“Revolution” is one of these words. By “industrial revolution” Marxism means the gradual transformation of the pre-capitalist way of production into the capitalist. “Revolution” here means the same as “development,” and the contrast between the terms “evolution” and “revolution” is almost extinguished. Thus the Marxist is able, when it pleases him, to speak of the revolutionary spirit as contemptible “putschism” (“insurrectionism”). The revisionists were quite right when they called many passages in Marx and Engels to their support. But when Marx calls the workers’ movement a revolutionary movement and says that the working class is the only true revolutionary class, he is using the term in the sense that suggests barricades and street fights. Thus syndicalism is also right when it appeals to Marx.
82
Marxism is equally obscure in the use of the word State. According to
[print edition page 70]
Marxism, the State is merely an instrument of class domination. By acquiring political power the proletariat abolishes class conflict and the State ceases to exist. “As soon as there is no longer any social class to be kept in suppression, and as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the hitherto existing anarchy of production are removed, along with the conflicts and excesses which arise from them, then there will be nothing more to repress and nothing that would make necessary a special repressive power, a state. The first act in which the State really appears as representative of the whole society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—is simultaneously its last independent act as a state. The intervention of state power in social affairs becomes superfluous in one field after another until at last it falls asleep of its own accord.”12 However obscure or badly thought out may be its view of the essence of political organization, this statement is so positive in what it says of the proletarian rule that it would seem to leave no room for doubt. But it seems much less positive when we remember Marx’s assertion that between the capitalist and the communist societies must lie a period of revolutionary transformation, in addition to which there will be a corresponding “political period of transition whose state can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”13 If we assume, with Lenin, that this period is to endure until that “higher phase of communist society” is reached, in which “the enslaving subordination of individuals under the division of labour has vanished, and with it the contrast of mental and physical work,” in which “work will have become not only a means to life but itself the first necessity of life,” then of course we come to a very different conclusion with regard to Marxism’s attitude to democracy.14 Obviously the socialist community will have no room for democracy for centuries to come.
83
Although it occasionally comments on the historical achievements of Liberalism, Marxism entirely overlooks the importance of liberal ideas. It is at
[print edition page 71]
a loss when it comes to deal with the liberal demands for liberty of conscience and expression of opinion, for the recognition on principle of every opposition party and the equal rights of all parties. Wherever it is not in power, Marxism claims all the basic liberal rights, for they alone can give it the freedom which its propaganda urgently needs. But it can never understand their spirit and will never grant them to its opponents when it comes into power itself. In this respect it resembles the Churches and other institutions which rest on the principle of violence. These, too, exploit the democratic liberties when they are fighting their battle, but once in power they deny their adversaries such rights. So, plainly, the democracy of Socialism exposes its deceit. “The party of the communists,” says Bukharin, “demands no sort of liberties for the bourgeois enemies of the people. On the contrary.” And with remarkable cynicism he boasts that the communists, before they were in power, advocated the liberty of expression of opinion merely because it would have been “ridiculous” to demand from the capitalists liberty for the workers’ movement in any other way than by demanding liberty in general.15
Always and everywhere Liberalism demands democracy at once, for it believes that the function which it has to fulfil in society permits of no postponement. Without democracy the peaceful development of the state is impossible. The demand for democracy is not the result of a policy of compromise or of a pandering to relativism in questions of world-philosophy,16 for Liberalism asserts the absolute validity of its doctrine. Rather, it is the consequence of the Liberal belief that power depends upon a mastery over mind alone and that to gain such a mastery only spiritual weapons are effective. Even where for an indefinite time to come it may expect to reap only disadvantages from democracy, Liberalism still advocates democracy. Liberalism believes that it cannot maintain itself against the will of the majority; and that in any case the advantages which might accrue from a liberal regime maintained artificially and against the feeling of the people would be infinitesimal compared to the disturbances that would stay the quiet course of state development if the people’s will were violated.
84
The Social Democrats would certainly have continued to juggle with the catchword democracy, but, by an historical accident, the Bolshevist revolution has compelled them prematurely to discard their mask, and to reveal the violence which their doctrine implies.
[print edition page 72]
The Political Constitution of Socialist Communities
Beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat lies the paradise, the “higher phase of the communist society,” in which, “with the all round development of individuals, the productive forces will also have increased, and all the springs of social wealth will flow more freely.”17 In this land of promise “there will remain nothing to repress, nothing which would necessitate a special repressive power, a state . . . In place of the government over persons comes the administration of things and the direction of productive processes.”18 An epoch will have begun in which “a generation, grown up in new, free social conditions, will be able to discard the whole lumber of State.”19 The working class will have gone, thanks to “long struggles, a whole series of historical processes,” by which “the men, like the conditions, were completely transformed.”20 Thus society is able to exist without coercion, as once it did in the Golden Age. Of this Engels has much to relate, much that is beautiful and good.21 Only we have read it all before, all better and more beautifully expressed in Virgil, Ovid, and Tacitus!
Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,
sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.
Poena metusque aberant, nec verba minantia fixo
aere legebantur22
(The first golden age flourished, which begat truth and justice spontaneously;
No laws of formal guarantees were needed. Punishment and fear were unheard of; no savage, restrictive decrees were carved on bronze tablets.)