Results and Prospects Issue 2

7/30/2019 Results and Prospects Issue 2

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RESULTS and

PROSPECTSTheoretical Journal of the Revolutionary Socialist Organization

Theoretical sloppiness always takes cruel vengeance in revolutionary politics. - Leon Trotsky

Issue No.2/2012

Price. 2.00

www.revolutionarysocialism.blogspot.com

Special Bodies of

Armed MenThe Development of the Theory

of the State of Marx and Engels

Also inside:- Unemployment in Britain- Theses on Revolutionary Interven-tions in Workplaces and Trade Unions


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Results and Prospects No. 2 / 20122

Introduction

Contents

Unemployment in Britain; An Attempt at an Explanation

The Development of the Theory of the State by Marx and Engels

Preface

Main

Afterword

Theses on Revolutionary Interventions in Workplaces and Trade Unions

Who we are

p. 3

p. 14

p. 14

p. 16

p. 23

p. 27

p. 31

Introduction

Welcome to the second is-sue of our theoretical Jour-nal Results and Prospects. The

Revolutionary Socialist Organiza-

tion has been around in Britain for

more than half a year now. And an

important 6 months it has been! On

November the 30th Britain saw the

largest strike action since the gen-

eral strike in 1926. While millions

of workers on the street showedtheir determination to ght, the Un-

ion bureaucracy sold out quickly

afterwards for more than moderate

concessions. Further strike action

has constantly been delayed. This

shows that the union bureaucracy

is clearly unwilling to take on the

ght.

Meanwhile, encouraged by the in-activity of the workers movement,

the capitalists and their Tory gov-

ernment continue their onslaught

of public welfare. Without much

of an uproar they have pretty much

privatized the NHS, continuing the

work of the previous capitalist la-

bour government opening up the

NHS for business. These attacks

on working peoples livelihood

derstand the state throughout their

work, and how it was only Leninwho was able to fully systemise

their ndings. This is accompaniedby a new introduction by Michael

Bonvalot, written for the re-pub-

lication in German. In the current

protest movements it seems as if

things were turned on their head,

and the Tories were the ones ght-

ing the state whilst the left cameout to defend it. Only by going

back to Marx and Engels can we

understand that the workers have

no stake in the capitalists society

and its state.

The second article by James Ste-

vens looks at the historic develop-

ment of unemployment and how

it intrinsically linked to the devel-opment of capitalism. As an addi-

tion to those texts, we have alsopublished the RSOs theses on

nterventions in Trade Unions andWorkplaces, an important pro-

grammatic document of our organi-

sation, putting forward our political

understanding of approaching the

working class in workplaces and

trade unions.

will unquestionably go on until

the capitalists are shown a proper

ght back. Like in the school play-

ground, we have to stand up to thebullies and not hand them our lunch

money willingly.

It is evident that neither the union

bureaucrats nor the labour party

will stand up for the workers. In

fact, this is the crux of the issuewe have to stand up for ourselves.

Today however, the working class

lacks a united voice and a coherent

set of ideas to overcome the mis-

ery forced upon it by the capital-

ists. What is necessary is to once

again nd the way to the ideas ofrevolutionary socialism, the only

ideas that are truly able to change

the world. Results and Prospectstries to contribute to the clarica-

tion of ideas in the working class

and in the political left.

In this issue we publish for the

rst time our pamphlet The de-

velopment of the theory of the state

by Marx and Engels in English. In

it, Christina Stojanovic explains

how Marx and Engels came to un-


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Results and Prospects No. 2 / 2012 3

Britain

The misery that unemploymentwreaks cannot be underestimated.For the working class to be unemployedin Britain today means to be living in

extreme poverty. It means having to

endure the morale-sapping routine of

searching through a list of potential,menial jobs, none of which would payenough to raise one completely out of

poverty. It means spending hours of

time working to produce a CV, that isyour personal advert, and lling it withbuzz words devoid of any meaning.

One has to play the game of picking

the right buzz word for each differentjob. If the person reading the CV anddeciding who gets the job doesnt seeany of these magic buzz words on the

CV then they automatically consign itto the unwanted pile. It is a pile that

towers over the prospective candi-

date pile in height. Being unemployed

means having to endure this process

day after day, spending life applyingfor jobs only to be rejected time aftertime, making one question ones ownworth and usefulness. It means having

to write down each job one has ap-plied for on a grey piece of recycled

paper, because thats obviously all oneis worth, to show to the job advisor

so as not to get barred from receiv-

ing the paltry 53 a week job seek-

ers allowance, or the dole as it usedto be known. On the way home from

the job centre thoughts turn into fears.Fears about how youre ever going to

make that next rent payment; that next

gas bill payment; how youre going to

eat, whether youll ever be able to af-ford a pair of shoes that arent falling

apart; whether youll ever have enough

money to go out and meet a friend for a

pint. It means being alive but it doesnt

mean living. It means surviving, just,

ever in insecurity, ever unable to trulyenjoy oneself, ever just one mean jobsadvisor away from absolute destitution

and starvation.

The reality of the situation

in 2012

According to the latest gures fromthe Ofce of National Statistics 2.67million people in the United Kingdomare unemployed. The gures, releasedin March, reveal that 8.4% of the

population able to work and actively

seeking work are unable to nd work.Amongst this number are 1.04 million

unemployed 16-24 year olds, meaning

that 22.5% of Britains 16-24 year oldsare currently out of work. This is the

highest rate of unemployment in Brit-ain since 1994.

The reason for the current state of

affairs, in which one in ve of Brit-ains young workers do not have jobs,has been the subject of much debateamongst the bourgeois media. Some

blame an inux of immigrant workerstaking the jobs that would be done byBritish workers. Some blame China forstealing British jobs as the factories of

the orient pump out goods that wereformally made here. Some even go so

far to say that the reason that 2.67 mil-

lion people are unemployed is because

these 2.67 million people are simply

lazy, feckless, work-shy scroungerswho refuse to get up in the morning to

go to work. They cry that the problem

is a generation of people who have de-

veloped a sense of entitlement and lack

the industrious work ethic that formal-

ly made Britain great.

There is some truth in the statement

that jobs that might formally have beentaken by British born workers are be-

ing taken by workers born abroad. It

Unemployment in Britain

An Attempt at an Explanation


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Britain

survive. Everyone was employed for

the benet of the society, a state knownas primitive communism.

As mankind developed farming tech-

niques it was able to create a surplus of

food so now not every individual in the

society was needed to dedicate their

work to collecting the necessities of

life. Instead a class arose that admin-

istered society, originally in an attemptto maximize efciency, but whichgradually developed into a ruling class

with interests separate to those of the

people who laboured to produce the

means of subsistence.

The slave mode of production de-

veloped whereby civilizations would

enslave prisoners of war and their

offspring. Society was broadly divid-

ed into two classes, slaves and slaveowners. The slaves would perform

the labour that was necessary for the

development of society and the slave

owners would live off the surplus the

slaves created. If a slave refused to

work they could be sold, whipped orexecuted as they were the property of

the slave owner. If a free person was so

destitute they could not eat they might

be enslaved and forced to perform la-

bour in return for the necessities of life.

Because the slave owners saw theirslaves as property they had to look

after them, feed them, cloth them andprovide them with shelter. Not making

use the labour of the slaves was pure

folly as that would automatically mean

to lose ones investments.

Employment in the Feudal

Mode of Production

The slave mode of production devel-

oped into the feudal mode of produc-

tion whereby the labouring class in

society was the peasantry who owned

their own small plots of land that they

could cultivate themselves. They were

necessities of life, which they need forsurvival. Workers are thus forced to

work for somebody else who will pay

them money with which they purchase

the necessities of life. If the individual

worker can not nd another individualcapitalist willing to employ him, thenthe worker is unemployed.

Furthermore to be unemployed does

not imply that the person does not do

anything at all, for work is meant in itsmodern usage, meaning paid employ-ment. The specialization of work (and

the meaning of work) to paid employ-

ment is the result of the development

of capitalist productive relations. To

be in work or out of work is to be in a

denite relationship with another class,which has control over the means of

production. It is only in this sense that

a woman running a house and bringingup children can be said to be not work-

ing. In addition unemployment statis-

tics include only those people who are

actively seeking work. The gures dis-guise those people who are not work-

ing but who have given up all hope of

ever nding a job due to demoralisa-tion. How many people fall into this

categoryis hard to determine but their

sufferings are even worse than that of

those who have not yet given up hope

of nding a job.

To understand the reasons for unem-

ployment it is necessary to look at his-

tory and learn where it stems from.

A History of Unemployment

In the beginning there was no money.

People lived in hunter gatherer groups

living off the land, which was ownedby the tribe collectively or by no one,subsisting as best they could. Every-

one knew how to build a re or makea shelter and everyone in the society

participated in the gathering of the ne-

cessities of life that the tribe needed to

is also true that there has been in the

last decades a wholesale destruction of

Britains once mighty manufacturing

industry and a huge expansion in the

Chinese manufacturing industry. Andit is also true that workers in Britain

enjoy better working conditions andrates of pay than their Chinese coun-terparts whose work ethic bourgeois

commentators hold in such high es-

teem. These factors though, whilst partof the picture, do not by themselvesexplain the rise in unemployment to its

current rate.

The cause of the rise in unemploy-

ment is really rather simpler to explain.

When the global capitalist economy is

in recession unemployment generally

increases. When the global capitalist

economy is booming unemployment

generally decreases. The global capi-talist economy is currently suffering

from the effects of the worst recession

since the great depression of the 1930s

and the 2.67 million people in Britain

unable to nd work are a consequenceof this.

Unemployment is an inherent by-product of the capitalist mode of pro-

duction. Unemployment is specic toa mode of production in which the pro-

ducers are separated from the means ofproduction and have to sell their labour

according to the needs of the capital-

ists. The individual is not the personal

property of another person as in the

slave mode of production nor are they

bound by feudal ties to perform labour

for their feudal lord. The individual is

never forced to perform labour. The

compulsion to sell ones labour to an-

other is provided not by the whip but

by the individuals need to earn money

to eat or else face destitution and star-

vation. The individual will face desti-

tution because they own no means of

production themselves. They do not

own the tools they need to produce the


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Britain

however tied by feudal law to spend

a part of their time labouring for their

feudal lord who owned much big-

ger tracts of land. If they refused the

knight or lord would evoke the letter of

the law and use violence to punish the

peasant for refusing to fulll their du-ties to him. These peasants though still

did not work for a wage, they workedfor the lord because they were legally

bound to and they subsisted by tilling

their own plots of land. They produced

the means of subsistence on their own

land. This system was the predominant

one in England until the middle of the

14th century.

The seeds of the capitalist mode of

production, and the rst examples ofunemployment, can be found in the feu-dal mode of production. Every mode of

production places certain limits on theextent to which mankind can expand

its productive capacities, the feudalmode of production reached this limit

in England as early as the 13th century,due to the natural limits of the land.

Particularly successful peasants had

discovered that they could sell some

of the surplus of their own production

at markets and with the money they

received in exchange could buy other

things they needed. Some of them dis-

covered the benets of long distancetrade and market towns emerged wherepeople would come from afar to trade

in goods. These towns were largely

free from the grips of feudal lords ex-

torting the population as they did in the

villages of the countryside. Craftsmenbecame concentrated in the towns and

they would produce goods not for their

own consumption but specically forthe purpose of exchange. The success-

ful craftsmen amongst them who pos-

sessed extra capital would hire other

people to work for them producing

goods and pay them with money. The

embryo of what was to become the

capitalist class had developed.

At the same time of this development

in the towns, a great change occurredin the countryside. Since the early

13th century a process of commuta-

tion had been taking place whereby a

feudal lord commuted the labour ser-

vice owed to them by their serfs in

exchange for a payment of money, orrent. This development was in the in-

terest of both parties as the lords found

wage labour to be more efcient andthe former serfs found it a less harsh

system. Following the Black Death in

the middle of the 14th century though

between a third and a half of Englands

population died, creating a great short-age of labour. Fields were left unsown,crops untendered and prices doubled

within a year. The peasants demanded

higher wages and, so great was themortality during the plague, that the

peasant labourers were able to dictatetheir own terms to the lord and in most

cases received a rise in real wages.

The parliament consisting almost en-

tirely of landowners passed the statute

of labourers in 1350 in an attempt to

check their labour costs, ordering thatthe labourers work for the lower wages

they received before the plague. The

law made it an offence for anybody

able in person to be idle, on punish-

ment of being committed to gaol (pris-on) and gaol was also the punishment

for anyone refusing to work for the

lower wages. The peasant labourers

and serfs however were able to circum-

vent the law by playing the landlords

off against one another. If one did not

grant them their wage demands then

they would run the low risk of being

caught as a fugitive and simply go and

sell their labour to a lord who would.

The historian A.L. Morton writes that,the old village community in which

families had lived generation after

generation upon the same land began

to break up and a migratory class of la-

bourers and peasants moving from one

job and holding to the next arose.

The feudal lords reaction to this de-

velopment was to enclose their arable

land for use in sheep farming which

required far less labour and was much

more protable due to the boomingtrade in wool. This enclosure led to

many evictions of residents and in-

creased the number of labourers who

had no land of their own, roaming thecountry and seeking work. The lords

also introduced a new kind of land

tenure, the stock and land lease. In thissystem a tenant farmer would take a

lease on a plot of land for a number of

years and the lord would provide the

tenant with the seed, cattle and imple-ments needed for farming. In return the

lord would receive a rent calculated to

cover both the value of the land and

the cost of the stock and at the endof the lease the stock would have to

be returned in good order. At rst theholdings rented would have been small

but in time many of them grew and the

tenants themselves began to employ

labourers.

The attempts by the lords to roll back

the gains of the peasants and labourers

provoked anger and led to the Peasants

Revolt in 1381. The rebellion was put

down but there was no complete returnto the pre-black death conditions. After

the revolt Villein unions continued toexert pressure for higher wages and for

the commutation of services of peas-

ants still bound by feudal ties. Peasant

agriculture began to replace the open

eld system and though enclosures forsheep farming continued to cause local

and temporary hardships it wasnt until

around 1500, when the population hadreturned nearly to pre-black death lev-

els, that it began to drive the peasantsoff the land on a large scale.


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Britain

majority of yeoman farmers and it wasonly large landowners who possessed

sufcient capital to fund changes intechnique. Consequently, the techni-cal revolution led to, and developedalongside of, a social revolution thatchanged the whole structure of rural

England.

Whilst the enclosures of earlier times

had been made with the object of turn-ing arable land into land for sheep

pasture those of the 18th century trans-formed the communally cultivated

open elds into large, compact farmson which the new and more scienticmixed farming could be more prot-ably carried out. In addition, muchcommon land not then under plough,land on which the villagers had certain

long standing customary rights of pas-

turage or wood or turf cutting, as wellas other land which had been merely

waste was enclosed. It has been cal-

culated that between 1740 and 1788the number of separate farms declined

by over 40,000. From 1717 to 1727Parliament passed 15 enclosure acts,from 1728 to 1760 it passed 226, from1761 to 1796, 1,482 whilst from 1797to 1820, the period of the NapoleonicWars, there were 1,727 passed. In allover four million acres were enclosed

under these acts. As soon as Parliamenthad passed an act of enclosure the

business of redistributing the land was

conducted by a powerful commission

under the inuence of wealthy land-owners so that re-allotment amounted

practically to conscation of smallerlandowners plots. The sums received

under the conditions were usually too

small to be employed successfully in

any other business even if the farmer

had the know how to make good use

of them. The class of cottagers, whohad lived in the past by a combina-

tion of domestic industry, the keepingof a few beasts or some poultry or ir-

regular work for wages now found it-

In 1572 unlicensed beggars were to be

ogged and branded unless someonewas willing to employ them. For a sec-

ond offence they were to be executed

unless someone would take them into

service, for a third offence they wereto be executed anyway. Toward the end

of the century however the industries

of the expanding towns had absorbed

a large part of the unemployed and

the increased demand for food in the

towns meant arable farming became

more protable and enclosure forsheep farming was checked. The farms

though were now no longer tilled by

peasants who owned their plots but

were, by and large, large scale farmswhich would become capitalist farms.

With the decline in the number of un-

employed came legislation to deal with

those people who were still unable to

nd work. The Poor Law of 1601 in-cluded arrangements for setting the

poor to work upon a convenient stock

of ax, hemp, wool thread, iron andother necessary ware and stuff rmlyestablishing the principle that if relief

were to be given to the poor it was to

be given only in the most humiliating

and degrading circumstances depriv-

ing the unemployed person of any dig-

nity. From this act developed the whole

system of Poor Rate, Workhouse and

settlement by parish that lasted untilthe shock of the industrial revolution.

The 18th century saw major im-provements in both agricultural and

industrial technique which had huge

implications for the working lives

of the majority of people. Improvedcrop rotation methods imported from

the Netherlands meant farms could

yield far more food than before and

improved breeding methods meant

that the amount of meat that could

be acquiesced from livestock also in-

creased. The changes though were en-

tirely incompatible with the primitive

open eld method still practiced by the

In the 16th century the preconditions

for the capitalist society developed.

The peasantry had to be atomized, bro-ken up into solitary defenceless units

before they could be reintegrated into

a mass of wage labourers taking part

in capitalist production. This was done

through the acceleration of the process

of enclosure which combined with the

steep rise in population meant a gener-

al dispossession of the peasantry from

their land. Henry VIIIs sale of themonasteries to the big landlords of the

new type also added to the ranks of the

landless and property-less as these men

exploited the former church estates to

the utmost. England was thus in the

early part of the 16th century faced

with the problem of a huge army of

unemployed for whom no work could

be found. Their descendants eventu-

ally found work in the growing clothindustry or the commercial enterprises

of the towns but the process was slow.

The government attempted to remedy

the problem of the unemployed by

passing acts limiting the expansion of

enclosure but the laws were ignored by

the local Justices of the Peace as these

were the same men who were prot-ing from enclosure. What the nascent

capitalism required, consciously orotherwise, was not the plough in the

hands of the owners but, a degradedand servile condition of the mass of thepeople, the transformation of them intomercenaries, and of their means of la-

bour into capital!

A far more effective remedy in the

eyes of the government was the series

of penal laws passed over the century

handing out draconian punishments

for the offence of being unemployed.

In 1536 it was decreed that sturdy

vagabonds should have their ears cut

off, and death was the penalty for athird offence. In 1547 anyone who re-

fused to work was condemned to be

the slave of whoever denounced him.


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Britain

self thrown back entirely on the last of

these resources. The enclosing of the

elds in the 18th century led to massimpoverishment of the working popu-

lation there and had three results with

consequences that went far beyond the

sphere of agriculture.

The consequences of the Agricultural

revolution were:

- Firstly it increased the productiv-

ity of the land and so made possible

the feeding of the great industrial

populations of the new towns.

- Second it created a reserve army

of wage earners, now free com-pletely from any connection with

the soil, men without ties or placeor property. It provided a force of

free labourers over the same periodthat the bourgeoisie had accumu-

lated mass amounts of capital and

came at a time when the large scale

production of commodities was at

last possible with the advent of the

industrial revolution.

- Thirdly, it created a home marketfor manufactured goods. The sub-

sistence farmer could make what

he needed domestically so might

consume a great deal but buy verylittle. The labourer that he had now

become was usually compelled to

consume a great deal less but eve-

rything he consumed had to be

bought on the market.

The Era of Capitalism

The Industrial Revolution in Britain

beginning in the latter part of the 18thcentury created what Marx referred

to as the proletariat. People had been

driven off of the soil due to enclosure

and the cottage industries were driven

out of business as the bigger mills were

able to produce commodities much

cheaper with their superior techniques.

Formerly insignicant hamlets, suchas Manchester, became great industrialcities over the course of half a centu-

ry as people migrated en mass to the

new towns hoping to eek out a living.

The capitalists owning not only the

raw materials but also the machinery

needed for production and the building

where the goods were produced, need-ed a great number of labourers to work

in their new industries and offered to

pay these people if theyd perform la-

bour for them.

The people of the countryside, in des-peration, ocked in greater and greaternumber each year to where there was

work. Adding to the numbers of this

mass were Irish men and women who

had been reduced to near starvation

by English rule and immigrated to theemerging cities of England. As the

populations of the towns swelled the

number of workers seeking jobs out-grew the number of jobs the capital-ists were offering. The workers were

competing against one another for

the same jobs. The capitalists realisedthis and used it to their advantage.

They would offer worse terms for the

same job to the workers. The capital-ist would say to the worker take this

job and work longer hours for less paythan you were before. If the workerrefused these worsened terms the capi-

talist would say, no matter, I will ndsome other worker who will take the

job, and inevitably some poor desper-ate soul would accept the job on theworse terms. The original worker who

refused the job would now, with noproperty or source of income, be un-employed. With no income he would

be facing starvation so he could either

turn to criminal activity, with all the

danger that this entails, or, far more of-ten, would have to accept another jobon whatever terrible terms the capi-

talist was now offering. This system

meant misery for the worker whether

employed or unemployed and huge

prots for the capitalists who wouldcheapen labour as far as the working

class would let them without ghtingback.

However there were never enough

jobs for everyone, even in the goodtimes, but something that plagues thecapitalist mode of production that

hadnt affected previous modes is pe-

riodical crises. There comes a point

where the produce of the capitalists

factories cannot be sold anymore be-

cause those with money already have

the commodities they need and those

on low wages cannot afford to purchase

the things they produce. Unable to sellall their stock at a prot the capitalistsstop or limit production of commodi-

ties until they can sell the stock alreadyproduced. The problem in capitalist

crisis is not that there is not enough to

go around but the opposite, that thereis too much to go around that can not

be sold at a ludicrous enough price to

please the capitalist. During these peri-

ods of recession many more people are

thrown out of work.

This happened after the end of the

Napoleonic wars as the British gov-

ernment, no longer at war, no longerneeded to purchase vast amounts ofsupplies for the military. The manu-

facturers hoped that the loss of the

military contracts would be alleviated

by increased demand from a Europe

no longer under blockade but Europe

had been so devastated by war that it

was nancially unable to provide thedemand the British manufacturers

needed. As a result thousands of work-

ers found themselves without jobs. InShropshire 24 out of 34 blast furnaces

went out of production and thousands

of iron workers and colliers were

thrown out of work. There was a reviv-

al of industry beginning in 1820 due to


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Britain

the poverty stricken people of East

London that a mass movement of theunemployed emerged during the win-

ter of 1886/1887. The Social Demo-cratic Federation and the Socialist

League made attempts at organizingthis mass movement of the unem-

ployed and called a demonstration in

Trafalgar Square for 13th November

1887. The demonstration though wasattacked by the police who killed three

protestors and injured hundreds moreafter which the mass movement of the

unemployed quietly evaporated as the

destitute reverted to a state of general

disheartenment.

The plight of workers unlucky enough

to be unemployed only worsened in the

rst years of the 20th century. The situ-ation was worsened by the steep rise

in prices that occurred between 1895and 1914 with the purchasing power of

20 shillings in the hands of a working

class housewife diminishing to 14 shil-

lings 7d over that period. The increas-

ing militancy of the working class and

the rise of the inuence of the labourparty, as well as the decreasing physi-cal health of the working class causing

severe troubles for the army to nd trecruits, forced the liberal governmentin 1911 to pass the National Insurance

Act which provided a small amountof insurance to workers who often

found themselves unemployed due to

the seasonal nature of their work, suchas those in the shipbuilding industry.

The act though made no provision for

dependants and unemployment still

equaled destitution.

The imperialist world war of 1914-

1918 briey alleviated the problem ofunemployment as men were drafted ei-

ther into the factories to make weapons

or into the army to be slaughtered onthe elds of France. Afterwards how-ever, the problem of unemploymenttook on new proportions. The U.S.A

Engels describes the lot of the poor

man, cast into the whirlpool, he muststruggle through as well as he can. If

he is so happy as to nd work, i.e. ifthe bourgeoisie does him a favour to

enrich itself by means of him, wagesawait him which scarcely sufce tokeep body and soul together; if he can

get no work he may steal, if he is notafraid of the police, or starve, in whichcase the police will take care that he

does so in a quiet and inoffensive man-

ner. Engels then writes that during his

residency in England of less than two

years he knew of 20 to 30 people who

had died of simple starvation in the

most revolting circumstances.

The period from 1845 to 1875 was theGolden Age of the Manufacturers, atime when Britain was the Workshop

of the World. Capitalists were prot-ing immensely from Britains virtual

monopoly over world trade enforced

by the powerful Royal Navy. They

needed so many workers in their facto-

ries that unemployment was relatively

low apart from that caused by the cot-

ton famine during the American CivilWar when 60% of Lancashire Textileworkers became unemployed. The

crisis of 1875 however was more pro-found than those that had preceded it

and was followed by others in 1880and 1884. The recovery of British in-dustry was much slower after each cri-

sis and whilst it still continued to pro-

gress it was at a much slower rate. The

reason for this slowing of industrial ex-

pansion was that the British manufac-

turing monopoly was being broken by

the rapidly industrialising nations Ger-

many and America. The effects of this

crisis were felt especially hard in the

East End of London which was popu-lated by hundreds of thousands of un-

employed, destitute dockers, unskilledand casual workers who had witnessed

the shipbuilding industries migration

to Clyde in the 1860s. It was amongst

Britain holding a monopoly on indus-

try at the time but the cycle of boom

and bust would now be the one which

dictated to millions of workers whether

they would be able to keep their heads

just above the poverty line or wheth-er theyd be condemned to suffer the

worst consequences of unemployment.

By 1830 Britain was again sufferinga slump in trade. Factories were clos-

ing down, unemployment increasedrapidly and the wages of those still

employed fell. This crises was again

followed by a period of boom in trade

which was again followed by a crisis

of overproduction. In 1834 the govern-ment revised the poor law in an attempt

to deal with the problem of unemploy-

ment as the parish relief system was

judged to be costing the bourgeoisie far

too much money. The principle of thenew system was simple: every person

in need of relief must receive it inside

of a workhouse. For the new system to

work it was necessary that the condi-

tion of the pauper should be less eli-

gible, than that of the least prosperousworkers outside. At a time when mil-

lions were on the verge of starvation,this objective could only be achieved

by making the workhouse the home of

every imaginable form of meanness

and cruelty. Families were broken up,food was poor and scanty and the tasksimposed were degrading and senseless,oakum picking and stone breaking be-

ing amongst the most common.

The misery that this system was

wreaking by the middle of the nine-

teenth century is documented superb-

ly in numerous literary works, suchas those of Charles Dickens, whichsympathized with the plight of the op-

pressed. It is a work though by one of

the founders of Marxism, FriedrichEngels that best describes the horrors

of the capitalist system. In The Condi-tion of the Working Class in England


9/32


Britain

the rate of prot to decline howeveris an inviolable law of capitalism and

from 1973 onwards the global econo-

my began to suffer more pronounced

recessions. In 1971 unemployment

rose above 1 million for the rst timesince the thirties and by the end of the

decade numerous oil crises, economicstagnation and ination had contrib-uted to 1,500,000 people being out ofwork, a rate of 5%.

The election of Margaret Thatchers

Conservative government in 1979marked the end of the post war consen-

sus and the rejection of the policy offull employment. The neo-liberal poli-

cies implemented by Thatchers gov-

ernment, the privatizing of previouslystate owned industries, tax cuts for therich, deregulation of the nancial sec-

tor and a war on the trade unions whichled to spiraling unemployment, werean unmasked expression of the capital-

ists desires,. By July 1982 3 millionpeople were unemployed in Britain

for the rst time in fty years and onceagain whole communities, especiallyin the north of England were devastat-

ed. The ofcial number of unemployedfell briey to 1.6 million after 1986 butin 1990 recession hit again, and againthere were 3 million people out of

work. The economy recovered as newspheres for investment were opened up

in the formerly soviet states in Eastern

Europe and Russia and unemployment

fell so that when the Labour Govern-ment came to power in 1997 it was at a

rate of 8%. New Labour continued onwith roughly the same economic poli-

cies of the conservatives promoting a

deregulated nancial sector, de-indus-trialization and a general deskilling of

the working class. It was less the result

of these economic policies and more

the long economic boom that capital-ism enjoyed which allowed the unem-

ployment rate to fall to around 5.5% byJuly 2005.

Britain only began to crawl out of the

depths of depression once the govern-

ment began rearming in preparation for

World War Two. The worst poverty was

still being endured by people in indus-

trial communities though until the war

broke out in 1939 and the government

enlisted every hand in its efforts to win

yet another imperialist war. During the

war the victory of British imperialism

was at times so threatened though that

the state had to take control of indus-

try and instill a spirit in the workers of

self sacrice to achieve greater things.The workers bought into this but once

the war had been won they realised

the greater things they had been ght-ing for were different from those the

capitalists had envisaged. The workers

refused to regress to the poverty they

had endured in the 1930s and any gov-

ernment attempt to make them do sowould probably had resulted in revo-

lution. Thus the post war consensus

was born. For the next thirty years all

parties in government agreed on some

principles for how the state should be

run. One was the maintenance of a

welfare state with a National Health

Service, decent pensions, unemploy-ment benets etc. Another was thestriving to maintain full employment,a policy which was largely successful

with the average unemployment ratebetween 1945 and 1973 being 1.3% asthe table shows.

The low unemployment was the re-

sult of the governments Keynesianeconomic policy where it would spend

money to stimulate the economy and

put certain limits on the freedom of

nance capitalism to do whatever itwanted. The government in the post

war decades beneted from the eco-nomic boom, this boom was the result

of new spheres for prot making beingopened up by the immense destruc-

tion of capital that had occurred dur-

ing World War Two. The tendency of

had come out of World War One as the

worlds industrial powerhouse whilst

Britain, burdened by the immense costof the war, had been knocked off her

perch as the worlds undisputed su-

perpower. Struggling to compete with

the superior technique of foreign com-

petitors British industry entered into

the terminal decline it is still suffering

from today. Unemployment during the1920s hovered at between 10% and12%, about one million people, and thedecade was one of great class strug-

gle, climaxing with the general strikeof 1926. The lot of the working class

only worsened as the great depression

followed the Wall Street crash in 1929.

By the end of 1930 unemployment had

hit 2.5 million (20%) and by the end of1931 had reached 3 million. In some

of the industrial towns and villages of

north east England the unemploymentrate was 70% and entire communitiesqueuing for soup became a norm.

It was during these years that the dole,or Job Seekers Allowance as it is now

called was developed. In August 1931,the 1911 National Insurance scheme

was replaced by a fully government-

funded unemployment benet system.This system, for the rst time, paid outaccording to need rather than the level

of contributions a person had madewhilst employed. This unemployment

benet was subject to a strict meanstest, and anyone applying for unem-

ployment pay had to have an inspec-

tion by a government ofcial to makesure that they had no hidden earnings

or savings, undisclosed source(s) ofincome or other means of support. For

many poor people, this was a humiliat-ing experience and was much resent-

ed and anyone who has had to jumpthrough the innumerable hoops put in

front of them by the Job Centre PLCtoday would attest to.


10/32


Britain

ceases but they will be needed by the

capitalists when they expand again.

Marx point out that, the whole formof the movement of modern industry

depends, therefore upon the constanttransformation of a part of the labour-

ing population into unemployed or half

employed hands.

As a side the half employed hands

Marx refers to are a part of the popu-

lation we understand today as people

working part time or people in vul-

nerable employment. According to

the latest Ofce of National Statis-tics gures in March 2012 there were6,600,000 half employed hands inBritain. Most of these part time work-

ers are only working part time because

they are unable to nd full time work.The trend in the labour market back to-

wards casual work, with the increasingdominance of employment and temp-

ing agencies, is as worrying as the risein actual unemployment. There are

currently 1.5.million temporary work-

ers in Britain who can be hired and

red at an hours notice, be paid lessfor doing the same job and lack rightssuch as paid holidays and redundancy

pay. All these workers provide compe-

tition for workers in full time jobs andcontribute to the willingness of those

workers to be further exploited. Thegovernment encouraged trend of work-

ers in part time employment however

is an issue that requires an article all

to itself. We must now though go back

to the 19th century to learn more from

Marx.

As the technology used in the fac-

tories became more sophisticated,capitalists no longer needed highly

skilled, better paid labour as unskilledpoorly paid labour could perform the

menial tasks required in production.The capitalist could therefore buy

more individual labour with the same

outlay of capital. This not only meant

Unemployment, far from nat-

ural

This history of unemployment dem-

onstrates that for a human being to be

unemployed is not something natural

in the slightest. Unemployment is aconcept that only exists when a human

being is separated from the means of

production. The ruling class rst hadto separate people from the soil before

they would be willing to be exploited

in the capitalistic manner, that is, fora wage. It is a condition of existence

that has been engineered for the benetof the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Ithas been shown above, that the devel-opment of unemployment was insepa-

rably linked to the development of the

modern proletariat. The rst to fullygrasp the interrelation, the dialectics of

this process, was Karl Marx, especiallyin his major work, Capital.

Unemployment explained by

Marx

Karl Marx explains unemploymentin Capital as the concept of relativesurplus population. In chapter 25, sec-tion 3 of the rst volume he writes,A surplus labouring population is a

necessary product of accumulation

or of the development of wealth on acapitalist basis, this surplus-populationbecomes, conversely, the lever of capi-talistic accumulation, nay, a conditionof existence of the capitalist mode of

production. It forms a disposable in-

dustrial reserve army, that belongs tocapital quite as absolutely as if the

latter had bred it at its own cost. He

means that as the capitalist mode of

production expands in ts and starts,the ts being recessions, the starts be-ing booms, capitalism needs a mass ofunemployed labourers ready to be em-

ployed in industry during the periods

of expansion. They are then thrown

out of work again when expansion

Gordon Brown, then Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, talked about the endof boom and bust. He foolishly im-

agined that he had found a way to

circumvent one of the inherent laws

of capitalism which Marx pointed out

in the 19th century. If Gordon Brown

had tried to understand the economic

system he was supposed to be regu-

lating then he would have understood

that, in capitalism, periodic crises areinevitable and that there is a tendency

for each of these crisis to be worst than

the last. The Great Depression of the

1930s was the worst recession in capi-

talisms history up to that point and

economic recovery was only ensured

through the massive destruction of

capital as a result of World War Two.

The current economic crisis which be-

gan in 2007 with the collapse of the

sub-prime mortgage market, continuedwith the credit crunch, the collapse ofLehmann brothers and the bailing outof the banks is today inicting suffer-ing upon the working class in the age

of austerity.

In the age of austerity it has been the

policy of government to make enor-

mous cuts to funding for public ser-

vices. In Britain this is leading to the

loss of 710,000 public sector jobs. The

governments justication for mak-ing hundreds of thousands of peopleunemployed is that reduced govern-

ment spending will open up opportu-

nities for private sector companies to

expand and create jobs. So far thoughthis creation of jobs in the private sec-tor had been largely non existent and

in actuality many large private sector

employers have shed jobs during therecession as they look to squeeze more

value out of each worker rather than

hire in greater numbers. The result, as

mentioned already, is that as of March2012 2.67million people in the U.K.are unemployed, a rate of 8.4%.


11/32


Britain

the displacement of skilled labour by

unskilled but also meant the displace-

ment of adult labour by child labour.

It always benets the capitalists tosqueeze more labour out of one worker

than hire two so they do their level best

to overwork their employees. But, theoverwork of the employed part of the

working class swells the ranks of the

reserve, whilst conversely the greaterpressure that the latter by its competi-

tion exerts on the former, forces theseto submit to over-work and to subju-gation under the dictates of capital.

The condemnation of one part of the

working class to enforced idleness by

the overwork of the other part, and theconverse, becomes a means of enrich-ing the individual capitalists.

The amount an employer is willing

to pay in wages is dependant on thenumber of people seeking jobs. Marxwrites, taking them as a whole, thegeneral movements of wages are ex-

clusively regulated by the expansion

and contraction of the industrial re-

serve army, and these again correspondto the periodic changes of the industri-

al cycle. They are, therefore not deter-mined by the variations of the absolute

number of the working population, butby the varying proportions in which

the working class is divided into ac-tive and reserve army, by the increaseor diminution in the relative amount of

the surplus-population, by the extent towhich it is now absorbed now set free.

We can observe this law in motion to-

day by comparing different historical

periods. During the post war consensus

period when there was almost full em-

ployment the smaller industrial reserve

army meant that workers in employ-

ment could demand higher wages, andreceived them as the industrial reserve

army (unemployed persons) was rela-tively small. Today as there is a large

industrial reserve army employers are

able to keep wages low. In local gov-

ernment the practice had been to give

workers an ultimatum of signing a new

contract on a lower wage or lose their

jobs. Workers, in the knowledge thatthere are millions of people out there

willing to take their job for the lowerwages, sign the contracts consentingto lower wages and over work. Marx

points out that in this manner the sup-

ply of labour, to a certain extent, be-comes independent of the supply of

labourers.

The Problem and the Solu-

tion

It is obvious to see that in capitalism

keeping a section of the population

unemployed benets the capitalists asit allows them to more easily exploit

the worker. It is in their interest to

keep unemployment relatively high.Conversely the worker is forced to toilharder and for a lesser wage due to the

threat from the industrial reserve army.

It is against their interests to have high

unemployment. It is in the workers

interest to have no one unemployed

but this can not be achieved within the

connes of the capitalist mode of pro-duction. The experience of low unem-

ployment after the Second World War

was unique in that it was only possible

for the capitalists to grant the workerstheir demands due to the high protsthey were able to reap from post war

reconstruction. Excluding another, in-evitably even more destructive world

war such concessions will not be made

again and unemployment in the mil-

lions will be the lot of the working

class.

The only way that the working class

can escape from the misery unemploy-

ment causes, both for the employed and

the unemployed, is to do away with thesystem that creates these conditions.

That is to create a new system in which

the chief concern is to provide for the

needs of its citizens not for the private

prot of a parasitic few capitalists. Insuch a society, socialism, the workerswill democratically plan their econo-

my instead of subordinating it to blind

market forces. The workers will, frominformation gained in this process, beable to organize their labour to create

all needs of life. Those who can work

will have to work, those who will notwork, will not eat. Work will be sharedout evenly between all members of

society, following the guide of eachaccording to his/her abilities. Therewill be work that needs to be done and

everyone will be needed to chip in to

get in done, unemployment will notexist. With the labour of everybody in

society put to work creating only the

things the society needs, as opposed touseless things like giant private yachts,

as well as by making full use of all la-bour saving machinery, even those thatdo not create prots for capitalists, theamount of labour each person will have

to contribute will be signicantly lessthan it is today. This massive increase

in time that has not to be spent on nec-

essary labour will enable humanity to

fully live up to its potential, cultivatetheir abilities and give a huge impetus

to general culture.

To get to socialism however theworking class must organize itself to

ght collectively against the rule of thebourgeoisie. Workers are constantly

competing for jobs and those with jobsare constantly at risk of losing their

job to someone without one. Both theemployed and the unemployed must be

organised so that they are not compet-

ing against each other for the capital-

ists benet. The organisation of thosein employment has seen relative suc-

cesses in the concessions won by the

trade unions. The organisation of theunemployed however, a task that isalso of vital importance for the success

of the revolution, has met with mixed


12/32


Britain

to even entertaining the prospect of

revolution. Both the Communist Partyof America and The American Fed-

eration of Labour both eventually en-dorsed the Roosevelt governments

New Deal which included innumer-

able anti working class measures and

actively tried to sabotage the efforts of

anyone who organized to oppose the

New Deal.

Despite the seemingly insurmount-

able challenges the Trotskyists faced

they did achieve some success in unit-

ing the struggles of employed and un-

employed. In Minneapolis the Trotsky-

ists set an example of working-class

unity which even the Stalinists found

impossible to ignore. Even before the

three strikes in 1934 which established

the General Drivers Local 574, under

Trotskyist leadership, and transformedMinneapolis into a union town, themilitant Teamsters sought to organise

the unemployed. During the strikes

this paid off as many of the 4,000 un-employed workers of the Minneapolis

Central Council of Workers (MCCW)militantly defended the truck drivers

picket lines.

The tale during the depression over-

all though was one of defeats for the

labour movement with unemploymentwreaking untold misery for millions.

It was a decade in which the unem-

ployed had to learn that destitution was

not a personal failing of their own or

a temporary condition, as claimed bythe ruling class, but a permanent fea-ture of capitalism which could only be

eradicated by the overthrow of capital-

ism itself. Unemployed organizers hadto learn that by themselves the unem-

ployed are difcult to organize into astable formation and are prey to right

wing ideologies and tempted to scabon employed workers. Leadership inthe unemployed struggle must ulti-

mately fall to the employed workers

the inuence of the NUWM ultimate-ly proved to weak to play a decisive

role in events and the number of un-

employed workers remained in the

millions right up until outbreak of the

second world war.

Unlike Britain, the 1920s in Amer-ica was a period of relative economic

prosperity. It was not until the Wall

Street crash, and the Great Depressionthat followed it, that unemploymentskyrocketed peaking at 18 million in1933. Left to themselves the legionsof unemployed workers provided a

ready pool of scab labour for strike-

breaking employers to exploit and use

to blackmail their workers into accept-

ing worse terms of employment. What

was needed to deal with the rampant

unemployment was a mass organisa-

tion including both employed and un-employed workers to unite the whole

working class in a single struggle. In

struggle against a system which by

protecting the prots of a few indus-trial and nancial moguls subjectedthe masses of working people to untold

privations.

Unfortunately the activists, union or-ganizers and revolutionaries who tried

to create such an organization were

hampered, harassed, persecuted bymen who claimed to be forwarding theinterests of the working class but were

in reality protecting the interests of the

ruling class. The Communist Party ofAmerica was but an organ of Stalin-

ist foreign policy in the U.S.A. and,as such, was more concerned with de-stroying the inuence of the Trotsky-ist left opposition in the labour move-

ment than alleviating the suffering of

the unemployed. At the same time the

American Federation of Labour, the

union with the largest membership inAmerica was crippled by the conserva-

tism and opportunism of its leaders

and was therefore virulently opposed

successes.

Learning lessons from previ-

ous attempts at organizing

the unemployed

In the U.K. the Communist Partyof Great Britain established the Na-

tional Unemployed Workers Move-ment (NUWM) in 1921 with the twingoals of preventing unemployed work-

ers becoming blackleg strike breakers

and of improving their general condi-

tion which in 1921 was dire. Around

2 million workers were unemployed

and nearly 2 million more were only

on short time work. To make matters

worse in March 1921 the government

halved the post war benet to the un-employed. In response to this the

NUWM raised a number of demands

which were: 1. Raise the benet of theunemployed 2. Remove the not genu-

inely seeking work clause from the

conditions of denying relief to a per-

son 3. Restore benets to all those ex-cluded by previous governments 4. No

disqualication unless refused workon trade union rates of pay 5. Shorter

working day without loss of pay 6. Ad-

equate pension for all over 60.

In contrast to previous campaigns

against unemployment which relied onappeals for charity the NUWM wageda tremendously energetic campaign

which brought dignity to the ght ofthe unemployed, arguing for militantdirect action. Demonstrations, hungermarches, raids on the ofces of thecouncil guardians who were responsi-

ble for providing relief, strike solidar-ity and even raids on factories against

overtime working and piece rates were

organised. The NUWM even managedto organise unemployed workers to

join strikers in their struggles duringthe engineers lockout in 1922 and the

dockers strike of 1923/4. Concessionswere won through these struggles but


13/32


Britain

who can utilize their economic power

and organisation derived from their po-

sition in capitalist production.

The Challenges of Today

This article has focused heavily on

unemployment and attempts to organ-

ize in an attempt to end the misery

that it causes historically, but the onlyvalue in history is to learn lessons from

it, to avoid making the same mistakestwice so we can positively shape the

future. According to the International

Labour Organisation in 2012 there are200 million people unemployed world-

wide whilst there are 1.5 billion people

in vulnerable employment meaning

they are liable to become unemployed

at any moment. The International

Monetary Fund in its annual World

Economic Outlook report is warningthat the global economic recovery is

very fragile and the risk of a relapse

that triggers an even bigger crisis than

the last is high. If the crisis worsens,which it increasingly looks like it will,this will bring with it yet more joblosses and even higher unemployment

creating a situation ever more like the

one workers worldwide barley sur-

vived in the 1930s. In that situation

capitalism failed to solve its inherent

contradictions and the only way to endthe economic crisis was to enter into

a second inter-imperialist war which

resulted in the deaths of more than 70

million people. Such a scenario is not

unforeseeable in the near future.

We have to understand that there can

only be an end to unemployment when

the majority of humanity is no longerprey to the uctuations in the anarchiccapitalist system, which puts peopleout of work according to the needs of

prots while putting more and morepressure upon those still in employ-

ment. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky,today the most concrete thing we can

do to ght against unemployment isto awaken the attention of all workers

to the facts of unemployment. Every

worker in employment today could

be unemployed by tomorrow and un-

employment will always hang like the

sword of Damocles above the head of

those workers standing up and ghtingfor their interests. The capitalists will

not shun for a single second the oppor-

tunity to play the workers off against

each other for their own benet. It isonly by consequently dismantling the

bourgeois lies of undeserving poor

and lazy scroungers and ghting acommon struggle against the common

enemy, capitalism, that a better society,free from misery and poverty can be

brought about.

James Stevens, RSO Manchester

Bibliography

Engels, F. The Condition of the Work-

ing Class in England in 1844

Jones, O. Chavs

Marx, K. Capital

Moore, T. Utopia

Morton, A.L. A Peoples History ofEngland

Orwell, G. The Road to Wigan Pier

Steinbeck, J. The Grapes of Wrath

Thompson, E.P. The Making of the

English Working Class

Tressel, R. The Ragged Trousered Phi-

lanthropists


14/32


Theory

The Development of the

Theory of the State by

Marx and Engels

The more the vulnerability of capi-talism becomes apparent, the morethe ideas of Marx and Engels resurface.

In bourgeois papers there a more hints

to the economic theories of Marx and

Engels and also in leftist social demo-

cratic and trade union circles there is

increased discussion about Marx. But

the restriction on the economic analy-

sis of Marx and Engels also means a

misrepresentation, because the two

were not only theoreticians, but alsopolitical activists in the service of arevolutionary transformation of socie-

ty. Furthermore, while they were work-ing on theoretical problems, this wasnot a simple examination of capitalist

society, but an examination of the waythis society could be overcome. In fact

it is exactly the achievement of Marx

and Engels to have found that theory

and practice cannot be separated. The-

ory, for Marx and Engels was always aguide to action.

In this contribution we want to tracethe development of the theory of the

state by Marx and Engels. Marx and

was developed in the real struggles of

the working class. The Paris Commune

gave them not only a conrmation ofearlier assumptions, but also showedthem the new form of government, inwhich the proletariat has taken power.

This enabled them to nally realizewhat it exactly means to smash the

state. And Friedrich Engels was able to

declare in 1891:

Of late, the Social-Democraticphilistine has once more been

lled with wholesome terror at the

words: Dictatorship of the Prole-tariat. Well and good, gentlemen,do you want to know what this

dictatorship looks like? Look at theParis Commune. That was the Dic-tatorship of the Proletariat. [3]

This processing of the experience of

the Commune was central, and a sig-nicant development of Marxism. But,even before that, Marx and Engelswere of course committed to revolu-

tionary development. Friedrich Engels

had already written in 1847 The prin-ciples of Communism;

Engels went through an important de-

velopment of their own analysis. For

Marx and Engels, it was clear thatthe working class taking power is a

prerequisite for the development of

communism. [1] However, they werenot aware of what this dictatorship of

the proletariat - ie the working class

instead of the capitalists as the ruling

class - meant for the development of

the form of the state. For a long time

Marx and Engels thought it possible

that a workers party could take over

the bourgeois state apparatus, for ex-

ample through a majority in an elec-tion. But after the Paris Commune of1871, Marx wrote in a letter:

... If you look at the last chapter

of my Eighteenth Brumaire you

will nd that I say that the next at-tempt of the French revolution will

be no longer, as before, to transferthe bureaucratic-military machine

from one hand to another, but tosmash it, and this is essential forevery real peoples revolution on

the Continent. [2]

The theory of the state of Marx and

Engels was not carved in stone, but

Preface


15/32


Theory

Question 16; Will the peaceful

abolition of private property be

possible? It would be desirable if

this could happen, and the commu-nists would certainly be the last to

oppose it. Communists know onlytoo well that all conspiracies are

not only useless, but even harmful.They know all too well that revolu-

tions are not made intentionally and

arbitrarily, but that, everywhere andalways, they have been the neces-sary consequence of conditions

which were wholly independent of

the will and direction of individual

parties and entire classes. But they

also see that the development of the

proletariat in nearly all civilized

countries has been violently sup-

pressed, and that in this way the op-ponents of communism have been

working toward a revolution withall their strength. If the oppressed

proletariat is nally driven to revo-lution, then we communists willdefend the interests of the proletar-

ians with deeds as we now defend

them with words. [4]

It has to be remarked critically that

the positions of Marx and Engels were

not consistent even after the events of

the Paris Commune. Marx limited his

knowledge of the precondition forevery real peoples revolution on the

continent, so did not include Britainor the USA. Later we nd in Engels(especially in his later phase) positions

that even mean a clear step backwards.

Thus Engels wrote in 1895 in his newintroduction to Marxs Class Strugglesin France:

The irony of world history turns

everything upside down. We, therevolutionaries, the overthrow-ers we are thriving far better on

legal methods than on illegal meth-

ods and overthrow. [5]

And he continued:

his concept. In his book State and

Revolution, Lenin to a large extentgeneralised his positions on the need

to smash the bourgeois state apparatus.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky andothers are not saints or idols. They have

made very important contributions, butthat does not mean that they were free

of mistakes. For us its about applying

the Marxist method - and where it is

necessary, to make use of this samemethod to criticize important Marxists.

In the second part of our contribution,we go into detail of this question i.e.

response to a readers letter.

This contribution was rst publishedas a pamphlet by the AGM (Arbeits-

gruppe Marxismus), one of the fore-runners of the RSO. We are pleased

to now republish this text for the rsttime in the English language and hope

to make a small contribution to the de-

bate on Marxist theory.

Michael Bonvalot (RSO Vienna)

__________________________

[1] What I did that was new was to prove: (1)

that the existence of classes is only bound up

with particular historical phases in the devel-

opment of production (historische Entwick-

lungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class

struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of

the proletariat,[1] (3) that this dictatorship itself

only constitutes the transition to the abolition of

all classes and to a classless society .Karl Marx,

letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, 1852

[2] Karl Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann,

MEW 33, p.205

[3] F. Engels, Introduction to K. Marx, 1891:

Civil War in France, MEW 17, 623ff.

[4] Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Commu-

nism

[5] Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Introduction to

Marx, Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850,MEW 22/2}

[6] Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Manifesto of

the Communist Party

Its [the German social democra-

cies] growth proceeds as sponta-

neously, as steadily, as irresistibly,and at the same time as tranquilly

as a natural process.

Engels conclusion was that the legal

parliamentary struggle was now far

more realistic than the armed struggle

on the barricades. This position was

clearly a product of the peaceful co-

existence, that Engels entered at theend of his life with the then already

partially reformist SPD and demon-

strates once again that it is necessary

to also look upon the classics with a

certain critical distance.

However, despite the later writingsof Engels it is evident that the experi-

ence of the Commune meant an essen-

tial incision for Marx and Engels. Thetwo even found it necessary to correct

the Communist Manifesto. In the lastpreface to the German edition of The

Communist Manifesto, signed by itstwo authors, dated 24 June 1872, Marxand Engels declare, that the programof the Communist Manifesto has insome details been antiquated..

One thing especially, they contin-ue, was proved by the Commune,

viz., that the working class cannotsimply lay hold of the ready-madestate machinery, and wield it for itsown purposes.[6] (Interestingly

Britain is not named as an excep-

tion here.)

The analyses of Marx and Engelswere later developed and generalised

primarily by the Russian Marxists.

Lenin, however, had a long way to goto reach this conculusion, this jour-ney led him from half-hearted agree-

ment with the position represented by

Nikolai Bukharin, who built upon theexperience of Marx and Engels after

the Paris Commune, to fully embrace


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Theory

society . Marx concluded from that ,as he later wrote, the anatomy of thiscivil society, however, has to be soughtin political economy.: [8]

In this context the use of the termcivil society has to be explained

quickly. In fact, Marx used this termin two ways. On the one hand, Marxuses the term to describe generally the

sphere that includes the whole mate-

rial intercourse of individuals within

a denite stage of the developmentof productive forces. that is to say the

economic base. On the other hand, heuses it to describe this specic sphereat the time of the bourgeoisie. In the

rst section of The German IdeologyMarx himself explained the dual use of

this term: Civil society as such onlydevelops with the bourgeoisie; the so-

cial organisation evolving directly outof production and commerce, whichin all ages forms the basis of the State

and of the rest of the idealistic super-

structure, has, however, always beendesignated by the same name. [9] Po-

litical state and civil society are also

the two categories around which Marx

developed his criticism in On the Jew-

ish Question, by investigating the rela-tionship of political and general human

emancipation.

The state, taken as an expression ofa deciency or secular conict, rep-resents to Marx the general entity, inwhich people encounter as abstract

equals - the state as illusory commu-

nity. Concretely however, people existin civil society where they face each

other as isolated, egotistic individu-als. This separation of political state

and civil society corresponds to the

separation of people into citizen and

bourgeois, citizen of a state and citi-zen. As a citizen an individual is an ab-

stract moral person, a member of thatimagined community. As part of civil

society, however, he is a labourer, a

cism is, therefore, rst religious andpolitical, which is directed against theexisting conditions in Germany, partic-ularly in the Prussian State. It is there-

fore obvious that Marx, who alongwith philosophy and history has stud-

ied law, when in the theoretical eld,deals with realm questions of law rst.Marxs critique of Hegels Philosophy

of Right, which falls into the time be-fore the long-term collaboration with

Engels, documents Marxs transition tomaterialism and is still strongly char-

acterized by his break with the idealis-

tic approach. [6]

By the example of the criticism ofreligion, Marx developed the under-standing that being is not the realiza-

tion of consciousness, but that con-sciousness is produced by the social

being. But man is no abstract beingsquatting outside the world. Man is

the world of man state, society. Thisstate and this society produce religion,which is an inverted consciousness of

the world, because they are an invertedworld. [7] These factual circumstanc-

es, the law and politics must thereforebe subjected to criticism.

Marx starts with the criticism of theGerman political and legal philosophy

because in Germany the developmentof the modern countries of Europe

was only imitated in the realm of phi-

losophy, the German legal and politi-cal philosophy (an imitation in itself)

is just the ideal expression of thosedevelopments, that, in other countries,have been completed through revolu-

tions. Marx shows that the contradic-

tions inherent in the Hegelian phi-

losophy of law are expressions of the

actually existing contradictions within

the state on the one hand and its world-

ly circumstances on the other. How-

ever the key to understanding lies in

these very material conditions of life,which Hegel called in summary civil

Marxs and Engelss writings, inwhich they deal with the questionof the state, fall into four groups; First,those writings that came into being in

the wake of Marx criticism of the tra-

ditional legal philosophy (Critique ofHegels Philosophy of Right, On theJewish Question) [1] Second, thosewritings in which Marx and Engels set

out for the rst time in a comprehensivemanner the materialist understanding

of history that were produced prior to

the Revolution of 1848 (The GermanIdeology, The Communist Manifesto)[2] , Third the articles, statements andwritings, which were the product of the

processing and assessment of current

political events (The Eighteenth Bru-

maire of Louis Bonaparte, The CivilWar in France) [3] , And fourth, a se-ries of polemics against the anarchists

and different trends in social democ-

racy, which however will not be dealtwith in this article because in those po-

lemics Marxs and Engelss previous

ndings are compactly summarized,but are not fundamentally developed

further (Political Indifferentism, OnAuthority, Critique of the Gotha Pro-gram, Anti-Duhring ...) [4]. Finally,

outside of this division or as a groupof its own stands Friedrich Engels The

Origin of the Family, Private Proper-ty and the State [5] , in which Engelsworks out the elementary results of the

marxist theory of the state and espe-

cially arranges them in the ,until then,most general form.

Critique of Hegels Philoso-

phy of Right

Marx begins his political and jour-

nalistic appearance as a ghter againstreligious, spiritual and government op-

pression in the most consistent wing of

the democratic movement. His criti-

Main


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Theory

merchant or a farmer, man in his realsociety.

Marx sees this separation unfoldfully only in the purely political or

modern state, which has alreadybrought about the political emancipa-

tion of men and which is quite com-

pletely elevated above the civil soci-

ety. The Christian state, which is stilldominated by feudalism and in which

the political order is still very much in-

tertwined with the social order is, bycomparison to the modern state, evena non-state [10] , because it has notyet dared to proclaim itself as the pure,

political state. The so-called Chris-tian state is the imperfect state, andthe Christian religion is regarded by itas the supplementation and sanctica-tion of its imperfection.(...)It makes a

great difference whether the completestate, because of the defect inherent inthe general nature of the state, countsreligion among its presuppositions, orwhether the incomplete state, becauseof the defect inherent in its particular

existence as a defective state, declaresthat religion is its basis. [11] There-

fore the political state does not free the

people from religion; it is simply de-

clared a private matter.

Similarly, the emancipation throughthe political state is not the real humanemancipation. Political emancipationmeans equality in the sphere of the

state, equality as a moral person. Thisis done by declaring that the base of

inequality is not political and therefore

moves it into the realm of civil society,in which it can begin to unfold freely.

So the state, for example, abolishesprivate property politically by abolish-

ing property-bound suffrage. Never-

theless, the political annulment of pri-vate property not only fails to abolish

private property but even presupposes

it. The state abolishes, in its own way,distinctions of birth, social rank, edu-

cation, occupation, when it declaresthat birth, social rank, education, oc-cupation, are non-political distinctions(...) The perfect political state is, by itsnature, mans species-life, as opposedto his material life. All the precondi-

tions of this egoistic life continue to

exist in civil society outside the sphere

of the state, but as qualities of civil so-ciety.[12]

Political emancipation is, there-fore, the reduction of man, on the onehand, to the member of civil society,on the other hand, to the citizen of thestate. General human emancipation

can therefore not stop at the stage of

political emancipation: Only when

the real, individual man re-absorbs inhimself the abstract citizen, and as anindividual human being has become

a species-being in his everyday life,in his particular work, and in his par-ticular situation, only when man hasrecognized and organized his own

powers [13] as social powers, and,consequently, no longer separates so-cial power from himself in the shape

of political power, only then will hu-man emancipation have been accom-

plished. [14]

Already here the idea of taking backthe state into society, to neutralize thealienation of humanity within the state,reversing the separation of bourgeois

and citizen, becomes apparent. Marxformulated this idea, of course, onlyas an ideal goal to be aimed for, with-out insight into the historical material-

ist conditions of its implementation.

However Marx expands this idea in a

concrete form later on (see The CivilWar in France).

The German Ideology

In The German Ideology, writtenin 1845/46, Marx and Engels take animportant step closer to the task of ex-

plaining how the general human eman-

cipation would come about. Marx and

Engels give an account of their shared

understanding that the particular social

structure, the state, the religion andthe consciousness of a society emerge

consistently from the material condi-

tions of life found on a certain social

level. And further that the productive

force in the course of its development

comes into conict with these existingsocial relations, which cause radicalchanges in society. The origin of the

disintegration of the interests of each

individual and the common interest of

all individuals, that is the raison dtreof the state, they locate already in thedivision of labour.

The contradiction between town andcountry, a product of the division of la-

bour, begins with the transition frombarbarism to civilisation, from tribe toState, from locality to nation, and runsthrough the whole history of civilisa-

tion to the present day (the Anti-CornLaw League). The existence of thetown implies, at the same time, the ne-cessity of administration, police, taxes,etc.; in short, of the municipality, andthus of politics in general. [15] The

development of the state therefore

takes place materially in the develop-

ment of special bodies and institutions,which no longer coincide with themass of the people. This in itself has a

certain level of a division of labour as

a prerequisite. A nding that is indeedessential for the understanding of the

state in general and the conditions of

its abolition. Marx, and Lenin in par-ticular build upon this idea when they

develop the tasks of the proletariat in

relation to the state. The possibility

that the productive power, social rela-tions and consciousness do not have to

enter into conict with each other any-more is seen by Marx and Engels, in ananalogy to Marxs conclusions in On

the Jewish Question in the abolition of


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Theory

old conditions of production, thenit will, along with these conditions,have swept away the conditions for

the existence of class antagonisms

and of classes generally, and willthereby have abolished its own su-

premacy as a class. [17]

With the abolition of class antago-

nism the necessity of a public political

force, the organisation of one class tooppress another, meaning the necessityof the state, is thus abolished too. Thisis also true for the ideological function

of the state. The necessity to maintain

an illusory community will disappear

once man has become a real species-

being.

Here Marx also formulated thethought that the state can not be abol-

ished by a single stroke and that thebourgeois society can not be over-

come by a trick. The proletariat, in atransitional phase, must make use ofits political supremacy to create the

conditions for the withering away of

all class distinctions. In this period, thestate, in the sense of the oppression ofone class by another - the bourgeoisie

being oppressed by the proletariat - has

to continue to exist, but annuls itself associalized economic development pro-

gresses.

Even in On the Jewish QuestionMarx shows a tendency, to regardonly the modern state, which developsalongside the bourgeoisie, as the pure,fully developed state. In The German

Ideology Marx develops this thought

parallel to the different stages of prop-

erty, from tribal property to pure pri-vate property, which corresponds to themode of production of the bourgeoi-

sie. Real private property began with

the ancients, as with modern nations,with movable property. (Slavery

and community) (dominium ex jureQuiritum). In the case of the nations

This achievement represents a quali-

tative step on the path of development

of the Marxist theory of revolution and

the state and nds its clear program-matical conclusion immediately before

the Revolution of 1848 in the Mani-festo of the Communist Party;

In depicting the most general

phases of the development of the

proletariat, we traced the more orless veiled civil war, raging withinexisting society, up to the pointwhere that war breaks out into open

revolution, and where the violentoverthrow of the bourgeoisie lays

the foundation for the sway of the

proletariat.(...)

We have seen above, that the rst

step in the revolution by the work-ing class is to raise the proletariat to

the position of ruling class to win

the battle of democracy. The prole-

tariat will use its political suprem-

acy to wrest, by degree, all capitalfrom the bourgeoisie, to centraliseall instruments of production in the

hands of the State, i.e., of the prole-tariat organised as the ruling class;

and to increase the total productive

forces as rapidly as possible. (...)

When, in the course of develop-ment, class distinctions have disap-

peared, and all production has beenconcentrated in the hands of a vast

association of the whole nation, thepublic power will lose its political

character. Political power, properlyso called, is merely the organised

power of one class for oppressing

another. If the proletariat during

its contest with the bourgeoisie is

compelled, by the force of cir-

cumstances, to organise itself as aclass, if, by means of a revolution,it makes itself the ruling class, and,as such, sweeps away by force the

the division of labour. Now, however,they already mention it as a necessity

on the way, an important intermediarystep;

...And out of this very contradic-

tion between the interest of the

individual and that of the commu-

nity the latter takes an independent

form as the State, divorced fromthe real interests of individual and

community, and at the same time asan illusory communal life, always

based, however, on the real tiesexisting in every family and tribal

conglomeration such as esh andblood, language, division of labouron a larger sca

Documents

Results and Prospects Issue 2