ETIENNE BALIBAR ON THE
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Introduction by
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Afterword by
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Translated by Grahame Lock
Contents
[Part III]
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Georges Marchais Liberty and Socialism
Georges Marchais Ten Questions, Ten Answers to Etienne Balibar On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Guy Besse On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Georges Marchais In Order to Take Democracy Forward
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161 168 | |
Louis Althussier : The Historic Significance |
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Etienne Balibar : Postscript to the |
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Index [Not available] |
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Although the question of the Party Statutes does not figure on the agenda for the 22nd Congress, we [L'Humanité] think that readers may find the following contribution interesting, in so far as it deals with a problem which is relevant to the work of the Congress.
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in Latin America, and in particular in Chile.
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attentive to the question of liberty and of respect for socialist democracy.
Question: Your condemnation of the attacks on liberties in the USSR -- is this a new thing?
G. Marchais -- For you it is new, for me it is not. The question of liberty and of respect for socialist democracy is for us of the first importance.
G. Marchais is next asked about the pre-Congress discussion for the 22nd Congress of the French Party.
The branches are meeting, the debate is lively, says G. Marchais, who remarks : no party in this country prepares its congresses so democratically as we do. In our Party discussion is free; when the decision has been made, everyone applies it!
Christian Guy then questions G. Marchais about 'the democratic road to socialism'.
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G. Marchais -- It means transition to socialism without civil war. What is the solution? STRUGGLE. We reject civil war, but there can be no transition to socialism without a bitter struggle, taking various forms, based on the Union of the French People and its central pillar, the Union of the Left, and whose means lies in the system of elections. The majority must at each step make its will known through the election system.
G. Marchais is then asked: Is this a gamble?
G. Marchais -- No, it is a serious political strategy: shall we or shall we not succeed in obtaining a majority grouping of the people and thus in isolating the big bourgeoisie? Yes, of course!
The General Secretary of the French Communist Party then details the 'three necessary levers' of change:
1. -- The working class, which has the greatest interest in change. The working people makes up 44% of the population. It has a great experience of struggle, a powerful Communist Party, and a great, experienced Trade Union federation.
J.-M. Cavada -- Well, that's clear enough!
Next, C. Guy questions G. Marchais about the discussion contributions published that morning by L'Humanité, and in particular about the opinion expressed there according to which the term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' should be eliminated from the French Communist Party's Statutes.
George Marchais expresses his agreement with this proposition. He says: 'The Congress will decide.' He continues: 'Here is my opinion . . .'
G. Marchais -- . . . We are living in 1976 . . . The French Communist Party is not rooted in the past. It is not dogmatic. It knows how to adapt to present-day conditions. Now, the word 'dictatorship' no longer corresponds to our aims. It has an intolerable
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connotation, contrary to our aspirations and to our arguments . . .
G. Marchais underlines the need to struggle step by step for each immediate demand, but he is emphatic in pointing out: 'We must transform society. We need a socialist society . . .'
The broadcast then links up with Rome for the next item.
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Answer -- As you know, we are preparing our Congress on the basis of a draft document entitled 'What the Communists want for France'.
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therefore of the great majority of the people in France today.
Question 3 -- Mr Marchais, were you or were you not guided in your decisions by tactical considerations and by the attitude of other political forces, for example by the progress of the Socialist Party?
Answer -- The idea that the reason why we are proposing a democratic road to socialism, without the dictatorship of the proletariat, lies in pressure from other political forces, is quite simply absurd. I will tell you why. All the other political parties are now or have in the past been involved in government. What have they done?
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In short, if we were to give way to pressure from other political forces, the consequence would be that we should change for the worse, we should enter the government to maintain capitalist rule and restrict democracy. But we are proposing exactly the opposite, as I have just explained to you.
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1. First of all, it must be pointed out that a theoretical change of this importance cannot be carried out ad hoc. How does it come about that the draft document of the Congress, the basis of the present discussion, did not even mention the problem? Are Communist militants incapable of facing a clearly posed question
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head-on, and of organizing a thorough discussion about the principles of their politics? Would it not have been correct to set out in detail, precisely on the occasion of the Congress, the whole line of reasoning justifying the decision to establish the action of the Communists on new foundations, to assign it new historical objectives, and to drop the dictatorship of the proletariat, so that the Communists might make their decision with full knowledge of the facts, and not simply on the basis of a feeling of repulsion inspired by the word 'dictatorship'.
2. I quoted Lenin. I could have produced a thousand other quotes. Quotations prove nothing. Reduced to quotations, Marxism becomes a form of sterile dogmatism, a religion of formulae: painful experience has taught us something about the consequences. Let us remember one fact, however: that the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is not a theoretical invention, conjured up by Marxist intellectuals; it is a discovery which had to be made, which expresses the lessons of years of activity. And this
Even if the Congress document had been differently conceived, conceived not as a 'manifesto' for the future, but as an analysis of the political problems confronting the present theory and tactics of the Party, these conditions could not have been created from one day to the next. It would in fact have been necessary for the Party in the preceding years to have fixed for itself the task of studying in depth the problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat, systematically confronting them with the lessons of its everyday experience. Instead of which, voluntarily or not, it has kept silent on this question, and thus allowed a gap to develop between its analyses, its projects for a programme and Marxist political theory. So that the particular 'dictatorship of the proletariat' which is now to be cast off like a worn-out piece of clothing is no more than a ghost, a caricature of the concept worked out by Marx and Lenin, which they had made the touchstone of the revolutionary class position and which they had tried, not without difficulty, to explain to the labour movement of their own time in the hope that the movement would adopt it.
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activity teaches us, in particular, that the revolutionary class must not accept the blinkers, the mystifying alternatives on which bourgeois legal ideology rests: 'dictatorship' in itself or 'democracy' in itself; organization of the workers as a ruling class through the use of State coercion or democratic mass struggle for their emancipation. But these are precisely the alternatives within which we are now trapping ourselves.
3. We are faced with an enormously important fact, about which we have finally had to admit that it has been a big obstacle to the mass movement. This fact is that the history of the socialist countries (or of certain socialist countries) has disfigured and discredited the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. It has confused it with a dictatorship over the proletariat, by identifying party and State; it has in practice opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat to mass political democracy. It has led to grave political crises and to deep-rooted splits in the International Communist Movement. But it is no good for us simply to express our regrets about this situation or to hope to avoid it by ignoring and then finally openly abandoning the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, this situation must be analyzed. An historical phenomenon has
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historical causes. What are the historical causes which prevented (leaving aside all questions of individual 'personalities') the peoples of the socialist countries from fully realizing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and which have thus tended to turn it into its opposite? What are the historical causes which prevented the effective destruction of the bourgeois State apparatus and therefore the complete solution of the gigantic social contradictions inherited from centuries of class oppression? What form do these causes take today, in the socialist world, and in the capitalist world, and how can they be counteracted? What in consequence are the additions (including the rectifications ) which have to be made to the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to guide the revolutionary action of the Communists?
4. The absence of these questions is greatly distorting the present debate in the Party. Its effects can be felt in every line of the draft document, sometimes producing astonishing results. I shall give just one example. The document devotes one small paragraph to the 'international context'. The impression is given on the one hand that the world situation is evolving uniformly to the detriment of imperialism and to the benefit of the socialist camp, the national liberation struggles, the labour movement and the unity of these forces for progress; and on the other hand that France, because of its 'world importance', has the means to carry out its internal social transformation while escaping the intervention of imperialism. But the facts show this simplistic and over-optimistic view to be completely wrong. The only peoples who, in the course of the last decades, have succeeded in liberating themselves from imperialism and starting out on the road to socialism have been able to do so only at the cost of prolonged struggles against imperialist intervention: Cuba and Vietnam. The point is obviously not to underestimate the historic importance of these victories, for they show that revolution can be made by the peoples of the world and by the workers. And this in spite of the obstacles resulting from the disunity of the socialist camp and from the fragility of the alliance between socialism and the national independence struggles (cf. the Middle East!), which imperialism ceaselessly plays on.
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because France is an imperialist country, it finds itself in a more favourable position to neutralize any intervention in its internal affairs by the world imperialist system (of which it is a part), or even to escape such intervention completely! But this argument is quite unacceptable, and that is why, in fact, no-one has ever formulated it openly in this way; because it is the opposite which is true: the nearer a country is to the heart of the imperialist system, the more vital it is for imperialism to prevent its revolutionary development, and the greater the means available to imperialism -- economic, ideological, political and military -- to do so. There is therefore less need for it to make immediate use of the extreme remedy of an external attack, which in the end only welds against it the national unity of the forces of the people. Once before, in 1945-47, a movement of the people was thus isolated and defeated in France. But the extent to which French society nowadays depends on the world imperialist system has not been reduced but considerably increased.
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capital and who in principle ought to be capable of uniting against it; we cannot content ourselves with putting forward a few general slogans and universal ideological themes which are supposed spontaneously to conjure up such a majority. We have to forecast the forms which imperialist intervention will take, which are related to its very existence; we have to take into account in the analysis the contradictions in the camp of the people on which imperialism can play, and the means at its disposal -- it will use everything that it has got -- to mobilize entire masses of the people, including sections of the exploited masses, against change, even when their own interests suffer thereby (in the case of Portugal it succeeded in using as its shock troops those very same poor peasants which it had itself reduced to poverty and forced into emigration). To put it briefly: we do not simply need to take into account the foundations of the popular union for change and for the transition to socialism; we also have to take into account -- this is the whole problem -- the potential foundations of counter-revolution, in order to analyze them and to work out corresponding forms of struggle. Any strategy which fails to deal with both aspects of the problem must be utopian; it will bring not victory but defeat.
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struggles which it implies and the high stakes which it involves.
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The power of the big bourgeoisie today page 176
If we want to unite all the forces of the working class, to group around it the whole of the working population against the money aristocracy, then we cannot satisfy ourselves with a general denunciation of the 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie'. Unless we locate the different aspects of the economic, social and political power held by the great industrial and finance companies, unless we analyze the crisis of State Monopoly Capitalism, unless we analyze the class struggles of present-day France, then we shall be condemned to impose on contemporary reality texts of Lenin abstractly torn from their historical context.
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If this was not the case, it would be impossible to understand why the régime wants to isolate the Communist Party, win back the Socialist Party to class collaboration, and set the different sections of the working population against one another. It would be impossible to understand why it is so worried by the successes of our action for the defence and extension of liberties. One thing which Marx and Engels taught us, and which Lenin repeated in his time, followed by French Communists like Maurice Thorez and Waldeck Rochet, is that the struggle for socialism and the struggle for democracy are inseparable.
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socialist democracy.
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the working class and the other strata of working people will be reinforced. In this way more favourable conditions will be created for the mobilization of all the help which a socialist France will need in order to guarantee its progress -- even against threats of subversion and armed violence.
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unable either to defeat its enemies or to transform old Russia.
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French people to decide its own future. Balibar pleads for us not to ignore 'the potential foundations of counter-revolution' in our country, not to underestimate the ability of imperialism to turn to its own profit 'the contradictions in the camp of the people'; but it seems to me that the only strategy capable of foiling these manoeuvres is precisely the one defined by the draft document.
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of the needs of the members of society. In order to meet this requirement, there will be various forms of social property: nationalized property, co-operative property, municipal, provincial and regional public property. At the same time, in a number of fields, small-scale private property (artisan-type, commercial and industrial) and family-based farming will be the best way to satisfy the people's needs; taking account of international experience, we intend to maintain these forms in a socialist France.
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2. The question of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'
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by Marx, Engels and Lenin.
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words the conditions in which we live in this epoch and in this country. These conditions allow and require us to envisage other paths to socialism in France than those followed by the peoples which have already brought about the socialist transformation of their country.
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pose problems which must not be ignored, they also offer possibilities of co-operation and common action between revolutionary and progressive forces in the struggle to open new roads -- based on the concrete conditions existing in our country -- to democracy and socialism. Our Party has already, for several years, been working in support of such common action. It is in this spirit that we contributed to the success of the Conference of Communist Parties of Capitalist Europe held in January 1974, and to the implementation of its decisions, and it is in the same spirit that we have just adopted, together with our Italian comrades, an important joint declaration.
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In drawing attention to these events, we do not intend to lecture others but to draw the necessary conclusions for our own struggle.
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the grounds that they are bourgeois or formal in nature. This is to deform not only our position but also that of the founders of Marxism.
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As I have pointed out, the draft document rules out any illusions about the attitude of the big bourgeoisie and its willingness to respect the verdict of universal suffrage.
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changes in the relation of social and political forces, to the benefit of the working people and of all the other sections of the people.
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Turning now to the case of France, the idea of the Popular Front, which became a reality in 1936, cannot be found ready-made in Marx or in Lenin. It was based on the general principles of scientific socialism and on 'a concrete analysis of concrete reality'. Many other examples could be taken, all showing that our present approach finds its inspiration in the living source of the revolutionary theory and practice of our movement.
In consequence, and as requested by all the federal congresses of the Party, we are proposing to the National Congress that this notion should be abandoned (applause ). We are also proposing to Congress that the Central Committee to be elected there should be instructed to present to the following Party Congress a suitably modified version of the Preamble to the Statutes.
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The Historic Significance page 194
a history full of problems and contradictions. And we must understand that the initiatives taken by the Congress do, in their own way, tend to break with this history and to open new perspectives.
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from defending and strengthening its mass base. When the reputation of a political figure is damaged (Giscard), the bourgeoisie can always find another one to replace him (Chirac): you must not believe that it is always a case of 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee', because it may be that the second man can, by a more dangerous, semi-fascist form of demagogy, win back the mass base of the bourgeoisie which was collapsing as a consequence of the class struggle. We must pay great attention to these differences in the political forms taken by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie: they can have important consequences. And in the first place they may precisely allow the bourgeoisie to survive and to maintain itself in power.
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about the Common Programme.[3] The whole document adopted by the 22nd Congress is however centred around socialism. By this reference to socialism, the Congress intended to move beyond the tactical and electoral point of view centred on the Common Programme alone in order to say something about the 'strategy' which, beyond the Common Programme, must lead to socialism.
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here; I am talking about terribly concrete realities which find their expression in the famous 'electoral barrier' and other similar stumbling-blocks, and which cannot be explained just by blaming the 'television system', etc. -- on the contrary, we have to analyze with great care in each particular case the precise class limits, functions and effects involved.
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But since nothing is without its contradictions and problems, we must point out that this same Party, which talks at such length and with such generosity about liberties for others, nevertheless remains silent on the question of the present forms and practices of democratic centralism, i.e. on the forms of liberty of Communists in their own Party. Yet there is a lot to be said about this question. I shall come back to it in a moment.
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quickly learned what they could expect from it. But they expected something quite different from Soviet socialism, in which they had placed all their hopes of liberation, from that régime of terror and mass extermination, which is still awaiting a Marxist analysis.
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French People? Interpreted in the most favourable sense it might be taken to be or to be destined to become something quite different from a slogan designed to restore the 'electoral balance', namely to be directed, beyond the organizations of the Left, to the masses of the people themselves. Why address the masses of the people? In order to suggest to them, even if at first only by hints, that it will one day be necessary for them to organize as an autonomous force, in new forms, in factories, in neighbourhoods, around questions of housing, education, health care, transport, etc., in order to define and defend their demands, to support and stimulate the people's government in power or to prepare for its coming. Such mass organizations already exist in Italy and in Spain, where they play an important political role.
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to express a kind of political voluntarism designed simply to extend the influence of the Party beyond the Union of the Left. Not that an electoral gain is an insignificant matter, but it is far from exhausting the wealth of ideas contained in the slogan of the Union of the French People. There is thus a political battle to be engaged and won if the slogan of the Union of the French People is to be interpreted in its strongest sense: its mass sense.
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forms of economic exploitation, to the most vulgar forms of ideological influence and blackmail. The workers have everyday experience of the intervention of the bourgeois State in economic exploitation and in ideological propaganda. There can be no telling the workers that the proletariat does not exist, whether you call it 'the core of the working class' or something else. Georges Marchais, talking recently about the unskilled workers in automated industry, called them 'the proletariat of modern times'.
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of the people and the relation of forces allows it to be constructed, then this alliance is quite simply indispensable, and it would be criminal not to exploit the possibility.
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production, whose stability, like that of every mode of production, lies in particular relations of production which, according to the classic formula, resolve the contradiction between the developed productive forces (at this point there comes a hymn of praise to the 'scientific and technical revolution') and the old, out-dated relations of production.
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defined in its own right, in terms of its relations of production, since there are strictly speaking no socialist relations of production, but only in terms of the contradiction between capitalism, out of which it emerged, and communism, of which it is the first phase: thus in terms of its relation to communism, which is its future and end point.
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revolution, supposing that a peaceful transition to this State is possible.
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between the repressive, political and ideological apparatuses, to revolutionize their methods of work and the bourgeois ideology which governs their practical activity, and to construct new relations between these apparatuses and the masses on the basis of a new, proletarian ideology, in order to prepare the 'withering away of the State', i.e. , its replacement by organizations of the masses.
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the enormous problems of the State and its apparatuses, which are class problems and not problems of law.
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most progressive kind of 'formal' democracy, and which automatically eliminates any difference of opinion in the plenary sessions of the Congress, regularly leading to unanimous decisions without any 'real discussion'
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making it up -- a picture which might moreover help to reinforce the unity between the working class and allied social classes.
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But we must be careful! If we reject the recognition of tendencies in the Party, it is not so as to fall back into a more primitive form of political practice, to restrict liberty, or totally to destroy it, as Stalin did: it is in order to move forward, towards more liberty, in order to respond to the demands of the political practice of the vanguard of the working class and to the appeal of the 22nd Congress.
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Postscript to the English page 213
the French Left, among workers and progressive intellectuals. However, this discussion, as well as the spectacular 'shift in position' carried out by the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party, can be seen to be aspects (with their own particular characteristics) of a much wider process, which also concerns other, neighbouring countries, and which does not only concern Communist Parties. And above all, as Grahame Lock explains, and as the reader will I think himself conclude from the texts contained here, the theoretical problems raised in this book bring into question by degrees the whole previous history of the international labour movement, the way in which this history is still a factor contributing to the present orientations and contradictions of this movement, and the way in which it is exercizing its influence on the interpretation and use of Marxist and Leninist principles. That is why, taking account of course of the considerable differences between the political situations of the different countries (France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain . . . but also -- why not? -- the USA, and even the Soviet Union and other socialist countries), and taking account in addition of the different, independent organizational forms which the working class of each country has constructed, I can only agree with Grahame Lock that this discussion does not concern one country and one party alone. Moreover, it cannot be confined to exchanges of views or polemics between the leaderships of Communist and Socialist Parties, in which their official positions of the moment are expressed. It must, if it is to bear fruit, remove all the obstacles to its own development, and lead to that renovation of Marxism of which we are in such dire need; it must involve the 'rank and file' of these parties, their militants, their 'friends' in the masses, whose number will itself be increased by the very openness of the discussion, and finally all socialists.[2]
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If the perspectives in which this book is situated, whether by design or by accident, really are so broad, it is easy to understand that we are anxious carefully to underline the circumstances in which it was written and its limits. It only constitutes a part of the dossier of the discussion now under way.
The draft document presented for discussion at the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party -- which contains no reference to the dictatorship of the proletariat, one way or the other -- was adopted unanimously by the Congress, without any modifications.[3]
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It must be said that in the existing conditions, with the Party being theoretically unprepared, this preoccupation at the same time distracted attention from the concrete analysis of the French political situation and of its present difficulties.[4] That is one -- and not the least -- of the paradoxes of the 22nd Congress, because the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, however general and 'abstract' it may at first sight appear, is in fact closely linked to the practical questions of the class struggle and of the movement of the people. However, it must be admitted that this link is not immediately obvious to many comrades, who either view it as a 'question of principle', in the bad sense of the term, or as a simple question of words, of propaganda and tactics. This situation is certainly not restricted to France, and it must be seen as one of the consequences of the Stalin deviation inside the Communist Parties. Not only did it distort the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, not only did it embody this distortion in a practice which is disfiguring and undermining the revolutionary objectives of the proletariat (in the USSR and in other socialist countries), but it also progressively imprisoned this concept in a theoretical ghetto, cutting its links with theory and practice.
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unified political movement? At this moment the question at issue was both how to strengthen mass activity in order to improve the recruitment, influence and organizational capacity of the revolutionary party, and how to reinforce its proletarian character. In other words, many Communists saw that a change in the Party's style of work was necessary if the working class itself was to be able to play its full political role. They also realized that this was the key to any sustained attack on bourgeois rule: the economic crisis alone is not enough, nor is the union of the parties of the Left, even if it is obviously indispensable. However, because of the real difficulty of the problem and because of the heritage of the Cold War period and of Stalinism, it proved extremely difficult (as clearly shown by the sudden 'switches' which took place during and immediately after the 21st Congress) for Communists to get a clear understanding of these apparently unavoidable dilemmas: 'Mass party' or 'vanguard party'? 'Union of the Left' at the top, between parties (with all the day-to-day compromises which it involves) or 'Popular Union' at the base, extending beyond the simple parliamentary and electoral framework? And how should this Popular Union be conceived and realized: as the unity of the (varyingly) exploited workers, of the producers, alone? Or as a unity with fractions of the bourgeoisie itself, with an eye to more or less long-term objectives? These are questions which, in the opinion of many comrades, were calling urgently for a new effort of discussion, with all the cards on the table, without dodging any contradictions. For if, from this period onwards, the Party's political work has indeed been 'walking on two legs' -- one being the political alliance constituted by the Common Programme, the other the effort of the Party to develop the movement of the people by taking the lead in all its struggles -- we nevertheless have to recognize that these two legs are having a lot of trouble keeping in pace: one (the movement of the people) is lagging behind the other (the alliance between parties), when it is not simply sacrificed to this alliance. For the Party has not been able to find the way to develop a proletarian practice of politics, it has not been able to detach itself sufficiently clearly from the bourgeois practice of politics, in which, paradoxically but inevitably, the Stalin deviation had helped to tangle it up. And yet -- as Georges Marchais himself indicated when signing the agreement -- without the movement of the people and the Popular Union, without the fusion of the Communist
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Party with this movement of the people, the Common Programme has no chance of success, and certainly no chance of producing the effects which the workers expect of it!
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point of view of a class which is throwing everything into the struggle to transform its desires into realities (and may even succeed in doing so in certain circumstances, for a certain period).
The reader of the above texts may have gained the impression that there exists a certain distance between on the one hand Grahame Lock's introduction and my own essay, and on the other hand Althusser's piece. A difference in 'tone', due to the different circumstances in which these texts were produced; and perhaps a visible contradiction on certain points. This should surprise only those who mistake a discussion which is just beginning for a completed enquiry, who mistake a collective effort of reflection for the manifesto of a 'school of thought', or even of a group pursuing a plan established in advance. Everyone, I think, will realize that this is not how matters stand.
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My own contribution to the discussion is directed essentially to the theoretical concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which I tried as far as possible to restore to its true definition in order to provide that indispensable reference point which the discussion was lacking. I did not sever this concept from the historical conditions under which it was constituted (Marx, Lenin) and of its deformation (Stalin), but I was forced to limit this analysis. Others, I hope, will take it further.[7]
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class struggle, ensures the material domination of the dominant ideology.[9] The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is an essential part of the argument that there can be no socialism and no destruction of the very foundations of exploitation in all its forms without the overthrow, in one way or another, of the State power of the bourgeoisie and the installation of the State power of the working people. This is something quite different from 'giving their fair place' to the workers within the existing State. And it is something quite different from 'strengthening the State of the whole people' on the backs of the workers.
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. . . Of course, Marx's Capital is not Moses' Law, whose rejection would be blasphemy! But before proceeding to such a 'transcendence', i.e. in the event to a replacement of the Marxist theory of the class struggle, the labour movement would do well to make sure that it possesses another theoretical basis compatible with its political autonomy and its revolutionary perspectives . . . Another class basis, of course.
This having been established, it remains true that the question at hand does not concern only the theoretical concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat -- far from it -- but also, as several participants in the discussion underlined, the relation between this concept and what is customarily called the 'strategy' of revolutionary struggles in a given historical period. A problem like that of 'class alliances', for instance, seems to be directly involved by this question. And on this point, the formulations proposed by Althusser's text would appear to contradict what I myself have argued and what Grahame Lock for his part is arguing. I do not want to evade this point.
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certain analyses in this book? Essentially two. Althusser writes: 'this last argument -- the proletariat as the heart of a broad alliance -- is in the tradition of Marx and Lenin. The 22nd Congress takes it up in the form of the idea of the "leading role of the working class" at the heart of the broad union of the people. There are no serious problems on this point.' And further on, distinguishing between the relatively 'contingent' elements and the 'necessary' elements in the dictatorship of the proletariat, he classifies the problems of peaceful transition and of class alliances among the contingent elements, and writes: 'As far as these two questions are concerned [. . .] the 22nd Congress did [. . .] correct certain errors to which some comrades might have fallen victim with regard to the seizure of power and to socialism, errors induced by the Stalin deviation. But precisely on these two questions, the 22nd Congress added nothing new: it only repeated arguments about things which Marx and Lenin themselves had claimed to be possible (peaceful transition) or politically desirable (broadest possible alliance around the working class).'
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revolution does indeed need a strategy for the seizure and exercise of power, a strategy adapted to the historical conditions of the moment, therefore founded on a concrete analysis of these conditions and of their transformation. That is undeniable. But such an analysis can precisely only be made if it takes into account the historical tendencies of the development of capitalist relations of production, of the State dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and the specific forms of the historical counter-tendency, the tendency to the dictatorship of the proletariat, in each new period. Every true revolutionary 'strategy' therefore implies a theory of these tendencies, and the development of this theory. This for example is what Lenin provides when he develops the theory of imperialism, thus rectifying certain points in Marx's theory, certain aspects of Marx's own idea of the development of the 'tendencies' of capitalist society. On this basis, the characteristics of imperialism (those which Lenin was able to recognize at the beginning of the imperialist epoch) are incorporated into the analysis of capitalism, becoming the basis of a concrete analysis of the forms of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, therefore of the conditions and of the forms of the proletarian revolution.[11] The construction of a strategy cannot be 'logically deduced' from a general historical tendency, as if this tendency had to follow an immutable and linear course, a predictable line of progression. Nor can it represent an empirical adaptation to (apparent) 'differences' between one country and another, between one epoch and another: on the contrary, all such differences and changes must be analyzed as (new, unforeseen but necessary) forms of the historical tendency if their real importance is to be understood. Worst of all is the temptation which often arises to justify after the event a strategic change by constructing the theory from which it might have been deduced (for example, in many of its aspects the 'theory of State Monopoly Capitalism' is quite simply the transposition into abstract economic terms of the conditions which one would have to imagine fulfilled in order to 'justify' a strategy of peaceful
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transition to socialism, in order to 'justify' a strategic alliance between the working class, the petty bourgeoisie, the non-monopoly bourgeoisie, etc . . .).
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. . . Marxism, on the other hand, by placing the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism at the centre of its theoretical apparatus, destroys every idea of a model, therefore every form of strategic empiricism. On the one hand it forbids us to confuse the announcement of a political or economic programme with the prediction of events to come (as if these events had to follow a plan), for every programme is transformed and finally destroyed by the national and international class struggle in which it is situated. On the other hand it shows that the only strategy which can, at least in part, succeed is a strategy which right from the beginning takes account of the final objective: not the construction of a new model of the State, however different from the existing State, but the abolition of classes and of every State. That is also why only such a strategy allows us to understand and genuinely to rectify the previous deviations of revolutionary practice (and let us add: also future deviations) instead of simply holding them 'at a distance' and relativizing them in space and time as 'out-of-date strategies'.
Let us now return to the question of class alliances. As a real problem, requiring a concrete analysis, it is entirely open, and there can be no question of solving it in two words. In fact, this problem is posed in specific terms in each epoch and in each social formation in the history of capitalism. That is why there can also be no question of identifying the dictatorship of the proletariat in general with such-and-such a form of class alliance, for example with that form of alliance which made possible the Revolution of October 1917 and the installation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and whose progressive break-up explains, at least in part, the subsequent aggravation of the class struggle and its Stalinian deviation. What we must say is, on the contrary, that in the writings of Marx and Lenin themselves the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat is never separated from the problem of class alliances, for the concrete conditions of the realization of the one are also the conditions of the realization of the other. Thus, to borrow Althusser's provisional terminology, what seems at first to be linked in a purely 'contingent' manner to the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is shown in practice to be indissociably linked to it, in constantly new forms, which are but the 'realization' of this concept itself. Now this realization of the
page 226
concept itself is in no way 'contingent': it is on the contrary just as necessary as the historical tendency of the class struggle.
page 227
admit that the history of social formations like capitalist France today is not producing a less complex class structure; it is simply a question of another type of complexity. The question of 'class alliances', as it is now once again posed, is precisely the political index of this new type of complexity.
page 228
complete 'industrialization' of agriculture, in this respect, is a myth. And the merging of agricultural and industrial labour power on a single labour market, in present conditions, is an impossibility. Thus, from the point of view of the socialist revolution, even if the problem of the 'alliance of the working class and peasantry' does not have the same importance nor the same content as in Lenin's time, it nevertheless remains a decisive problem whose exploration is vital.
page 229
different social groups occupy, from the economic and political points of view, an unstable position in the no man's land of class antagonism, more or less comfortably suspended 'between' proletarianization and capitalist bourgeoisification. I say it in order to deny that here we are talking about an independent class: in fact, its exact limits are indeterminate, and its specific interests non-existent for they only represent a combination, changing with the conjuncture, of the contradictory interests already present in each class.
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To reject the myth of the petty bourgeoisie as a third, independent class is therefore to reject the legal form which this argument about class alliances implicitly or explicitly takes. It is to propose another formulation, which may appear surprising if you extract it from its concrete historical context: that the class alliances which the proletariat needs are class alliances with fractions of the bourgeoisie itself, fractions which would turn against their class. It is therefore to imply that these alliances are in no way spontaneous, that they in no way result from a simple 'convergence' of interests, for they can only arise from the destruction of the system of class alliances of the bourgeoisie, which extends to within the proletariat itself, providing the bourgeoisie with its mass base through economic and political constraint, through the exploitation of divergent corporate interests, and through ideological domination. It is therefore to imply that the fundamental condition of this process, and in part also its result, is the class unity of the proletariat itself, which can never be spontaneously created.
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rooted in the bourgeois form of the family, in the role of the domestic labour of women, a form of super-exploited labour which the 'mass consumption' introduced by imperialism has not suppressed but perpetuated. For this mass consumption is a forced consumption of commodities of which the woman is the slave in the home, and the man the slave at work, because of the 'needs' which it creates. Another proof would be the division in the trade unions, which is an enormously important phenomenon of French social history, never really overcome, any more than its political divisions have been overcome (Gaullism constantly exploited these divisions). None of these phenomena, which demand a concrete analysis, can be reduced to simple ideological effects. To the extent that they concern the conditions of the reproduction of labour power and the forms of organization (whether trade-union or political) of the proletariat, they bring directly into question the function of the State in an imperialist social formation.[14]
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formation. The function which the State fulfils in ensuring (or failing to ensure) the unity of the ruling class cannot be understood unless you analyze it on the basis of the relation of this State to the exploited class. In other words, the State of the ruling class cannot be understood from the point of view of the ruling class, it can only be understood from the point of view of the exploited class. From this point of view, the basic function of the State is to hinder the class unity of the proletariat, a function which is also the basis of its contradictions, both within its purely repressive apparatuses and in its ideological apparatuses. That is why you cannot seize on the contradictions of the ruling class and break up its historical system of class alliances, undermining its mass base, without attacking the existing State, in whatever form the existing relation of forces makes possible. You cannot create the class unity of the proletariat or the unity of all working people around it within the existing bourgeois State; you can only create this unity in a battle against the existing State, against its historical forms, in a protracted trade-union, political and ideological class struggle.
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on the basis outlined above that you can really pose the question of the concrete unity of these two problems, which is at the same time the main theoretical question and the main political question.
Dossier
Extracts from the
Pre-Congress Debate and
the Proceedings of the
22nd Congress of the
French Communist Party
(January-February 1976)
On the question of the dictatorship
of the proletariat*
Georges Haddad
(Secretary of the Pablo Neruda branch,
Epinay-sous-Sénart )
I should like to make my contribution to the debate which is now involving large sections of the Party in connexion with the preparations for the 22nd Congress, by proposing a new version of certain paragraphs of the Preamble to the Statutes of the French Communist Party.
As far as paragraph 9 is concerned, I want to suggest a new wording which, while avoiding the use of the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat', clarifies this notion and brings it into closer touch with the present-day class struggle.
Why is it better to avoid the term 'dictatorship of the proletariat'?
-- Because, although it is an old and fundamental notion, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' corresponded to particular circumstances of the class struggle, to particular historical, social and economic conditions.
-- Because the term 'dictatorship' does not have the same connotations nor even the same content now, as compared with before the appearance of the fascist régimes in Germany and Italy, and of the Spanish, Greek and Portuguese dictatorships, the last two of which have recently collapsed . . . not to speak of the dictatorships
* From the pre-Congress debate for the 22nd Congress; as published in L'Humanité, 7. 1. 1976.
-- Because, after all, 'dictatorship' is the opposite of the continuously widening democracy and continuously expanding liberties for which we are fighting.
-- Because the idea of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is no longer completely true today. It was absolutely true towards the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. It does still have some truth today, but it does not reflect the whole of present-day reality, since the possibilities of victory do not depend entirely on the struggle of the working class and of the agricultural proletariat, but essentially on the struggle of the working class in alliance with the broad anti-monopolist social strata, and not only with the proletarian peasantry, within a broad grouping of forces around the working class, the decisive force behind the Union of the French People.
Thus paragraph 9 could be worded in the following way:
'This new political power, whose form may vary, guarantees the widest possible democracy, in particular for all working people, at both the economic level and the political level. It will ensure both the extension of liberties and the satisfaction of economic, social and human needs. This new political power of the working people will open up the road which will lead progressively from the government of men to the administration of things, to communist society.'
And then, I would propose adding to or completing paragraph 11 with the following phrase:
'Only the working class can successfully lead the revolutionary struggle, because it is the leading force of the struggle to change society.'
Liberty and socialism*
Georges Marchais
G. Marchais -- Your [the interviewer's ] question poses a general problem to which I must reply. In the construction of socialist society a number of principles must be taken into account.
You cannot build socialism without the collective appropriation of the means of production and exchange; without the State being ruled by the working class and its allies; without democratic planning; without the participation of the citizens in the administration of public affairs at every level; without a great Communist workers' party.
From Cuba to China and the USSR, socialism already offers a great diversity of possibilities throughout the world. This diversity will increase as other countries reach socialism.
Socialist society is genuinely superior because it truly guarantees the liberation of man, puts an end to his alienation and allows him to enjoy real freedom.
The text submitted for discussion by the Party with a view to the preparation of the Congress underlines the fact that democracy must be taken to its limits.
Socialism is synonymous with liberty.
This notion is valid for every country and for every circumstance. It is quite wrong to use repression or administrative measures against the expression of ideas, and there can be no other way of looking at this question.
That is why the French Communist Party has decided to express its disagreement with certain other ways of behaving. We think that there is no justification for attacking liberties. We shall remain
* From the interview given to 'Antenne 2' (French Television). As published in L'Humanité, 8. 1. 1976.
It is within this general framework that our standpoints must be interpreted. There is a difference of opinion between ourselves and the CPSU on the question of socialist democracy. [. . .]
We are more demanding now that the considerable successes of the Soviet Union and of the Socialist countries -- and I draw your attention to the fact that 25 million Soviet citizens are participating in the administration of public affairs -- have created new conditions in which socialist democracy can be pushed forward and further developed.
The CPSU has criticized the crimes, tragedies and errors of the past -- which by the way demonstrates the superiority of socialism -- and certain necessary corrections have been made, but these are not yet complete and more corrections have to be added. The necessary conditions exist for the Soviet Union to bear the banner of liberty ever higher and further.
But, he continues, it is always difficult to reproduce before the Congress itself the same lively to-and-fro as in the discussion in the branches. . . .
. . . With 1,500 delegates present, the Congress always gives a rather solemn impression; but we must ensure that the Congress debate reflects the tremendous discussion now taking place in the Party.
2. -- The Union of the French People, a grouping whose main pillar is the Union of the Left.
3. -- The French Communist Party, the revolutionary party of the working class.
These are the three forces, the three levers of struggle. At each stage, universal suffrage will decide!
Even the word 'proletariat' will no longer serve, because we want to unite together, with the working class, the majority of wage-earners . . . But this does not mean that we are abandoning our objective: socialism in French colours . . . For without socialism there is no way out of the crisis . . .
'Ten questions, ten answers, to
convince the listener'*
Georges Marchais
Question 2 -- You have enlivened the pre-Congress debate by condemning the dictatorship of the proletariat. If this expression is eliminated from the Party Statutes or replaced, will you not appear as a revisionist of Marxist-Leninist doctrine and be called to order ?
The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' does not figure in this draft document to designate political power in the socialist France for which we are fighting. It does not appear there because the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' does not properly characterize the reality of our policy and of what we are proposing to the country today.
We are living in 1976. We are living and struggling in a France and in a world totally different from the situation fifty or even twenty-five years ago. We take the fullest account of this fact. To do otherwise would be to replace the precise and living study of a real situation by quotations or examples erected into a dogma. The French Communist Party has been formed in a quite different school.
We believe, as our draft document clearly points out, that the power which will have to carry out the socialist transformation of society will be -- with the working class playing the vanguard role -- representative of the whole of the manual and intellectual workers,
* From the interview broadcast by France-Inter (French Radio): 'Ten questions, ten answers to convince the listener', January 19th, 1976; as published in L'Humanité, 20. 1. 1976.
This power will bring about the most extensive democratization of the whole of the economic, social and political life of the country by drawing support from the struggle of the working class and of the masses of the people.
Finally, at each stage we shall respect and ensure respect for the decisions of the people as freely expressed by universal suffrage.
Very briefly, we are proposing to the people the democratic and revolutionary road to socialism, taking account of the conditions of our epoch and our country, and of a relation of forces which has profoundly changed in favour of the forces of progress, liberty and peace.
Now, it is evident that this road, which we are now proposing to the working people, to our people, cannot be called a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. That is why this term does not appear in our draft document. Half a million Communists have been engaged in a democratic discussion on this question for more than two months. If their representatives at the Congress agree -- and this is probable, on the evidence of the branch, section and federation meetings already held -- then the problem will certainly arise of drawing up the necessary modifications to the Preamble to the Party Statutes. The Congress will have to decide what procedure to adopt.
The right-wing parties, especially under Giscard d'Estaing, are using their power in an anti-democratic, authoritarian manner, for the benefit of a privileged minority.
The Socialist Party and François Mitterand, when they entered the government without us, also served the interests of big capital. And you can see today how in certain countries, like West Germany, the Social-Democratic Parties in government are carrying out numerous and grave attacks on liberties, and undermining democracy.
The reason for our position is very simple: we have taken account of the changes which have occurred in national and international reality. In short, these positive changes allow us to envisage less severe roads to socialism, different roads from those followed by the peoples who have already built socialism. It is our good fortune that these possibilities exist in the French conditions. Our attitude is therefore not a tactical but a principled one. Taking account of the situation, we are pointing out the best and quickest way of arriving at socialism.
On the dictatorship of the
proletariat*
Etienne Balibar
(Gabriel Péri branch, 5th Ward, Paris Federation )
Several discussion contributions published in L'Humanité and in France Nouvelle have taken up position either for or against referring to the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in the document which the Congress must consider; and even for or against the presence of this notion in the Party Statutes. Interviewed on Antenne 2 [French Television] on January 7th, Georges Marchais declared himself in favour of rejecting the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', neither term of which any longer corresponded either to the present situation or to the objectives of the Communists. He added: 'Congress will decide.'
We therefore find ourselves faced with the following situation: the 22nd Congress may officially ratify a radical change in the principles on which, from the very first, the political action and organization of the Communist Parties has been based. Citing Marx's unambiguous arguments, Lenin wrote: 'To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat' (The State and Revolution ).
* Discussion contribution for the 22nd Congress; as published in L'Humanité, 22. 1. 1976.
In fact, and this is my second point, there is unfortunately reason to fear that we Communists -- i.e. the Party -- are at the moment incapable of discussing the problem at depth. For the necessary conditions do not exist.[*]
[. . .] French Communists are being invited to reject, at short notice, and without having made a scientific analysis of the problem, a concept which is an integral part of the Marxist tradition, and which cannot be reduced to a question of words. Can we, in that case, be sure that we have an objective understanding of what we are going to put in its place?
* The following paragraph was omitted by L'Humanité :
You have to understand what is at stake here. If the labour movement in the course of the class struggle had to fix the dictatorship of the proletariat as its objective, with all the difficulties and even formidable contradictions which go with it, and could not 'simply' define this objective as happiness, liberty, democracy, etc., it is for a material reason. It is because capitalist exploitation inevitably brings with it the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and rests on it, whatever the more or less violent and openly repressive forms taken by this dictatorship in particular historical conditions; and it is because it is impossible to destroy the historical foundations of this bourgeois dictatorship without immediately undertaking the destruction of the existing State apparatus, which can never as such function 'in the service of the working people'. To imagine that we can fight for 'real' democracy, for democracy for the masses of the people, without passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat is to ignore the existence of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to ignore the role of the State apparatus as an instrument of exploitation. Does this really correspond to the experience of the working people of France in their present-day struggles?
But what are we to think of the argument invoked in order implicitly to meet this objection, the argument about France's 'world importance'? It can in fact mean only one thing: that
What are the lessons, in particular, of Chile, of Portugal and at the present time of Italy? Surely that imperialist intervention never takes exactly the same form, that it has to adapt itself to the existing conditions. In this respect it is remarkably successful, making use in one place of the military putsch, in another of economic pressure exercized through the Common Market, mediated and guided by the counter-revolutionary action of European Social-Democracy, and everywhere exploiting the specific weaknesses of the mass movement. These examples reveal a basic fact, characterizing the present-day situation: the fact of the still enormous power of imperialism, its capacity for initiative and pre-emptive action. As soon as the masses, in any country in the world, begin to intervene in person on the political scene, even if they are only fighting for limited social changes, even if they are not yet completely united politically, even if they are quite unaware of the fact that in order to bring their struggle to a successful conclusion they need to overthrow capitalism itself, nevertheless imperialism will be there to intervene and even, forestalling its enemies, will begin to plan and to organize counter-revolution.
That is why we must realize that when the need and the conditions for a real social change in this country begin to develop, we cannot rest content with a strategy based on counting up all those social groups who are at this moment being trodden down by big
Thus -- and the above is only one aspect of the problem, which I have singled out in order to remain within acceptable limits of space -- we arrive back at the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not at the question concerning the simple term 'dictatorship of the proletariat', but at that which concerns the problems raised by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which we must ask and answer in our own fashion, and which no-one could or can answer for us. The question is not that of the alternative: either the dictatorship of the proletariat or mass democratic struggle; this alternative is the one which the bourgeoisie wants to force upon us. The question is: how to develop the forms of mass struggle, broad and democratic, which can make the dictatorship of the proletariat a reality, uniting the workers and the whole people against the exploiters and the bourgeois State. I am for my part completely convinced that the transition to socialism, with its own original stages, is 'on the agenda' for French society, as in other capitalist countries. But I do not think that we have any chance of making this transition if we give way to the ideological pressure of the enemy, or if we underestimate the contradictions involved in the process, and deceive ourselves as to the acute nature of the class
Comrades -- let us not lightly reject the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat! Let us prove ourselves, in theory as well as in practice, to be real Communists!
On the dictatorship of the
proletariat
(Reply to E. Balibar)*
Guy Besse
(Corrèze Federation, Guy Moquet Branch (Brive ),
Member of the Political Bureau )
Some remarks on Etienne Balibar's discussion contribution (L'Humanité, 22. 1. 1976).
1) To question the right of the General Secretary of the Party to take part in the pre-Congress discussion is to put in question the rights of every member of the French Communist Party; it is to ignore the duties of every Communist leader and to reduce his role to that of an arbitrator, or a simple spectator. Besides which, G. Marchais has said nothing which might suggest (as one might think, reading the opening lines of E. Balibar's contribution) that the Communist Party's 'aims' have changed: today, as it has always done, it is fighting for a socialist France.
2) E. Balibar writes: 'To imagine that we can fight for "real" democracy, for democracy for the masses of the people, without passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat is to ignore the existence of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to ignore the role of the State apparatus as an instrument of exploitation.'
In fact it is on the contrary just because we are fighting against the domination of big capital, the power of the monopolies and that of the State uniting together in what we call State Monopoly Capitalism that we are led to define in French conditions a form of socialist power which cannot be properly expressed by the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
* Pre-Congress discussion contribution; as published in L'Humanité , 13. 1. 1976.
The crisis has its source, says the draft document, in a fundamental contradiction between the 'economic, social and political structures' of our society, dominated by big capital, and on the other hand the 'vital needs of the workers and of the people', the 'requirements of economic progress and of national development'. There exists an oligarchy which, in order to hold on to power and to force the whole of the French working people to accept the consequences of the crisis, is concentrating the levers of power ever more closely into its own hands. It is attacking the liberties dearly won by our people since 1789. It wants to imprison France in a supra-national Europe, under American supervision.
In such conditions, is it not the task of a Leninist Party to help all the social strata victimized by big capital to recognize their common enemy, to form that unstoppable 'majority grouping' which alone can isolate the régime and defeat it? And which, already, is forcing it onto the defensive in this or that sector of the class battle -- when for example, supported by the population, workers prevent the closure of an enterprise decided on by some big company, protected and supported by the State.
This is the revolutionary meaning of our struggle for the Union of the French People around the Common Programme of the Left. A Union whose motor is the working class, for reasons which the document explains. The needs, the aspirations which have become globally an essential characteristic of French society are today in fact witnesses (even if many French men and women are not yet conscious of the fact) to the objective necessity of the socialist transformation of our country. The working class therefore cannot play its full part except by assuming all the responsibilities which fall to it with respect both to the everyday economic struggle and to the unification of all the forces which will make our country into a socialist democracy.
Democratizing the State
3) According to E. Balibar, the draft document ignores the need, in order to put an end to the 'class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie', to destroy 'the existing State apparatus, which can never as such function "in the service of the working people"'.
Balibar reproaches the draft document for reducing the debate on the dictatorship of the proletariat to a question of 'words'; I should like to ask him to measure the terms which he employs against contemporary reality.
The evolution of the State in present-day France faces the labour movement with new problems. For example -- to take only one case -- State power is nowadays being used to undermine the big public service industries (e.g. the Post Office); and it is the postmen who have been fighting to preserve for the French people a public service which is truly 'public' and truly a 'service'.
But, above all, the transition from the State of the monopolies to the State of the working people as envisaged by the draft document (Part 3) cannot be made in a single step; it will not be like a sudden mutation. It will be a process of democratization, the very process which we are already preparing for today in working for the Common Programme.
The application of this Programme will deprive the monopolies of their control of the banking and finance system, and of the key sectors of the economy. It will thus constitute an 'important step forward' on the road to democratic change. And the struggles of all those groups whose interest lies in the application of the Common Programme will lay the foundation for other struggles, those which, when the majority of the French people has decided for it, will take democracy 'to the limit' and transform the country into a
How can E. Balibar therefore write that we are trapping ourselves within mystifying 'alternatives'? We do not believe, as Bernstein used to believe, that the movement is everything and the goal nothing. The democratic mass struggle does not exclude but paves the way for the victory of socialism. And the new government, which will for the first time be a government of the working class and of all working people, will improve its work and defend itself not by restricting democratic activity but by providing it with every possible facility.
Defending socialism
4) E. Balibar believes that the draft document underestimates the forces and means available to the bourgeois counter-revolution; he suggests that it cannot be overcome except by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
These worries would be justified if the Document had forgotten that a socialist democracy must watch over its conquests. But the whole document in fact helps us to understand that the defence of socialism is one of the components of socialist democracy.
I shall not repeat here the arguments already developed in the present discussion by those comrades who are of the opinion that, in our country, the 'representative government of the working people' will have a broader base than that of a dictatorship of the proletariat. This government will not forbid opposition movements to participate in public life; it will exclude no single social group from the voting booths. It will provide for its own defence, in every domain, by means of the indispensable 'action of the working class and of the broad masses of the people'. And the conquests of socialism on the workshop floor and in the various institutions, in life and in law -- will provide the working class and its allies with greater possibilities of intervention against any attempt, whatever its form, to drag the country back into the past. One of the functions of a democratized system of universal suffrage will be to demonstrate the will of a people resolved to give way neither to pressure nor to violence.
It is therefore in its own way, in direct application of its principles and aims, that socialist democracy will provide itself with the means to ensure that it is 'respected'. In this way the links between
The working people of our country understand the meaning of the word 'fascism'. But it was only in the struggle for the people's demands and liberties that, thanks to the initiatives of the Communist Party, fascism retreated in the face of the single front, in the face of the Popular Front.
If today the practical activity of the men of government proves their liberalism to be no more than a matter of words, it is because they find democracy more and more impossible to accept. The struggle to preserve the democratic heritage, to extend the sphere of liberties in accordance with the demands of our epoch -- this struggle is imposing on the modem feudalists a battle which is becoming more and more difficult for them. And it is preparing the ground, today, on which millions of Frenchmen will be able to come together in defence of their socialist democracy. To act now, today, for the democratization of the system of administration, of justice, of the police, for an army of citizen-soldiers and of citizen-officers -- this will enable our working class and our people to make the best possible use tomorrow of all the weapons of liberty.
And, since the defence of socialism (Balibar stresses this point) implies the need to hinder any attempt to hold up its economic development, here too the most effective defence will be the full exercise of socialist democracy. The new government will interest the whole working population in the protection and perfectioning of the means of production and exchange; in their enterprises the working people (including the employees of the banks) will be the best defenders of the socialist economy. Is it not already obvious that they know how to protect the national heritage against the big bosses and their State? Will they not find this task all the easier when State power is their own?
Fighting anti-Sovietism
5) The history of the socialist countries is open to study. It is in any case certain that, without the dictatorship of the proletariat (as Lenin understood it), the first socialist State would have been
Never could a 'dictatorship over the proletariat' (an expression unfortunately taken over by E. Balibar) have found the strength to break Hitler's offensive. The Soviet Union's victory over fascism, the murderer of peoples, was the victory of a socialist society, of a people solidly united around its Soviet State and its Communist Party.
We condemn those practices which are -- in spite of the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU -- still holding up the development of socialist democracy. Our attitude is based on the conviction that such practices are in conflict with the principles of a society whose goal can only be the happiness and brotherhood of men.
It is this society itself which provokes the steadfast hostility of international reaction; a society in which the working people have conquered and developed that fundamental liberty which is still to be born in 'advanced liberal society': they are no longer subjected to capitalist exploitation.
To fight against anti-Sovietism is today, as it has always been, a revolutionary task.
The evolution of the relation of forces
6) E. Balibar has a different view of the international context from that set out in the draft document. L'Humanité has on several occasions presented the analyses on which this document is founded, and I shall not repeat them in detail.
Peaceful co-existence, which has been imposed on imperialism, is working in the interest of the liberation of the peoples, whatever the form of their struggle (from Cuba to Vietnam).
Imperialism has not changed its aggressive nature, and the fact that it has been weakened does not lead us to conclude that the international situation is irreversible.
But I cannot imagine that Balibar has not noticed the positive evolution of the relation of forces. And how can he disregard the role and the effects of the movement of the people in this country, today and in the future?
Imperialism (and above all American imperialism) is hostile to a socialist France? But the draft document does not hide this fact, and our Party is at the head of the struggle for the right of the
It warns against the temptation to try and take short cuts; and here again the importance attached to the system of universal suffrage will be a substantial guarantee against the impatience of anyone who thinks that he can force the pace. It envisages the most sensible means of resolving at the proper moment, and to the advantage of socialism, the contradictions thrown up by its development.
A thoroughgoing debate
In the conditions of present-day France, the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat is out-of-date. Only the strategy defined by the draft resolution offers the working class the possibility of bringing about the 'Union of the French People', an indispensable condition of victory. Only this strategy offers the French Communist Party the possibility of further strengthening itself and assuming all its responsibilities at the head of the struggle for a socialist France.
E. Balibar believes that the French Communists are not in a position to make a decision on these questions because they lack 'full knowledge of the facts'. But does the debate not demonstrate -- a debate in which tens of thousands of our comrades are taking part, in branch meetings, section congresses and federal congresses -- that the moment has come when the problems under examination are ready to be solved? And they are being solved, by the vast majority of our militants, both manual and intellectual workers, in the spirit of the draft document presented to the 22nd Congress.
'In order to take democracy forward
to socialism, two problems are
decisive.' (Extracts) *
Georges Marchais
1. Property and administration
Now, just because we are Communists, we do not consider that putting the Common Programme into effect would constitute an end in itself. We want to take democracy further forward, we want socialism.
The draft document defines the characteristics of socialist society as we are proposing it to the country. I should like to take a closer look at two problems which are decisive for a correct understanding of the kind of society for which we are fighting.
As our document points out, we believe that the 'great means of production and exchange should become as a whole the property of society itself'. This is one of the foundations of socialist society, and there can be no socialism if this condition is not realized. This is shown by the experience of the Social-Democratic Parties which, recoiling before the need to put an end to the stranglehold of big capital on the principal resources of the countries which they have ruled or are presently ruling, have nowhere been able to bring socialism into being. Does this mean that we want France to be what reactionary propaganda calls 'collectivist', i.e., that we want to dispossess everyone, to submit them to uniformity and constraint? Our reply is a categorical no.
In the first place, we obviously do not intend to interfere with personal property -- with the various kinds of consumer goods and articles of personal use -- or with the right to bequeath it. This applies for example to home ownership, either of a house or flat.
In the second place, the objective of socialism is the satisfaction
* From the Report presented to the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party on February 4th, 1976; as reported in L'Humanité, 5. 2. 1976.
In the third place, it is the monopolies which are exercizing a real dictatorship over the enterprises; it is the present régime which is developing a technocratic bureaucracy trying to domineer over all aspects of national life; it is the State of big capital which is meddling with the local communities and trying to keep them under its thumb. We are today struggling against this authoritarianism, this suffocating centralism. And not in order to re-introduce it tomorrow, under socialism! On the contrary, we want the nationalized enterprises to be independent in their administration; we want planning to be carried out democratically, with the participation of the working people and consumers; we want the administration of enterprises to be itself democratic, so that those employed there -- workers, white-collar employees, engineers, managers -- can participate more and more actively in this task. And we also want the parishes, provinces and regions to become real centres of democratic decision-making and administration.
The same preoccupations lie behind our conception of cultural life. We stand for a culture liberated from the rule of money, a culture which will no longer be a commodity nor a luxury but the property of everyone, men and women, in our country. In a socialist France, culture will be broad and lively, open to every advance in knowledge, research and creation. Developing the great traditions of our people, it will be enriched by the diversity of talents and also by the possibilities provided for each individual freely to develop the faculties which lie in him.
In short, we do not want a mutilating uniformity but an enriching diversity. Nothing is more foreign to our conception of socialism than what is called 'barracks communism', which pours everyone and everything into the same mould. We picture the socialist system which we are proposing for our country in lively, flexible and inventive terms, as favouring a variety of solutions and appealing to the expansion of initiatives. (Applause.)
This leads me to another question.
The document defines a second decisive problem of socialism, inseparable from the first: 'Only a political power representing the working people will make it possible to bring about the necessary radical transformations in economic and social life.'
The importance of this problem has provoked a discussion all the richer for the fact that the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' does not appear in the draft document. We must therefore take a closer look at this question.
The reason that the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' does not appear in the draft document in order to designate political power in the socialist France for which we are fighting is that it does not characterize the reality of our policy, the reality of what we are proposing for the country.
What do we say in the draft document? We say the following:
-- The power that will lead the socialist transformation of society will be that of the working class and of the other categories of working people, manual and intellectual, of city and countryside, i.e. the great majority of the people.
-- This power will be based on and will act according to the freely expressed results of the system of universal suffrage; its task will be to carry out the most extensive democratization of the economic, social and political life of the country.
-- Its duty will be to respect and to ensure respect for the democratic decisions of the people.
In contrast to all this, the term 'dictatorship' automatically evokes the fascist régimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Salazar and Franco, i.e. the very negation of democracy. That is not what we want.
As far as the proletariat is concerned, today it represents the core or heart of the working class. Though its role is an essential one, it does not represent the whole of this class; still less does it represent the whole of the working people whose power will be expressed in the socialist society which we envisage.
It is therefore obvious that what we are proposing to the working people, to our people, cannot be called a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.
On what basis do we define our position on this question? We base ourselves on the principles of scientific socialism elaborated
The first point is that the working class must play a leading political role in the struggle for the socialist transformation of society.
Even if the working people, the masses of the people, are already able to force the government to take urgent social measures, and even to win certain new privileges, the genuine and permanent satisfaction of their economic, social and political rights is totally impossible without a change in the class nature of the régime. The participation of the working people and of their representatives in the administration of the country's affairs, their access to the control centres of society constitutes the key problem of the struggle for socialism. Among the working people, the working class is the most numerous, militant and experienced class in the struggle for social progress and also -- this has to be underlined -- for the national interest. It must therefore take its full place in the socialist State and play a determining role within it.
In this connexion, the draft document states: 'Only the working class can lead the revolutionary struggle to victory. Its vital interests, its numerical power, its great concentration, its experience of the class struggle and its organization make it, today and tomorrow, the leading force in the fight for a new society.'
The second point is that the manoeuvres of the big bourgeoisie cannot be defeated without the revolutionary struggle of the masses.
In this connexion the draft document declares: 'The big exploiting bourgeoisie will never willingly give up its domination and its privileges. It will always tend to use every possible means to defend them or to win them back.' I would even add that this is particularly true of the French bourgeoisie. For, although there exists a revolutionary tradition in our country, there also exists the reactionary tradition of Versailles, which is certainly not dead, as the behaviour of the men now in power reminds us every day.
That is why the draft document shows that the working people, the masses of the people, must 'at each stage gather their forces and struggle very actively in order to foil reactionary manoeuvres . . . and to paralyze or defeat any possible attempt by reaction to resort to illegal action, subversion and violence'.
Having said that, we must in conformity with the spirit of our own doctrine take into careful account 'the real process', in other
In the conditions of Russia in 1917, and then of the young Soviet Union, the dictatorship of the proletariat was necessary in order to guarantee the construction of socialism. It is true to say that without this dictatorship the working class and the peoples of the Soviet Union would have been able neither to undertake nor to persist in the unprecedented task of liberation which they carried out. That is why the Communist Parties, when they were founded, drawing the lessons of the bankruptcy of international Social-Democracy and of the victory of the October Revolution, were correct in the conditions of the epoch to adopt this slogan.
The world has changed
In the most recent period of history, the world has profoundly changed. The relation of forces has been transformed and continues to develop in the direction of independence and the liberty of the peoples, of democracy and socialism. Peaceful coexistence has been strengthened. In the course of complex and bitter struggles, marked by advances and sometimes by retreats, it is finally reaction and fascism which have had to give ground, while democracy is progressing, as shown by the events in Greece, Portugal and also in Spain. It cannot be denied that never have the peoples of the world had such great possibilities of deciding their destiny and of advancing on the road of national and social liberation. These possibilities are based on the existence and progress of the socialist countries, on the development of the struggles of the working class and the masses of the people in the capitalist countries, on the rapid advance and the rise in the level of the struggle of the national liberation movements, and on the solidarity between all these revolutionary forces. The people of our own country will find in these movements a factor of support, which does not of course mean that it is exempt from the need to take action for itself, but which does provide it with unprecedented means of independent action. Moreover, if the position of France in Western Europe and the relations linking it with its neighbours
Now both the Communists and all the forces of progress are of course very concerned about what happened in Chile. They are also attentively following events in Portugal. Beyond the important differences between these two sets of events, they both provide brutal confirmation of the fact that reaction will never shrink from the use of violence. No-one who is really interested in the progressive transformation of society, its transformation in the direction of the interests of the working people, can afford to forget or to neglect this fact. But events also show that reaction has not always turned and cannot always, in all conditions, turn to violence; it requires a relation of political forces which is moving in its favour.
In Chile, the Popular Unity alliance took government power in an absolutely legal and normal way. However, we must not forget that it did not in the beginning enjoy the support of a majority in the country. In the face of the machinations of internal reaction and of imperialism, nothing was more important than to change this relation of forces in its own favour, by getting down to the problem of winning and extending the majority support of the population. Our Chilean comrades did in this connexion, even if they produced some positive results, commit gravely damaging errors which did not help them to realize this aim. In Portugal the overthrow of fascism allowed the popular movement to win some important successes. But the division of democratic forces, for which Mario Soares' Socialist Party must bear an overwhelming responsibility, led to a retreat of this popular movement. The struggle to defend, and to extend in the future the democratic achievements of the Portuguese people is today being fought out in more difficult conditions.
In this connexion, what we conclude from these two sets of events is that it is necessary to be on permanent guard against two dangers:
-- The danger of not carrying out, when this becomes possible, the necessary democratic transformations of the economic and political structures, with the support of the mass movement;
-- The danger of putting forward adventurist slogans or of taking adventurist actions which do not correspond to real possibilities, which are inspired by the desire to 'take short cuts', and which in fact lead the revolutionary forces to isolation and defeat.
The most important conclusion is that the decisive condition of success is the existence and self-assertion of a popular movement sufficiently broad to encompass a large majority of the people, solidly united around the need for change.
This fundamental lesson adds weight to the conclusions which we have drawn with respect to France from the analysis of the conditions existing in our country.
What is this analysis and what are its conclusions?
French reality
As you know, the working class now makes up 44.5% of the working population of France, i.e. about 10 million persons. In addition, several million other wage-earners, above all among the employees, live and work in conditions close to those of the working class. Together with the working class in the strict sense, this makes at least three-quarters of the active population. Moreover, the crisis is not only damaging the interests of the mass of wage-earners but also those of the other strata of the working population. The convergence of the basic interests of all these social forces therefore offers unprecedented possibilities of winning over the majority of the people to the cause of changing our society, of grouping around the powerful pole constituted by the working class a movement representing the vast majority of the people. Should we make use of such a possibility? There is no doubt about it.
In this connexion we must return to the question of 'bourgeois liberties'. It is claimed that we are opposed to certain liberties on
There is one and only one liberty to which Communists are and always will be opposed: the liberty to exploit the working people. This liberty is the only real bourgeois liberty, if you can talk about a right of oppression as a liberty.
For the rest, we openly refuse to give the credit to the bourgeoisie for the existence of liberties. It is true that the French bourgeoisie, when it took power nearly 200 years ago, did carry into daily life some of the democratic principles proclaimed by its philosophers. But very soon, a very long time ago, it stopped arguing for or putting into practice any principle which did not correspond to its own nature and to its needs as an exploiting class.
In reality there is no liberty in France which has not been paid for by the sufferings and sometimes the blood of our people. The working people, the masses of the people, have indeed had to struggle for -- among other things -- universal suffrage, freedom of opinion, expression, association and publication, for the right to strike, for trade union rights, and for the right to organize their own political parties. And they waged these struggles because all these liberties correspond to their own interests and aspirations. That is why they are so attached to them, and why the Communist Party will defend them to the end. The task of the Communists -- and their ambition is only to improve their work in this respect -- is to continue in the line of all the workers, peasants, intellectuals, simple citizens or statesmen who have for so many centuries been fighting for liberty in our country.
If certain liberties today have a formal character, it is because the bourgeoisie in power has been trying to empty them of their content. Far from coming to their aid and holding these liberties in contempt, we intend on the contrary to restore them to their full meaning, to renovate them. Socialism is not an arbitrary construction of the mind. It is born in the real movement of history, out of the real struggles of the people such as it is, with its own traditions and aspirations. We are convinced that socialism in our country must be identified -- otherwise we shall remain at the level of words -- with the defence and extension of the democratic conquests which have been made possible by the great and persistent struggles of our people. This must be so and this can be so.
But at the same time it guards against the idea that it might be possible, taking a short cut, to substitute for the political will of the majority of the people the action of 'small, highly-motivated groups' or of the weapons of repression. This is an equally dangerous illusion, because it can only give internal and external reaction an excuse for violence; it can only lead the revolutionary movement to isolation and defeat.
Struggle of the masses and liberties
In the struggle for socialism, nothing, absolutely nothing can -- in our own epoch and in a country like our own -- replace the popular majority will, expressed democratically in struggle and by means of universal suffrage. Whatever the forms taken by the advance to socialism in this country (and of course we cannot predict in detail what these will be) we are convinced that at each stage there must be both a political and an arithmetical majority. This is possible.
How are we to create the best conditions for the development of this indispensable majority movement of our people, to make it broad, strong and effective? This is the real question; to pose any other is either empty talk or provocation.
To this question, the democratic road to socialism which we are proposing offers a serious answer.
In struggling today for the democratic transformations foreseen in the Common Programme, we are offering the best possible foundation for uniting the broad masses of the people, a foundation which will make it possible to replace the power of the monopolies by a new, democratic power.
Tomorrow, the application of democratic reforms will enable the positions and the means of struggle of the big bourgeoisie to be weakened, and the positions and therefore the means of struggle of the working class and of the people to be strengthened.
Beyond that moment, it is by developing economic, social and political democracy, and by still further extending individual and collective liberties, that the popular movement will be reinforced and that the socialist régime will win the support and participation which it needs. In return, the struggle of the masses will continue to produce
In fact, in order to guarantee the success of socialism, the problem is not to deprive the minority making up the reactionary forces of its liberties, but to provide these liberties to the working people constituting the great majority of the nation. The reactionaries might of course organize a reactionary party. But this they already possess today, it will not be a novelty. What will indeed be a great novelty is for example the fact that the working people will have extensive rights in their places of work, or that their representatives will be allowed fair access to the television, or that the police will be democratized. Thus they will possess effective means of struggle against any economic sabotage carried out by reaction, they will be able to extend and defend their positions, ideas and actions far and wide, and they will be able to defeat their enemy politically and ideologically. The workers will be strengthened, ever more strengthened by the liberties they will enjoy.
It is by drawing support from these liberties that they will be able to develop their struggle, to force the big bourgeoisie on to the retreat and then to defeat it. And it is by drawing support from this broad-based struggle that the socialist government will be able to force the reactionaries to respect the choices freely made by the great majority of the people.
This means that, far from renouncing socialism or holding it back, we are proposing the best and quickest means of bringing it into being.
In so doing, we are absolutely faithful to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, which has no use for a collection of dogmas, and to the creative experience of the world Communist movement and of our own Party.
We know for example that Lenin, analyzing the situation at the beginning of the century, developed the argument that, contrary to what Marx had imagined, socialism could triumph first of all in a single country. This all-important conclusion was to be the basis of the Bolshevik Party's strategy in 1917. In the same way, the world Communist movement put forward in 1960 the new idea that world war was no longer inevitable in contemporary conditions. And the fact is that thirty years have passed since the Second World War, and that peaceful coexistence is advancing, though of course it is not irreversible.
Such are the foundations of our position, the reasons leading us to propose the democratic road defined in the draft document.
That is also why the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' does not figure in the draft document.
of the 22nd Congress
by Louis Althusser
I want to thank the UEC Philosophy Branch for having invited me to take part in this debate.[1] I was left free to choose my subject. And I thought: there is no subject in France more important than the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party, not only for Communists but for everyone who wants to put an end to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to its exploitation, cynicism and lies.
I shall therefore present a series of remarks on this Congress.
In order to make my political position clear to everyone, let me first say that I consider the 22nd Congress to be a decisive event in the history of the Communist Party and of the French labour movement.
I should add that, in order to understand an event of such importance, we must not concentrate our attention on this or that detail of French political history, on this or that particular circumstance of the Congress, or even on the letter of the formulations adopted there.
We must rather try to grasp the general problems to which the 22nd Congress constitutes a response, problems which are posed not only on the national scale but also on the world scale. We must look at matters in the necessary perspective, and place the Congress in the history of imperialism, the 'period of revolutionary movements' (Lenin), which are themselves inseparable from the general forms of crisis of the international revolutionary movement.
We must place the Congress in this long and dramatic history,
[1]
This paper was first presented as a speech in a debate organized by the Sorbonne Philosophy Branch of the French Union of Communist Students. [This and the following notes are added by the translator.]
As a first approximation let me say that it is impossible to understand the 22nd Congress without taking account of two important facts which dominate the political situation and are of crucial interest to millions of men and women in the world: on the one hand the aggravation of the crisis of imperialism, and on the other hand the aggravation of the crisis of the International Communist Movement.
For the third time in its history, following the revolutionary crisis opened up by the First World War and the great crisis of 1929, whose revolutionary premises imperialism swept away by fascism and a Second World War -- each time however paying the price of a revolution (USSR) or revolutions (China, Cuba) -- we can say that this same imperialism now finds itself once again in a pre-revolutionary crisis, whose forms are quite new.
Paradoxically, the revolutionary movement has never been so powerful in the world, now that the Third World movements for liberation and economic independence have been joined to the anti-capitalist struggle in the imperialist centres. But, paradoxically, at the same time the crisis of the International Communist Movement, both open (the Sino-Soviet split) and masked (the conflict between the Western Communist Movement and the USSR) has never been so acute.
Unless we place the 22nd Congress within the framework of this fundamental contradiction and of its effects, we run the risk of failing to understand its significance, together with the problems which it posed and its own contradictions.
But I would also say, as a second approximation, that in spite of its own crisis, imperialism -- playing on the crisis of the International Communist Movement -- still has at its disposal considerable resources and forces in order to make the international working class, the countries of the Third World, their emigrant workers and the dependent capitalist States pay the cost of the crisis and of the maintenance, re-establishment or reinforcement of its supremacy. In the present context it would be dangerous to underestimate the power of imperialism, just as it would be dangerous to underestimate the power of the bourgeois State : the fact that it is dominated by its monopolist fraction does not prevent it
In the same way, but on a quite different front, it would be dangerous to underestimate, in spite of the acute crisis which it is going through, the capacities of the International Communist Movement, and its chances of resolving this crisis. And this too is an historical phenomenon of great significance.
In order to understand the initiatives taken by the 22nd Congress, we must take all these aspects together, in their always complex and sometimes paradoxical dialectic.
It is in this context that I shall examine, one by one, the initiatives taken by the 22nd Congress.
First initiative
The Congress itself claimed to be of historic importance, a turning point in the history of the Communist Party. Why was it an historic Congress? Because for the first time it dealt with the present stage in the class struggle in terms of the strategy for socialism and of the peaceful and democratic means of transition to socialism.
The document adopted by the Congress[2] is not a concrete analysis of the state of the relation of class forces in the world in general and France in particular, but a political manifesto picturing to the French people, and not only to the working class, 'the society which the Communists want for France: socialism'.
You will notice an important difference here: for the 21st Congress did not talk so much about socialism, but above all
[2]
Ce que veulent les communistes pour la France ; published together with other Congress documents in Le Socialisme pour la France, Editions sociales, 1976.
The great innovation of the 22nd Congress is that it argues that this whole strategy will be democratic and peaceful. In every case the Party promises to respect the verdict of universal suffrage, and therefore the possibility of the democratic alternation of governments. The French people will not make the transition to socialism by force, but democratically, by the vote, in full liberty.
But at the same time the Party does not hide the fact that it will not be a passive witness to the class struggle. It is launching a great recruiting campaign on the basis of lofty objectives, intervening 'on all points of the compass' in the class struggle, and doing everything to unite the masses of the people around their class demands, in order to achieve socialism with liberty.
But since nothing is without its contradictions and problems, we must point out here that the ambitious character of this initiative, which does not hesitate to sketch out a picture of the socialist society of the future (one leading comrade used the phrase 'a practical utopia'), is accompanied by a very scanty account of the existing class power of the bourgeoisie in France. Here is where the absence of a concrete analysis of the concrete situation makes itself felt. Because you cannot solve politically the problem of the bourgeois class State by just pointing out that the French economy is dominated by 25 giant trusts + 600 great auxiliaries + 500,000 members of the great bourgeoisie, for this State always takes the form of a 'power bloc', associating several class fractions under the domination of the bourgeoisie as a class; so this is no way to solve the fundamental problem of the mass base of the domination of the bourgeoisie as a class, which, as a class, cannot be reduced to its monopolist fraction. If the bourgeoisie, as a class, was reduced politically to its monopolist fraction, it would not last for a quarter of an hour.
I am not making a simply 'abstract' or 'theoretical' objection
[3]
For Georges Marchais' Report to the 21st French Communist Party Congress, see Marxism Today, January and February 1975; for Althusser's contribution to the pre-Congress discussion, see his Essays in Self-Criticism, NLB, 1976, pp. 208-15.
Second initiative
It is to the credit of the 22nd Congress that, in the definition of its political line, it pays attention to the important changes which have taken place in the world. If this political line sketches out a new perspective it is because class relations have changed, and because the masses, in the course of their own struggles, however hard these struggles may be in a period of inflation and unemployment, have become aware of this fact. Georges Marchais expressed this historical experience of the masses by insisting on the fact that if things have changed, the Party must change too.
And the Cold War has indeed begun to fade away, though very dangerous sparking-points remain, like the Middle East and South Africa, where American imperialism intervenes either directly or through its lackeys. The economic crisis of imperialism is indeed undermining the political power of the bourgeoisie and creating new possibilities for the struggle of the working class and of the people. New social strata are indeed drawn into the ranks of the wage-earners and joining the struggle of the working class. An unprecedented relation of forces is appearing on the horizon of this struggle: for the first time in history the transition to socialism may take a peaceful form. For the first time in history a form of socialism is appearing different from the 'grey' variety built on force or even repression: a mass democratic socialism.
The 22nd Congress was able to draw the lesson of the objective demands, of the experience and claims of the people of this country. That is why it talked about 'socialism in French colours'. In its own way it echoed the long revolutionary tradition of the French people, which has always linked liberty and revolution. It went much further than the repudiation of the military occupation of Czechoslovakia. It launched a gigantic campaign for the defence of existing liberties and for their future extension. This development is irreversible.
Second initiative
Third initiative
The 22nd Congress adopted a new position in response to the crisis of the International Communist Movement.
The paradox is that the Congress made allusive references to the problem without providing an analysis of this crucial phenomenon: silence reigns over the history which is now being made. The paradox is that the crisis of the International Communist Movement was dealt with obliquely, indirectly: in the form of the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This is one of those cases where you must not take declarations literally. What is at stake here is of much greater importance than would appear from the official explanations.
The official standpoint was that, following the Hitler, Mussolini and Franco régimes, the word 'dictatorship' has become 'intolerable'. The official standpoint was that the proletariat, the 'hard core' of the working class, is now 'too narrow' to be identified with the broad popular union which we want.
Now this last argument -- the proletariat as the heart of a broad alliance -- is in the tradition of Marx and Lenin. The 22nd Congress takes it up in the form of the idea of the 'leading role of the working class' at the heart of a broad union of the people. There are no serious problems on this point.
On the other hand it is difficult to take seriously the argument about 'dictatorship', since it does not say what it means: it says something different, and something very important. Because the official list of examples (Hitler, Mussolini, etc.) simply omits any mention of Stalin: not just of the individual called Stalin, but of the structure of the Soviet State and Party, and of the economic and political line imposed by Stalin over a period of thirty years, not only on the Soviet State and Party but on the Communist Parties of the whole world. Fascism is fascism: the workers
The exponents of the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat said : dictatorship = Hitler, Mussolini, etc. In reality they meant : dictatorship = Stalin, Soviet socialism. In reality they meant: we do not want anything to do with that kind of socialism, ever.
There is no doubt that in the unexpected form of the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat the 22nd Congress killed two birds with one stone: while adopting a new strategy for socialism it also at the same time adopted a new position with regard to the crisis of the International Communist Movement, thus furnishing the proof that, at least to some extent, it is possible to find a way out of this crisis. In spite of its present limits, agreed to at the Berlin Conference, this initiative may prove fruitful.
It is in this perspective that the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat played its part, by allowing a spectacular presentation (the abandonment of a hallowed formula . . .) of the idea that a different kind of socialism is possible from that now holding sway in the USSR and Eastern Europe.
As far as the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is concerned, in particular its irrefutable scientific core, I am not too worried about its future prospects. They will not be settled by its political abandonment. Every materialist knows that a scientific truth which objectively reflects a real relation is hard to kill off, and has time on its side. We shall soon see the proof of it.
Fourth initiative
On this matter too the 22nd Congress was not explicit, but it is an important matter, one which has to be deciphered.
I am talking about the slogan of the Union of the French People, which Georges Marchais proposed to the 21st Congress and which the 22nd Congress readopted in its full force.
This slogan is not the same as that of the Union of the Left. It is wider, because it designates more than a Union of the political organizations of the Left, parties and trade unions.
How are we to understand this slogan of the Union of the
If the masses take up the slogan of the Union of the French People and interpret it in this mass sense, they will be joining up with a living tradition of popular struggles in this country and will be able to contribute to giving a new content to the political forms in which the power of the working people will be exercized in this country, under socialism.
Something may come to fruition in the Union of the French People, something which was eliminated in the practices of the Stalin type, and yet lies at the heart of the Marxist and Leninist tradition: the practice of letting the masses which make history speak for themselves, of not simply attempting to serve the people but of listening to them, learning from them and understanding their aspirations and their contradictions, and being attentive to the powers of imagination and invention of the masses.
The present broad recruiting policy of the Party can favour such mass democratic practices, and others of a daring kind (e.g. the opening of the Party press to workers who are not Party members: cf. France Nouvelle ),[4] and in general everything which might serve the common debates and actions of Communists and non-Communists.
But since nothing is without its contradictions and problems, we must point out the risk involved here: the risk that this slogan will remain a matter of words alone, without giving rise to the corresponding forms of practical activity, the risk that it will serve
[4]
Weekly journal of the French Communist Party; the nearest equivalent in the CPGB would be the fortnightly Comment.
Fifth initiative
The 22nd Congress has taught us several times over to be very careful with words. And here is the most surprising case.
My opinion is that we have to give paradoxical credit to the Congress on one point. In deciding to abandon the dictatorship of the proletariat, which had become a ritual formula, empty except for the Stalinian parody with which it was identified, the Congress placed publicly on the agenda, for the first time since the Tours Congress,[5] the theoretical and political ideas linked to the dictatorship of the proletariat. And yet the formula of abandonment did not itself appear in the Congress document.
The details of the events of the Congress do not in the last instance matter too much. We have other things to do than undertake a legal examination of the procedure followed there. Here again, facts are more important than words. The problem which concerns us is the following: willy-nilly, the 22nd Congress forced us all to think about a question which had remained obscure or been obscured for many comrades. It has already provoked and will continue to provoke thought about the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the basis of the concrete questions which it talked about: not only the dictatorship of the proletariat but also for example the nature of socialism and the 'destruction' of the State.
There can be no telling the workers that the conditions of life described by the document are not in fact imposed on them by the dictatorship (or class rule) of the bourgeoisie, or that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie can be reduced to its merely political forms, called 'democratic', that it does not extend to the worst
[5]
The Congress of the French Socialist Party (1920) at which a majority of the delegates voted for applying to join the Communist International, thus creating the French Communist Party.
It is this experience of the 'dictatorship', or, if you prefer the old phrase of the Communist Manifesto, of the class 'domination ' of the bourgeoisie, an experience repeated daily for the working class, which contains the 'secret' of the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or 'class domination' of the proletariat and its allies. The political form of this domination is mass democracy, democracy 'taken to the limit', but as a form of class domination it cannot be reduced to its political forms -- it is also class domination in the economy and in ideology. This quite new kind of class domination runs counter to the bourgeois class dictatorship: it begins little by little to transfigure the bourgeois forms of exploitation and the corresponding political and ideological forms by 'destroying' or revolutionizing the bourgeois State, which is nothing but the State of the dictatorship (or domination) of the bourgeoisie.
As long as we understand this point, we shall also understand that the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat' contains both relatively contingent elements, and necessary elements. We shall understand for example that the question of the peaceful transition to socialism is a contingent element: if, in the class struggle, the relation of forces is very favourable to the proletariat and to the working people in general and very unfavourable to imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, then a peaceful transition is possible. You must not forget about imperialism in the analysis, because it can intervene without the slightest scruple, though it may on the other hand find itself relatively paralyzed. All this depends on the relation of forces, on the conjuncture: all this is contingent.
The achievement of the broadest possible class alliance around the 'hard core' of the working class, although it is an ever-present objective of the revolutionary struggle, is also a contingent element of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If the strength of the forces
To say that these two conditions -- relation of forces permitting the peaceful transition to socialism/broadest possible alliance around the proletariat -- are 'contingent' elements of the dictatorship of the proletariat means that they may or may not be present. We know that they were not present in the 1917 revolution, although the situation did pose the task of a revolutionary breakthrough. The revolution thus took place in non-peaceful forms, on the basis of an alliance of workers and peasants which proved rather fragile.
As far as these two questions are concerned -- peaceful transition, broadest possible alliance around the proletariat ('leading role of the working class') -- the 22nd Congress did, in the paradoxical form of the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, correct certain errors to which some comrades might have fallen victim with regard to the seizure of power and to socialism, errors induced by the Stalin deviation. But precisely on these two questions, the 22nd Congress added nothing new: it only repeated arguments about things which Marx and Lenin themselves had claimed to be possible (peaceful transition) or politically desirable (broadest possible alliance around the working class).
On the other hand there are elements of the dictatorship of the proletariat which are not contingent (dependent on the circumstances) but necessary, if the revolution is not to get bogged down and come to grief.
The essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat today lies in the question of socialism and in the question of the State.
Now when the 22nd Congress presents socialism in the way which it does, a society governed by a generalized democracy and by the generalized satisfaction of needs, it imagines that it has resolved what is in fact an imaginary problem. The introduction of the term 'practical utopia' is no accident. The problem is quite imaginary because it does not correspond to the reality of socialism as it can be understood both in theory and in real-life experience.
Socialism is not presented as what it really is: a contradictory transition period between capitalism and communism, but on the contrary as a goal to be attained, and at the same time as the end term of a process -- that is, to put it bluntly, as a stable mode of
Now this conception is foreign to the ideas of Marx and Lenin, and also, we must add, if we want to try to understand these ideas together with all the difficulties which they raise, foreign to the historical experience of the socialist countries.
For Marx and Lenin, there is no socialist mode of production, there are no socialist relations of production, no socialist law, etc. Socialism is nothing other than the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., a new class domination, in which the working class fulfils the leading role with regard to its allies in the broadest possible mass democracy. Socialism is the transition period (the only such period which Marx and Lenin talk about) between capitalism and communism, a contradictory period in which capitalist elements (e.g. wages) and communist elements (e.g. new mass organizations) coexist in a relation of conflict, an essentially unstable period in which the class struggle persists in modified forms, unrecognizable from the standpoint of our own class struggle, difficult to decipher, and which may -- depending on the relation of forces and the 'line' which is followed -- either regress towards capitalism or mark time in frozen forms or again progress towards communism.
Everything which the historical experience of socialism has taught us (and we should be very wrong to condemn it from on high simply on the basis of obviously 'blameworthy' 'short-comings in democracy', as they are called in order to avoid having to look further) also proves that this historical period, far from being a society in which problems resolve themselves (on the basis of the satisfaction of 'needs'), is on the contrary one of the most difficult periods in world history, because of the contradictions which have to be overcome at each step -- as if humanity, in order finally to bring communism to birth, was obliged to pay a heavy price in struggles, intelligence and initiatives for the right to see it come to pass.
This original conception of socialism brings with it an important consequence. Contrary to modes of production, which are defined in terms of their relations of production, socialism cannot be
Very concretely, this reminds us of Marx's phrase: communism is not an ideal but a real movement taking place under our own eyes. Very concretely it means that the strategy of the labour movement has to take account of this dialectic; it cannot be a simple strategy for the transition to socialism, it must be a strategy for the transition to communism -- otherwise the whole process may run aground.
It is only on the basis of a strategy for the transition to communism that socialism can be conceived as a transitory and contradictory phase, and that a strategy of struggle can thus be put into effect right now which will fall into no illusions about socialism (of the kind: 'last stop: everyone get off!') but will treat socialism as what it really is, without getting bogged down in the first 'transition' which it meets up with.
Now the 22nd Congress replied to this question, it must be said, in the form of a disappointing definition, supported by a kind of super-optimism. Far from putting the emphasis on the decisive contradiction characterizing this transition phase called socialism, the Congress presented socialism, which does indeed bring enormous advantages to the workers, as a general, non-contradictory and quasi-euphoric solution to every problem. It is clear that instead of thinking in terms of a strategy for communism, which alone allows us to grasp the contradiction, to size it up and take bearings, it was concerned with a pseudo-strategy for socialism, thus running the risk of conjuring away the contradiction, not only under socialism but in consequence also in the period of the application of the Common Programme, if the Left wins the next general election.
The same goes for the question of the State.
I am not talking about the seizure of State power, which, if the national and international relations of forces permit it, may take a peaceful form. Nor am I talking about the bourgeois State, which will remain in place during the period of application of the Common Programme. I am talking about the State of the socialist
Now here is where the dictatorship of the proletariat makes its necessary effects felt, just as it does with respect to the case of socialism.
For this bourgeois State, the instrument of bourgeois class rule, must -- as Marx and Lenin constantly repeated -- be 'smashed'; moreover, in an even more important argument, they linked this process of 'breaking up' the old State with the later 'withering away' of the new revolutionary State, something which is indispensable if socialism is not to mark time indefinitely but is to arrive at communism. In other words, they understood the 'smashing' of the bourgeois State against the background of the withering away and end of every State.
The Congress obviously could not avoid confronting the argument concerning the 'smashing' of the bourgeois State. Here again, we must pay careful attention to words, because 'smash' is a strong word which, like 'dictatorship, can frighten people if its sense is not properly understood. Now if you want to get an idea of this sense, here is a concrete example. Lenin says: we must 'break up' the bourgeois parliamentary State apparatus. In order to 'break it up' (or 'smash' it) Lenin proposes: (1) to suppress the separation of powers between legislature and executive; (2) to suppress the division of labour on which it rests (in theory and practice), and above all (3) to suppress the bourgeois separation between the masses of the people and the parliamentary apparatus.
This is a very special use of the term 'smash', nothing to do with annihilation, but rather with recasting, restructuring and revolutionizing an existing apparatus in order to ensure the triumph of the domination of a new class, firmly linked with the masses of the people.
In fact -- and I should like particular attention to be paid to these words -- in order to 'smash' the bourgeois State and to replace it with the State of the working class and its allies it is not enough simply to add the adjective 'democratic' to each State apparatus ; it is something completely different from this formal and potentially reformist operation, it is to revolutionize in their structure, their practice and their ideology the existing State apparatuses, suppressing some of them, creating new ones, thus to produce a transformation in the forms of the division of labour
This necessity is related to the Marxist theory of the State. For Marx, the State apparatuses are not neutral instruments but, in a strong sense, the organic repressive and ideological apparatuses of a class: the ruling class. In order to guarantee the domination of the working class and its allies, and to prepare for the long-term 'withering away' of the State, you cannot avoid attacking the class character of the existing State apparatuses. That means 'smashing' the State. Otherwise the new ruling class will be defeated by its own victory, or be forced to mark time and get bogged down in its own conquests, thus abandoning any serious idea of completing the transition to communism.
If you want examples of States which were not 'smashed', which are not in the process of 'withering away', then you only have to look among the socialist countries, and you will see the consequences. The Soviet leaders declare: here the withering away of the State takes place through its reinforcement!
It is true that this is a difficult, even a very difficult problem, that it merits concrete historical investigation and profound theoretical analysis. But it is a real and unavoidable problem whose existence is indicated by a necessary element of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And it is undeniably one of the positive sides of the 22nd Congress that it forced us to think about this problem.
But it is also a fact that, in abandoning the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a headlong and indiscriminate manner - i.e. in abandoning the simple and clear idea that the proletariat and its allies must smash, i.e. revolutionize the bourgeois State machine in order to 'make itself the ruling class' (The Communist Manifesto ), that they must attack the very substance of the bourgeois State which they have inherited -- the 22nd Congress unfortunately deprived itself of the possibility of understanding the 'breaking up' and 'withering away' of the State except in the sugar-coated terms of the 'democratization of the State' , as if the simple legal form of democracy in general could suffice not only to deal with and solve but even simply to pose correctly
Sixth initiative
Can we say that this initiative really is to be found in potential form in the proceedings of the 22nd Congress, or in the foreseeable consequences of the logic of the Congress? In any case, here we are concerned with an historical necessity of importance to every Communist.
I am talking about the need for the Communists to take contradiction seriously: not only outside the Party but also inside the Party. I must therefore say a few words about democratic centralism.
Georges Marchais has insisted on the will to change in the Party. It is obvious that the new line of the 22nd Congress will necessarily have repercussions on the internal life of the Party, on the forms of expression of militants and their freedom of action, thus on the present conception of democratic centralism.
It is not my job to predict future developments or to anticipate decisions of the Party, its leadership and its militants. I should just like to try to set out a few principles of a question which is not at all simple.
What is the purpose of democratic centralism? It is a response to the vital political necessity of creating unity of thought and action in the Party, in order victoriously to counter the bourgeois class struggle. The working class has at its disposal only its revolutionary will and organization, sealed in the unity of thought and action. The purpose of democratic centralism is to create this theoretical and practical unity. Its mechanism is simple: decisions are freely discussed and democratically adopted at each level of the Party (branch, section, district, National Congress). Once adopted by the Party Congress they become binding on every militant as far as his political activity is concerned. But as long as he accepts this discipline, he can keep his own opinion.
In principle, the matter is therefore quite clear, even obvious. But in practice it is more complicated.
You only have to remember for example that delegates to a National Congress, the highest organ of the Party, are elected by a 3-stage majority vote (branches -> sections, sections -> districts, districts -> National Congress), which does not even represent the
In the television interview in which he brought up the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat,[6] Georges Marchais insisted that the 22nd Congress would be 'lively', that a 'tremendous discussion' would take place there. He was of course talking about the National Congress itself, because everyone knows that the discussions which take place in the branches, sections and districts are always lively. Now given the structure of the Party (its 'apparatus', which in fact controls the internal life of the organization), the habits acquired by this apparatus, and also by the militants, together with this system of election by elimination, Georges Marchais' wish was destined to remain a forlorn hope. There was no 'free discussion' at the 22nd Congress, where the speakers did no more than 'comment on' the draft document, and the final vote was unanimous.
It is easy to criticize the present forms of democratic centralism from a legal point of view. You might of course improve them, from this point of view, which could be an elementary democratic measure.
But personally I should go further. For the question of democratic centralism cannot be reduced to a legal question: it is above all a theoretical and political question.
We know that in the history of the labour movement the question of the forms of organization and internal representation has been the subject of many initiatives and controversies. It was Lenin who introduced the concept of democratic centralism as the form of organization par excellence of the revolutionary (Bolshevik) party. But already under Lenin the question was posed in terms of three possibilities: factions, tendencies, and democratic centralism, without factions or tendencies.
Lenin always opposed factions, which he claimed would split the party up into autonomous organizations and finally destroy it. But he did for a time support the idea of tendencies, even though these could degenerate into factions: thus he was against factions but for tendencies, which might provide a better picture of the diversity of the working class, of its origins, and of the strata
[6]
See the Dossier: Georges Marchais, 'Liberty and Socialism'.
Should we accept this formula to be found in Lenin: factions no, tendencies yes? Should we adopt it today? I should personally incline to answer this delicate question in the negative. I think that, theoretically and practically, the establishment of stable tendencies, even in a party which is not bourgeois, but a proletarian, workers' party, tends to reproduce a typically bourgeois form of representation of opinions, and thus a bourgeois conception of political practice.
The political practice of a Communist Party is quite different.
In order to provide some idea of what is involved in this difficult question, I should say that such a party does not limit itself to registering and representing opinions, that its relations with the masses are much more profound, that it possesses a scientific theory which guides its conception of any matter and its practical activity. Opinions in the Party are thus subjected to the demands of a scientific theory, which cannot be reduced to a pure democracy of tendencies.
I would say, finally, that what defines the Party is not so much simply the class character of its membership or its scientific theory alone, but the fusion of these two things in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie in which it is engaged. Opinions in the Party are thus subjected to the conflicts of the class struggle, which impose demands that cannot be reduced to a pure democracy of tendencies.
Of course, in a living party there are always contradictions and thus, if you like, different points of view and tendencies expressing them. There can be no question of denying this reality, this aspect of the real life of the Party. But the legal recognition and institutionalization of tendencies does not seem to me to be the best way of resolving these contradictions or of making the best of this situation in a revolutionary workers' party.
That is why the slogan of the recognition of tendencies does not seem to me to be correct in principle, and in any case it would certainly be wrong in the present conditions, because it does not correspond to the new political practice of the vanguard party of the working class. This slogan actually only reproduces in the Party one of the forms of bourgeois political practice. It is no accident if the right to tendencies is so profoundly linked to the history of Social-Democracy.
To turn to the question of present developments in the Party, it is clear that, following the Congress, new tasks are emerging: the task for example of creating new forms of unity, of communication, of the exchange of experiences, of discussion and debate. As soon as the Party opens itself up more widely to the outside world and introduces new forms of discussion, communication and unity with non-Communists, this same task will be posed more forcefully inside the Party. More information, a better press, greater freedom of expression, more discussions, more debates -- in short, a more lively, freer and more daring party, released from the clumsy controls which have served their time.
In this framework, it is a political necessity to open a discussion on the present forms of democratic centralism in the Party, whose object would be to study and define the new practical forms which, while avoiding any risk of the development of factions and organized tendencies, would make possible a genuine discussion in the Party, wider and freer than has hitherto been the case, safe from arbitrary censorship, within the framework of the class struggle and Marxist theory.
If the Party poses and confronts this problem in Marxist terms, in the spirit of the 22nd Congress, it will make its contribution to the necessary changes, imposed by the present state of the class struggle, which must take place within the Party itself.
And it will become the Party of the 22nd Congress.
Edition
by Etienne Balibar
This English edition of my book differs from the original French edition, published in July 1976, although my essay on The Dictatorship of the Proletariat remains the largest part.[1] We have however decided to add several new elements to the present edition, both in order to make access to the book easier for the English reader, who will probably not have directly followed the debates on the French Left, and also because the book will thus appear more clearly for what it is: a particular moment, necessarily incomplete and provisional, in a wider discussion which is itself only just getting under way.
I want first to thank Grahame Lock for having agreed to present the text to the English reader in introductory notes, which in themselves constitute a contribution to the discussion. It goes without saying that while writing my own essay I had in mind above all the discussion opened up in France, which is taking place within the Communist Party and around it, in the whole of
[1]
In the French edition my text was followed by two dossiers. The first (extracts from the proceedings of the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party), is reproduced here. The second is omitted for reasons of space. It contained a number of classic texts of Marx and Lenin, which set out the foundations of their theory of the State and of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as I have tried to reconstitute it and explain it here. I think it would be useful for the reader to refer to them on this occaslon.
These texts, which can be easily found in English, are the following: Lenin, 'The State' (a lecture delivered at Sverdlov University, Collected Works, XXIX); Marx, 'The Proletariat as a Class' (from The Communist Manifesto, 1848, ch. 1); Marx, 'Bourgeois and Proletarian Socialism' (from The Class Struggles in France, 1850, ch.III); Lenin, 'The Touchstone of Marxism' (from The State and Revolution, 1917, ch. II, Collected Works, XXV), Lenin, 'A Contribution to the History of Dictatorship' (1920; Collected Works, XXXI); Lenin, 'The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State' (from The State and Revolution, ch. V); Lenin, 'Communist Labour' (from A Great Beginning ; Collected Works, XXIX).
[2]
Here I should like to introduce a very general hypothesis. This renovation of Marxism will certainly owe a lot to the discussions and theoretical work now taking place among Communists in the countries of 'Latin' Europe, where they have conquered an important political position, and also to the debates inspired in recent years by the anti-imperialist revolutions of the 'Third World'. More than once we have also insisted on the need for a Marxist analysis of the history of the socialist countries, of the nature of the social relations which have developed there following the revolution, and of the tendencies now exhibited there by the class struggle. But it is no less crucial to combine these analyses with the study of the evolution of those capitalist countries -- especially the Anglo-Saxon countries -- where Marxism has not been able historically to become the organic ideology of the labour movement (in [cont. onto p. 214. -- DJR] spite of the age of this movement and of the tradition and force of its struggles). Why this 'failure' of the historical fusion of the labour movement with revolutionary theory? What are its causes in the economic and social structure, in the historical form taken by the State apparatus and in particular by the framework of ideological State apparatuses? If this enormously 'uneven' development of revolutionary practice is an integral part of the vista of Marxism-Leninism of which we are the heirs, and if it has to be admitted that the theoretical solution of this problem is an integral aspect of the enrichments and discoveries which are needed in other countries too, then there is in my opinion no doubt that this solution must come above all from the original analyses of Marxists in England, America, etc., and must include their critical point of view on the forms taken up to now by Marxism and Leninism. I should like in this connexion to mention the very interesting recent work of Michel Aglietta, Régulation et crises du capitalisme: l'expérience des Etats Unis, Paris, Calmann Levy, 1976.
I am of course not the only one to have intervened in the pre-Congress discussion in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Other contributors, either for similar reasons, or for other, more or less different reasons, also took this line in the discussion published in L'Humanité and France Nouvelle, not to speak of the verbal interventions made by comrades at various stages of the debate 'among the rank and file'. But I have not reproduced these contributions here, simply because I had and I have no right to 'enrol' these comrades in the service of the position which I am defending, and because it is not my task to make an inventory of the discussions around the Congress.
The reader will probably have got the impression that these discussions concerned only the dictatorship of the proletariat. This however was not the case, for the good reason that this question was not originally a factor in the debate; but it is true, as I have explained briefly in the introductory remarks to my essay, that as soon as it was introduced it became the centre of attention.
[3]
This document was entitled 'Ce que veulent les communistes pour la France' (see above footnote 2 to Althusser's text).
At the 21st Congress of the French Communist Party (October 1974), following the adoption of the Common Programme of government by the Left Parties (Communist Party, Socialist Party, Left Radicals) and following the 49% vote obtained by their joint candidate, François Mitterand, in the Presidential Election, a discussion opened up on the question of the best way to develop this movement of the people. In what sense was it provoked by the present economic crisis of capitalism? What obstacles, external and internal, were still hindering the transformation of this massive (yet multiform and even internally contradictory) social discontent into a vigorous, conscious and
[4]
It is only fair to point out that another debate, just as unexpected, enlivened the preparation for the 22nd Congress: a debate on morality. Some comrades attacked what they considered to be the immorality of decadent bourgeois society, others made a positive evaluation of the growing revolts against bourgeois moralism. Here too the impression may arise of a departure or even of a diversion with regard to the major political objectives of the Congress. And yet, at root, these problems were essential, for they touch on the family, education, and the role of 'class morality' in the functioning of the Party. . . . This double deflection towards an apparently 'too abstract' question on the one hand and towards a 'too specific' question on the other, very well illustrates the difficulty of grasping the object of concrete analysis and of granting it the proper recognition.
By suddenly exhuming the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, even if it was for the paradoxical reason of immediately consigning it to the archives of the labour movement, or even to its museum of errors, the 22nd Congress did in a sense give these problems their real name, for they are in fact problems of the class power of the working people, of the means to the establishment of this class power, and of the historical tendency in which it is situated. But this name remains for the moment much too abstract and too full of ambiguities.
However, this is perhaps not wholly true, and the proof would lie in the fact that the discussion, far from being closed by the Congress, actually really began from that moment -- one of the signs, among others, that something is changing, profoundly, under the surface, in the political conditions reflected by the evolution of the Party. A contradictory evolution, of course, whose dominant aspect is for the moment not one which might tend to liberate the thought and practice of Communists from every form of dogmatism, sectarianism, or their apparent opposites, utopianism and what Althusser has called a certain form of 'democratic adventurism'.[5]
As I have already pointed out, and as Althusser explains more clearly in the speech reproduced above,[6] it would nevertheless be quite wrong to imagine that this temporarily dominant aspect is the only one, the one playing the motive role in the transformations now under way, when on the contrary it actually constitutes, in various forms, the expression of the obstacles standing in the way of these transformations. Indeed, to imagine such a thing would precisely be to adopt the point of view of the bourgeoisie on the labour movement and on the evolution of its organizations, the
[5]
In the course of a public debate with Lucien Sève (as reported in the Press), organized in April 1976 at the 'Marxist Book Week' by the Communist Party publishing house.
[6]
We should like to thank Althusser for having allowed us to reproduce in this English edition the text of the speech which he gave in December 1976 at the Sorbonne. It will allow the British reader to gain a better idea of the problems raised by the 22nd Congress and of the way in which the discussion is continuing. Each of us of course bears the responsibility for his own contribution, though we should stress the general orientation which is common to all of us.
Althusser's (publicly delivered) speech helps to clarify, even if in very general terms, the tendency underlying the 22nd Congress, a tendency which allows us to explain the surprises which the Congress held in store, the uncertainties which it sometimes hid beneath correspondingly more strongly affirmed 'certainties', and its paradoxical effects. These effects are expressed in the profound doubts troubling the militants of the Party. Sometimes they result in a paralysis of their activity at the very moment when the development of the economic crisis, together with the perspectives of an electoral victory of the Left, are daily bringing it new members, new forces. That is why Althusser's account, taking into consideration the concerns which the Congress itself effectively posed in all their urgency (like 'democratic centralism'), is centred on the contradictions of the 22nd Congress. The position which the Congress adopted on the dictatorship of the proletariat is one of the terms of the contradiction, one of the poles around which this contradiction is developing. The ('overdetermined', therefore complex) contradiction of the 22nd Congress cannot be reduced to this term alone. But it is true, for the reasons which I briefly indicated a moment ago, that you only have to analyze the conditions in which the dictatorship of the proletariat re-entered the French political scene and to relate these reasons to the theoretical implications of the Marxist and Leninist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to see that the contradictions of the 22nd Congress find their reflection there in an especially pronounced form.
On this point, as the reader will have noticed, there is no contradiction between our analyses. We all agree that the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat really is a fundamental concept of historical materialism and constitutes an essential part of its analysis of capitalist society. It is an essential part of the analysis of the mode of exploitation on which this society is based (exploitation of wage labour), together with the tendential constitution of the two classes and two alone (to the cost of all others), i.e. proletariat and bourgeoisie, resulting from this mode of exploitation.[8]
It is an essential part of the Marxist analysis of the State as a class State, whose 'general social functions' are precisely nothing other than the whole of the mechanisms of reproduction of capitalist exploitation. That is why the broadening of the analysis of the State (which must not be confused with the so-called 'broadening of the concept of the State'), whose foundations were laid by Gramsci in particular, following Lenin himself, actually only reinforces the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat: for it means that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie cannot be reduced to the repressive 'armour' of the army, police, and law courts, even when supplemented by propaganda, but extends to the whole set of ideological State apparatuses which, at the price of a permanent
[7]
In the same spirit, I take the liberty of referring the reader to some complementary texts:
-- L. Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism, with an Introduction by Grahame Lock (NLB, 1976);
-- D. Lecourt, The Case of Lysenko, with an Introduction by Louis Althusser (NLB, 1977)
[8]
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Which does not of course mean either that this process of constitution follows a linear course, nor that the classes always have an identical social position, nor again that the complexity of capitalist social formations can be reduced to the juxtaposition of the two classes whose antagonism determines their evolution. Cf. also 'Plus-value et classes sociales', in my Cinq Etudes du matérialisme historique (Maspero, Paris, 1974).
Finally, this concept is an essential part of the argument that there can be no definitive liquidation of capitalism without the effective, constantly fortified and developed combination of (i) the mass democracy of the working people (something incompatible with the whole State apparatus of capitalism) with (ii) revolutionary transformations in the mode of production (therefore in property, but also beyond it, in the antagonistic forms of the social division of labour, in the industrial structure of production, in the forced consumption which it entails, whose recognition is itself forcibly imposed in the form of more or less unsatisfied 'needs', in the manner of the development of the productive forces themselves). In short, there can be no liquidation of capitalism without a progression towards communism, which is the organic unity of these two aspects, whatever the length and difficulty of this process of progression, which no-one today imagines to be the affair of a single day.
On this basis we are all in agreement that to talk about 'transcending' the dictatorship of the proletariat -- as do certain comrades, pretending to understand by this term 'dictatorship' a simple localized and dated 'tactic' of the revolutionary movement -- is in effect to suggest that this whole body of basic concepts and theoretical arguments, i.e. Marxism itself, must be 'transcended'
[9]
It is often suggested that Gramsci, in talking about hegemony and not simply about dictatorship, thereby attenuates the Leninist conception of the power of the bourgeoisie by adding 'consent' to 'coercion' or violence. But Gramsci on the basis of the dramatic experience of fascism, actually strengthens this conception. He says: class power is much more absolute than you think, because it is not only direct 'coercion', it is not only the surface 'armour', it is also 'consent', i.e. the materially dominant ideology and the organization of the 'general functions' of society by the ruling class. The proletariat must therefore substitute its dictatorship and hegemony for those of the bourgeoisie on this terrain too. The whole question is to know how: and here the means and forms of bourgeois hegemony will not help . . .
That is, why, beyond all questions of words (which may have their importance, but which are not decisive in theoretical matters), we have rejected the idea of the 'transcendence' of the dictatorship of the proletariat put forward by certain French and other Communists, considering this idea worse than equivocal. Not only did this formulation in practice appear as a compromise formula designed to 'persuade' comrades who might otherwise have jibbed at this change in the terminology and theory of the revolutionary party by dressing it up in a 'dialectical' justification (and such justifications can unfortunately serve any purpose); even more important, far from setting in motion the indispensable process of developing and rectifying existing theoretical conceptions inside the International Communist Movement, far from setting in motion the indispensable process of the renewal of Marxism demanded by the new conditions of the struggle for socialism today, such a formulation can only hinder it. In particular, instead of contributing to clarifying the contradictions of the 22nd Congress and the practice underlying them, and therefore to resolving them, it can only help to mask and aggravate them.
Let us be very scrupulous. Which are the formulations of Althusser which might cause difficulty when compared with
We must try to understand what this distinction implies. Certain communists, arguing for the 'transcendence' of the dictatorship of the proletariat, make use of an analogous distinction in the following way: on the one side they argue for a 'necessary' general definition of 'socialism (socialization of the means of production and political power of the working people), while on the other side they classify the dictatorship of the proletariat itself among the 'contingent' aspects linked to particular historical conditions which have now been superseded.[10] One might say: the way of posing the problem is at root the same in both cases, and the differences are only verbal, concerning the question of what is new and what is not . . . Is this not a little scholastic? I do not think so, and I believe that this becomes clear as soon as you have understood the immediate link between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Marxist conception of the State and of the struggle for communism.
What has to be demonstrated is that the problem of the proletarian revolution is not first of all a problem of 'strategy'. The
[10]
Cf. for example Lucien Sève's study 'Le XXIIe Congrès, développement léniniste de la stratégie de révolution pacifique', in Cahiers du communisme, June 1976: an English translation was published by Marxism Today in May 1977.
[11]
We could go even further and suggest that they might become the basis of an analysis of the deviations of the revolution and of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If, as I have suggested, socialism and capitalism do not constitute two closed and isolated 'worlds', but two aspects of a single system of contradictions, then the internal obstacles to socialism, the deviant and regressive tendencies within it, are not to be explained simply by reference to 'capitalist relations' in general but necessarily to their present imperialist form.
It is quite easy to understand that the Stalinian degeneration of Marxism, which reduced the analysis of capitalism to a mechanistic prophecy of its 'final crisis', reducing the political conception of socialism to a form of technocratism armed with instruments of repression and propaganda, provoked revolutionaries and Communists to look for 'strategic alternatives', to try and find in Gramsci or beyond him political alternatives to the Stalinian form of 'Leninism', to replace the ideology of the 'frontal attack' on the bourgeoisie by that of the 'war of positions'. However, as long as you remain content to juxtapose one strategy to another, one 'model of socialism' to another, opposing them term for term, epoch for epoch, without bothering to construct the necessary theory and to make the necessary concrete analysis, every strategy must remain profoundly stamped with utopianism. Paradoxically at first sight, the reference to the concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of communism, therefore to difficult objectives and to a very long-term tendency, has a profoundly anti-utopian significance, provided of course that this reference is made within the framework of an effective concrete analysis and theoretical development. If this reference is lacking, the revolutionary strategy becomes once again a form of the construction of models. Models of the seizure of power : first of all alliances, then victorious elections, then reforms in the economic and social structures, etc. . . . , with in passing the 'neutralization' of the class enemy and of foreign imperialism, etc. . . . Economic models : more or less extensive nationalizations, more or less rigorous planning, more or less autonomous management of enterprises, industrial priorities, improvement of the conditions of life of the working people, etc. Models of the State : the 'formal', purely legal type of democracy, limited by economic pressure groups, is contrasted with the 'real' democracy of the working people, each type of democracy having its own institutions; centralization is replaced with decentralization; the separation between the elites in power and the passive mass of the population is replaced by the active participation of the masses, etc. . . . This is where utopianism and reformism meet : both think in terms of models of the State whose merits and possibilities of implementation have to be weighed up
Let us make this point in another way. It is perfectly absurd to oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat to the idea of class alliances, to reject the dictatorship of the proletariat on the grounds of the limits and failures of the class alliance of the Russian revolution. But it is indispensable to work out the new forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat which go together with the new forms of class alliance that have become possible and necessary in a capitalist country like France today (and in Britain too, I suppose). In this respect, Leninist practice can do no more than indicate the existence of an open problem. For not only is the concrete configuration of classes no longer the same, but you could even ask whether the term 'class alliance' has exactly the same sense now.
From a Marxist point of view, as we have already pointed out, the capitalist mode of production reproduces tendentially only two classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat. In the Russian social formation of the beginning of the century, the capitalist mode of production was already absolutely dominant, which means that the question of revolution was already posed as bourgeois dictatorship or proletarian dictatorship, bourgeois democracy or proletarian democracy. However, capitalist development was very far from having suppressed every trace of other modes of production, even though it was transforming them profoundly from the inside. This is what made the 'alliance of the working class and peasantry' the fundamental problem. The peasantry, internally affected by capitalist antagonisms, tendentially divided between distinct fractions, some of which were in course of proletarianization, the others developing into an agrarian capitalist class, nevertheless formed a class with its own specific historical interests, its own ideology and its own political forces, whose autonomous position became the principal stake of the class struggle at certain moments. The same is not true of a social formation like France today, in which the capitalist mode of production is not only dominant, but the only true mode of production. It would be absolutely wrong, however, to represent the social structure of such a country as a simpler, more 'homogeneous' structure. In spite of Marx's formula, which refers in the Communist Manifesto to the 'simplification of class antagonisms' resulting from capitalism, we have to
I will give just two proofs of this argument, which would have to be backed up by a lengthy analysis.
In present-day capitalist France, agricultural production is now entirely under the domination of the capitalist mode of production, even with respect to what are called 'family farms', being entirely integrated into the whole process of capitalist production and circulation of commodities, 'squeezed' between the market in industrial products which the trusts are now imposing at monopoly prices, and the market in agricultural products controlled by the State within the framework of international competition. Even leaving aside the absolute drop in the active population in the countryside, this form of capitalist agricultural production cannot any more provide the basis of an independent social class. However, contrary to the imagination of the 'Marxist' evolutionism of the Second International (Kautsky), which has remained profoundly influential for a very long time, such a development in no way leads to the absorption of the peasantry within a single proletarian class, to its pure and simple fusion with the working class. What hinders this process is first of all the functional, decisive role which, in the case of France, the peasantry has played[12] in the reproduction of the State dictatorship of the French bourgeoisie. The existence and the policies of the bourgeois State, in France, are perpetuating the division between the working class and peasantry, in opposition to all tendencies to the proletarianization of agricultural labour. But that is not all: even if one could forget about this factor, it would nevertheless not be possible to place the process of proletarianization of agricultural labour on the same basis as that of the working class. This is because of the material (even 'natural') constraints of the agricultural labour process, which affect both the process of its operations (the cultivation of crops, the breeding of animals) and the reproduction of labour power (its 'qualification', its maintenance). The
[12]
And is still playing -- witness the way in which, in May 1968, the Pompidou government made use of it in order to split the front of its enemies.
The problem is posed in an even more decisive manner with regard to what is normally called the 'petty bourgeoisie', as when an 'old' petty bourgeoisie (artisans, small shopkeepers, small business men, liberal professions) is sometimes distinguished from a 'new' petty bourgeoisie (managers, technicians of the State apparatus and of private enterprise). Without attempting to justify my argument in detail, I will point out here what seems to me to be the more correct starting point: that the 'petty bourgeoisie' does not exist as a class. What is normally referred to under this umbrella term is precisely the complexity of social stratifications created by the development of capitalism. The fact is that the tendency to proletarianization develops in an uneven manner: with historical 'delays' which, sometimes for very long periods, prevent entire masses of wage-earners from being subjected to the same conditions of life, of work and of 'negotiation' of their labour power which the most exploited workers and employees experience. Delays which are followed by brutal leaps forward in the process of proletarianization, when for example entire sectors of office or laboratory workers, etc., are hit by mechanization and the extension of the division of labour. What is therefore being referred to by this inadequate concept is the internal contradictions of the process of proletarianization, which is not a process of the slow growth of a uniform mass of interchangeable workers, but a process which ceaselessly recreates groups which are unequal, and whose immediate interests are more or less deeply divided. I will go even further: what is normally called by the name 'petty bourgeoisie' is in fact the internal division of the proletariat and the internal division of the bourgeoisie, whose effects extend to the whole of these two classes, leading to the fact that they never constitute two absolutely distinct sociological groups, without any overlap or interactions, and that they seem to give birth to an intermediate 'third class'. I say 'seem', not in order to deny that
But the object of revolutionary politics is precisely the present moment of a given historical conjuncture. Thus, the denial of the existence of an independent petty-bourgeois class in no way implies the denial of the existence of a specific problem of 'class alliances', on the grounds that, in the very end, all these secondary stratifications and contradictions must disappear. For this very end will never arrive, and has no historical reality. What is however true is that to pose the problem in these theoretical terms necessarily has political consequences.
Schematically, to admit the existence of an intermediate class (of a more or less extensive kind: sometimes the whole of the 'non-monopolist bourgeoisie' is included here) is to open the way to a conception of class alliances in terms of compromises, or even in terms of an 'historic' contract, i.e. finally, in legal terms. The problem, in this perspective, becomes a problem of knowing what concessions the proletariat and the 'petty bourgeoisie' will each have to make to the other, what particular interests they will have to sacrifice in order to reach an agreement, and how this agreement will be 'guaranteed'. Thus the problem would be to determine whether this agreement is to be made between 'equal' partners (equal in rights and duties) or between 'unequal' partners (and therefore whether such an agreement is viable).[13]
[13]
In the version which is dominant in France, that of the theory of State Monopoly Capitalism, the problem is resolved in the following way: tendentially, the partners are already allied on the economic level, and on an equal basis, for all are equally exploited by big monopoly capital. Their interests, in the face of the monopolists, are spontaneously converging. It remains therefore to 'translate' this convergence onto the political level: it becomes precisely a question of a contract between political parties, democratically sealed and guaranteed by its democratic character. But something thereby becomes quite unintelligible, something which Communists, in the light of their experience, ought not to be prepared to ignore: 'the leading role of the working class', which, as they very well know, is the decisive force in revolutionary struggles. We might even say that it is this contradiction [cont. onto p. 230. -- DJR] which opens the way to the accusation of duplicity, to the accusation constantly made against the Communists that they want to maintain an underhand domination of the working class over its allies, or even the domination of their own party, behind the mask of a freely agreed compromise.
As soon as you raise the problem of class alliances in the conditions of an imperialist social formation like France, then the internal divisions of the two antagonistic classes, together with the role played by the State in the reproduction of these divisions, become the main aspect of the problem. Lenin and other theoreticians of imperialism already showed something important: that imperialism reproduces the divisions within the proletariat and aggravates them. The proof today would be the existence of enormously important phenomena like the 'national' division between 'French' and 'immigrant' workers (there were nearly four million of these latter, counting their families, in 1974), which in large part redraws the division between skilled and unskilled workers, which becomes tendentially the main basis of the 'industrial reserve army' of capital, and which, without a dogged struggle, may succeed in implanting racism within the working class itself. Another example would be the way in which the 'family' division between men and women operates, a division which is not simply a form of inequality in employment and wages, but an internal division running through the whole working class,
Too many Marxists, it seems to me, remain imprisoned in a bourgeois sociological framework with regard to the question of the imperialist State. What holds their attention is exclusively, or almost exclusively, the relation between the ruling class and 'its' State. They ask: what are the internal divisions (national, international) within the bourgeoisie? Which fractions of the bourgeoisie 'dominate' or 'control' the State? How does the State guarantee the relative unity of the ruling class or, inversely, how does it run into a 'crisis' when these internal divisions grow deeper? In posing the problem in these terms, they think that they are being faithful to the Marxist argument according to which every State is a class State. In fact, they are distorting and misunderstanding this argument. If the terms of the problem are limited to the State on the one side and the ruling class and its different fractions on the other, the essential term disappears: the internal relation of the State to the proletariat (therefore to exploitation, and to the reproduction of the conditions of exploitation) no longer plays any role. But this is precisely the fundamental aspect, the aspect from which one must begin if one is to understand the role of the State and the particular forms of its historical trans-
[14]
On this point some very useful indications can be found in Suzanne de Brunhoff's book Etat et Capital, Paris, Maspero, 1976.
As soon as you stop thinking about the class unity of the proletariat as an already existing or given fact, and class alliances as contracts or compromises, the true, materialist relation between the two problems comes to light. You no longer risk substituting one problem (alliances) for the other (class unity), as every reformist type of politics tends to do. History shows that, under these conditions, neither the one problem nor the other can be resolved, not to speak of those circumstances in which the illusion of an alliance around a divided working class quite simply takes its revenge on this working class by leading to the restoration of an open and even more powerful bourgeois dictatorship.[15] It is only
[15]
It is of course not enough to will the class unity of the proletariat in order to bring it about. That is why the historical analysis of the internal obstacles which this class unity runs up against (an analysis which must include the critical examination by the revolutionary party of the errors which it was not able to overcome in the past) is indispensable. It was not possible to bring about the class unity of the French proletariat either after the Popular Front (1936), or after the Resistance and Liberation (1945-47), or in 1958, or after May-June 1968 (the greatest workers' general strike in French and even European history!). Thus the masses of the people, instead of continuously playing the decisive role on the political scene and overturning the political landscape in a revolutionary manner, have remained an intermittent supporting force, in spite of their revolutionary power. Thus the class alliances around the proletariat have not been forged, in spite of the 'convergence of struggles' (as in 1968), or have finally broken (as in 1938 and in the 1950s, after the [cont. onto p. 233. -- DJR] anti-fascist unity). Thus the alliances between the political parties of the Left have repeatedly shattered. Thus the French bourgeoisie, though shaken by internal crises which have sometimes appeared to be mortal (from Vichy to the colonial wars, and to the 'construction of Europe'), has always succeeded in reconstituting its unity and once again broadening its mass base. This whole history is still, it seems to me, awaiting a satisfactory explanation.
These few remarks will, I hope, suffice to show that this question is wide open, and that it cannot be solved simply by being formulated. In any case we have never claimed to be able to offer solutions, even less ready-made recipes; we have only tried to clarify the terms of the discussion.