assumption was still that, just as where bourgeois-democratic revolutions had already occurred, and workers' parties now contested elections seeking to form a Workers' Government, so elsewhere, the bourgeois-democratic revolution would result in the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, and a period of bourgeois-democracy, in which the workers' parties would again engage in a struggle for power. This was consistent with the view that, as Marx had described, Socialism is only possible on the basis of a sufficient development of the productive forces by capitalism.
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