In their journal Socialist Studies, No. 57, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) run an article “Carnage, massacres and the state.” In this text they advocate the parliamentary road to socialism and criticise the IBRP for its rejection of this. In particular, they refer to letters published with introductions in Revolutionary Perspectives numbers 34 and 35. Their text claims that rejection of the parliamentary path to socialism is equivalent to rejection of political struggle and thus a type of anarchism. It further demands to be told how a “process of revolution” could arise in capitalist society without workers being consciousness of the need for revolution before the start of such a process.

The key question which underlies the discussions between the IBRP and the SPGB is how the transition from the present capitalist society to communist society can be made. We have argued that the SPGB views are utopian since they are derived from an idealist view of consciousness on which a framework of arguments is erected by a process of formal logic. The text we are considering simply exemplifies this.

Basis of consciousness

The arguments we have put to the SPGB on this issue have never been answered. This is not because they have not been understood but rather because admitting their truth would undermine the central political objective which this organisation has pursued since 1904. We have put these arguments to the SPGB in debates and in texts several times in the past. However, since the last of these debates was over a decade ago and previous texts are out of print, we will repeat these arguments briefly below.

The SPGB imagines that a majority of the working class could become conscious of the need for communism under the economic and social relations of capitalism. This majority would, they maintain, then elect SPGB members to parliament who would use their position as the parliamentary majority to expropriate the capitalist class and establish communist relations of production. Resistance of the capitalist class to this happy event, which even some members of the SPGB suspect might occur, would, the argument goes, be impossible since the SPGB would be in control of the state’s forces of repression, namely the police and the army. Hence the bourgeoisie would not have the means to resist and the gates to the socialist paradise would swing open without civil war and bloodshed. This has been the theoretical basis of their strategy for the last century.

The key premise on which this utopian structure of arguments rests is that the majority of the working class could become conscious of the need for communism under capitalist relations of production. Once this is refuted the entire structure will collapse.

Marx observed in The German Ideology that.

Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life process. ⁽¹⁾

Marx went on to conclude that,

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more that the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. ⁽²⁾

The ruling ideas in society will, in Marx’s view, generally speaking, be the ideas of the bourgeois class until their position as owners of the means of production is overturned. This view is directly contrary to that of the SPGB outlined above and refutes the basic premise on which the syllogisms of a peaceful parliamentary transition to communism are based. Although it is not necessary for the SPGB to agree with Marx on this issue, and clearly they do not agree with him, what is necessary is for the SPGB to explain why Marx was, in their view, wrong. This they have not done.

Instead, the SPGB query how a “process of revolution” could ever develop if the ruling ideas in society remain those of the ruling class. This is a question the SPGB has frequently asked. It is conundrum they find utterly insoluble. Marx, however, did consider this issue himself and went on to sketch the outlines of an answer in the following passage which is also from The German Ideology.

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. ⁽³⁾

Marx speaks of a ‘practical movement’ a ‘revolution’ namely a process of revolution which will enable the exploited class, which is subject to the ideas of its exploiters, to become fitted to found society anew. Such a practical movement will lead to communist consciousness on a mass scale. Obviously, if the ideas of the ruling class were absolutely dominant, as the SPGB imagine Marx is claiming, there could never be any hope of revolution or fundamental social change. Marx spent his life analysing historical change, and located its motive force in the struggle of classes: hence, he clearly did not think that the ideological domination of ruling classes is absolute. In fact, he never argued this. He says in the passage quoted above that “generally speaking” the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to the ideas of the dominant class. This is so obviously true that one really wonders how the SPGB can raise such a hue and cry about it.

Ideas opposed to the dominant ideas arise from the material struggles between classes in society. Men become conscious, Marx argues, through the experiences of their actual life process. When this life process is one in which there is sharp class struggle, ideas contrary to those of the ruling class take root. As these class struggles intensify the strength of the ideologies opposing the ruling class strengthen also. Marx is saying that such opposing ideas can only be held by a majority of the exploited class during periods of social upheaval or the actual revolutionary process. ⁽⁴⁾ It is only in this process that opposing ideas can arise on a mass scale and the ideological muck of ages can be cleared out. Here is what Marx wrote about working class emancipation in his analysis of the Paris commune.

They [the working class] know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. ⁽⁵⁾

This is what is meant by a process of revolution and there is no mystery as to how it will arise. However, the SPGB will not accept all this because if Marx is correct and the bourgeois ideas will “generally speaking” dominate the working class they will never get their famous majority in parliament and transform society peacefully to communism. The SPGB strategy of winning the battle for ideas and then winning control of the state is essentially that of Kautsky and dates from the era when he was the chief theoretician of the Second International. The strategy of taking control of the state betrays a lack of understanding of the nature of the state and its function in class society.

Taking over the bourgeois state

From premise of its communist majority in parliament the SPGB moves by formal logic to its theory of taking over the bourgeois state. This again betrays a utopianism which is not found in Marx’s writings.

The state is, as Engels wrote in the Introduction to The Civil War in France

...nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another. ⁽⁶⁾

In the preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1872, Marx wrote,

One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

This is precisely what the SPGB is proposing. On the contrary, what is necessary is to shatter the bourgeois state power and replace it with a proletarian state power. ⁽⁷⁾ The state, in class society, is an organ for exercising the power of the ruling class, it is not a neutral body standing above classes which can be used by the working class if they happen to win an election. In today’s society, the bourgeoisie control the state, not because they have won an election or some other such formality, but because they are the dominant economic class in society. Democracy is simply the camouflage which disguises the real state of affairs, namely the dictatorship of the bourgeois class over society. The bourgeois class hold society’s means of material production in their hands. This is the material social relationship which makes them the dominant economic class and gives them control of the state. The famous democratic elections which are held from time to time are the fig leaf which conceals the real relationships of power. The bourgeois class will use their state to protect their material position, i.e., their economic position, come what may. They will certainly use it against anyone who threatens to take their property from them and socialise that property and it won’t matter an iota how many democratic elections the SPGB have won. The SPGB lists the ruthless brutality with which the bourgeoisie has drowned in blood all previous threats to its power, the Paris Commune of 1871, Russia 1905, Germany 1919 to 1921, Hungary 1956, etc.: however, they naively imagine that the bourgeoisie of the central capitalist countries would accept total loss of their power, because they have chosen to organise the camouflage of that power through the so-called democratic process. Instead of honestly confronting this issue and drawing out the consequences for the working class, they dismiss it by a syllogism of formal logic. If there were a socialist majority in society, we are told, then there would be a socialist majority in the army and police. If there were a socialist majority in the army and police, then, they could never act against a socialist majority in parliament. Hence the bourgeoisie would not be able to resist their expropriation. Therefore bourgeois resistance by force of arms could not occur. Therefore the question of bourgeois armed resistance does not exist and all historical precedents are irrelevant since they simply show that the basic premise, namely the socialist majority in the population, was absent. ⁽⁸⁾

Even if a socialist majority were to be achieved in one national state, the bourgeoisie from other national states would not hesitate to send their forces to crush any attempt to overthrow capitalist property relations. This was first seen in the experience of the Paris Commune where, in Marx’s words;

The conquering and the conquered hosts fraternised for the common massacre of the proletariat... The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war: and this is now proved to be a mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out into civil war. Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform; the national governments are one as against the proletariat. ⁽⁹⁾

In the revolutionary upheavals following the First World War bourgeois armies from all over Europe intervened in Russia to try and crush the Bolshevik government, and the German Freikorps crushed the Munich Soviet Republic. In the present period, the US does not hesitate to use its armed forces to remove bourgeois regimes it disapproves of. The invasion of Iraq is only the latest example of this. The US would certainly move against a regime which began to expropriate bourgeois property. Does this mean that the SPGB’s famous socialist majority has to be a worldwide majority?

Instead of facing the real problems which lie in the path of the construction of communist society, the SPGB try to turn the argument against the IBRP asking “how would you deal with the army and police?” and declaring “what you are proposing is suicidal madness.” However, what we are proposing is not suicidal madness.

Workers’ councils

As argued above, a process of struggles is a necessary precursor to revolution. This is what we mean by a process of revolution. Within this process the ideas of the new society will grow as the bankruptcy of the old one becomes ever more apparent. For revolution to occur, it is clear that the existing bourgeois order must be in acute crisis with some, at least, of its forces of repression being paralysed or siding with the working class. During this process, we advocate the formation of workers’ councils, which are not simply committees, as the SPGB imagine, but form alternative centres of power. They will be the organs through which the working class reaches collective decisions, and will have commissions examining specific issues, etc. However, they will also have their own guard units and military detachments who have defected from the bourgeois forces in this period of crisis. In such a process of upheaval, it is not inevitable that revolutionary workers would be massacred by bourgeois armies. The experience of Russia in 1917 shows exactly how the armies of the bourgeoisie can collapse in times of crisis, since, as the SPGB itself recognises, they are composed of workers who are not immune from the general upheavals of society. 1917 also shows how a situation of dual power can develop when bourgeois society becomes wracked with crisis. From a situation of dual power the workers’ councils should move, we argue, to abolish the power of the bourgeois state and set about constructing a proletarian state. This state is necessary, not only to protect proletarian power, but to carry through the transition from capitalist to communist society. ⁽¹⁰⁾ To pretend that this process is not going to require bloodshed and periods of civil war is completely unrealistic. Although we do not welcome bloodshed and war, as the SPGB imagines, these things remain unavoidable overheads of the revolutionary process.

Of course, what we have written is derived from the experience of Russia in 1917, the only experience we have of the working class taking political power. ⁽¹¹⁾ We are fully aware that the struggles of the future must be on a much larger scale and need to rapidly become global if they are not to be crushed by an international coalition of bourgeois forces. In extending the power of the revolution and spiking the guns of the international bourgeoisie, international political action and revolutionary propaganda will be essential. An international political party fighting for the interests of the world’s working class will be necessary if this struggle is to succeed. How the SPGB can equate these positions with anarchism is simply incomprehensible. It is either deliberate distortion or plain ignorance.

What we have sketched above is not suicidal madness as the SPGB think. It is the realistic route to constructing a higher form of society based on a materialistic understanding of class consciousness and the true relations of power in capitalist class society. We need to face up to these issues and discard childish fantasies. The idea of a peaceful transition to communism via the ballot box and parliament is little better than a fairy story.

(1) See The German Ideology, Lawrence and Wishart, p47.

(2) Ibid, p64.

(3) Ibid, p94.

(4) During periods of social upheaval the prevailing ideas of bourgeois society are widely questioned. This has been evident in the social revolts from the Paris Commune to the present. An eloquent description of this was provided by George Orwell when he visited the communes in Aragon during the Spanish Civil war. This is what he observed:
> I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life - snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc - had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. (Homage to Catalonia)

(5) K Marx, The Civil War in France, p73 (Foreign language press Peking 1970).

(6) See The Civil War in France, p17.

(7) In the Introduction to The Civil War in France, Engels writes “The shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a new and truly democratic one is described in detail in the third section of The Civil War.”

(8) History has shown many times that the bourgeoisie knows very well how to muddy the waters of public opinion so no issue is clear cut. It shows also that the bourgeoisie knows precisely how to use its hired retainers, such as the police and volunteer army units, both of whom it ensures are well paid and relatively shielded from socialist ideas, to carry out the necessary massacres. The SPD’s use of the Freikorps in Germany in the period after World War 1 is only one of many such historical examples.

(9) See K Marx, The Civil War in France, p97.

(10) Marx, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme described the state in the period of transition thus: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” Section 4 of The Critique of Gotha Programme.

(11) The IBRP has consistently argued that it was the failure of the international revolution which decided the fate of the Russian revolution. The isolation of the Russian revolution resulted in the Bolshevik administration assuming the tasks of the Russian bourgeois class, developing the forces of production and a form of capitalism in Russia, namely state capitalism.