Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution
Volume I: State and Bureaucracy
Draper, Hal
Publisher: Monthly Review Press, New York, USA
Year Published: 1977
Pages: 748pp ISBN: 0-85345-461-2
Library of Congress Number: JC233.M299D7 Dewey: 301.5'92
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX6343
A wide-ranging and thorough exposition of Marx's views on democracy.
Abstract:
Draper writes: In his historical and political writings there were no state "norms" for Marx to start with even had he been so minded. For one thing a "normal" state (whatever that is thought to be) must be as hard to find in reality as an "average" person; and no planet actually follows Kepler's Laws even though they are "true." For another, the states that Marx spent time discussing were all states distorted, or modified, from the "normal" by social stresses, national factors, obsolete hangovers, and so on. It was scientifically valid for Marx in Capital to posit a "pure" or "abstract" bourgeois economy for the purpose of analyzing its basic laws; this is a way to begin. But in the case of the theory of the state, there is a tendency to end with the beginning. This means freezing the theory into a static formula. It can make little sense of real political phenomena, which are usually seen in the process of becoming, of change and interaction. In the life course of states -- arising, flourishing, and dying -- more time is spent in the first and last stages than in the more "normal" middle: that is, the "normal" is one of the more abnormal conditions encountered. Even more important, historical attention, and especially Marx's, must tend to focus on the problem situations, on critical periods of change and dislocation and revolution, even more than on times of relative stasis. The static formula is a blunt, brittle tool, which breaks off at the first attack on reality. This reality is complex, but it is a complex of simplicities; and this makes it possible for people to understand and control their social destiny. So Marx thought, and implicit in these pages is the thesis that political theory today had best look back to Marx.
Table of Contents
BOOK I
Foreword
1. Politics (11) ... 2. Class (14) ... 3. Marx (17) ... 4. Method (20) ... 5. Engels (23) ... 6. Format (26) . . . The scope of forthcoming volumes (27)
PART I: THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG MARX
1. The Democratic Extremist
1. State and civil society in Hegelese (32) ... 2. The winds of freedom (34) ... 3. The "freedom of the press" articles (36) ... 4. The subject: democratic rights in general (38) . . . 5. Marx rejects the liberal opposition (39) ... 6. Marx rejects the bourgeois approach to democracy (41) ... 7. Against bureaucratic (state) control of the mind (43) ... 8. Freedom means democratic control from below (46) ... 9. The dialec-tics of ends and means (52) ... 10. Not only with lances . . . (54) ... 11. Through bourgeois democracy-and beyond (57)
2. The Political Apprentice
1. The shift in orientation (61) ... 2. Wood theft and the state (66) ... 3. Through social reality to theory (73)
3. Emancipation from Hegel
1. Inverting Hegel (77) ... 2. The state and private property (79) ... 3. The state and the bureaucracy (81) ... 4. Political lexicon: democracy (84) ... 5. The state and democracy (87) ... 6. Democracy and revolution (91) ... 7. The break with Hegel (94)
4. The New Direction
1. Political lexicon.- socialism and communism (97) ... 2. How to develop a movement program (100) ... 3. Toward the politicalization of socialism (103)
5. Implementing the New Direction
1. The Jewish emancipation question (109) ... 2. Marx on Jewish emancipation (110) ... 3. Political emancipation as a stage (114) ... 4. "Human emancipation" as the end (117) . . . 5. Bauer: round two (120) ... 6. Dissolving the Jew-Christian antithesis (123) ... 7. Third round with Bauer (125)
6. Orientation Toward the Proletariat
1. Political lexicon: proletariat (131) ... 2. The ambiguity of pointing (133) ... 3. The road to the new orientation (134) ... 4. The impact of Paris (136) ... 5. "Practicals" and philos-ophers (139) ... 6. New concept of the universal class (141) ... 7. The proletariat as "universal class" (144) ... 8. Philoso-phy and the proletariat (147)
7. Toward a Theory of the Proletariat
1. Engels' contribution (150) ... 2. From Barmen to Manches-ter (151) ... 3. Reports from another world (153) . . . 4. Engels' first period in Manchester (155) ... 5. On Carlyle (158) ... 6. First step in political economy (159) ... 7. Enter: the class struggle (162) ... 8. New concept of alienated labor (164)
8. Toward a Class Theory of the State
1. The shell of Hegelian state theory (169) ... 2. Breaking the shell (172) ... 3. Lightning flash from Silesia (174) ... 4. First reaction: antistatism (178) ... 5. Engels takes the lead (181) ... 6. Engels in Elberfeld (184) ... 7. Prelude in Brus-sels (187) ... 8. The first "Marxist" work (189)
9. Character and Revolution
1. Of demons (195) ... 2. Of Siegfried and other heroes (198) ... 3. Of savior-rulers (201) ... 4. Of Prometheus and princes (202) ... 5. Of the servile state (207) ... 6. Of a thinker who dreams (210)
10.Toward the Principle of Self-Emancipation
1. The Acherontic danger (214) ... 2. The education of Engels (216) ... 3. The active element of emancipation (219) . . . 4. Elitism versus the masses (221) ... 5. Marx's attack on philosophical elitism (224) ... 6. Sue's Les Mystères de Paris (227) ... 7. The savior from above as despot (229) ... 8. The thesis on revolutionary practice (232)
PART II: THE THEORY OF THE STATE
11. The State and Society
1. Political and protopolitical authority (239) ... 2. The state separates out (243) ... 3. The state is not simply a class plot (245) ... 4. The state as superstructure (250) ... 5. Special characteristics of the state (253) ... 6. The state as class executive (256) ... 7. Subsidiary tasks of the state (258) . . . 8. The class nature of the state (260)
12. The State in Practice: Methods and Forms
1. Substitutes for force: some examples (264) ... 2. Economic roots of bourgeois democracy (270) ... 3. Liberalization and constitutionalism (275)
13. The State and Democratic Forms
1. Against "the old thesis" (284) ... 2. For revolution and democracy (286) ... 3. Free press and class struggle (291) . . .The maximization of democratic control (293) . . . Analysis of a constitution (297) ... 6. Minimization of the executive power (300) ... 7. Safety valves for the bourgeoisie (302) ... 8. The "democratic swindle" (306) . . . 9. Toward the socialization of democracy (308)
14.The Tendency Toward State Autonomy
1. Hypertrophy of the executive (312) ... 2. Autonomization of the executive (314) ... 3. The state as Caliban (318) . . . The political inaptitude of the capitalist class (321) ... Consequences for the state (324) ... 6. The autonomized state in Germany (327) ... 7. The case of the English bourgeoisie (329) ... 8. "Beat me, daddy," says the bourgeoisie (332) ... 9. Can the bourgeoisie do it? (336)
BOOK II
15. The Bonaparte Model
1. The problem posed (386) ... 2. Bankruptcy of bourgeois liberalism (389) ... 3. The pattern of permanent counter- revolution (392) ... 4. State gigantism versus democracy
(395) ... 5. The key to Bonapartism (398) ... 6. The autonomized state and the classes (401) ... 7. Bonapartism: the class equilibrium (403) ... 8. Bonapartism: society in a plaster cast (407)
16. Bonapartism: The Bismarckian Extension
1. Bismarck's coup (412) ... 2. Engels' first sketch (414) . . . 3. The class shift (417) ... 4. Elements of Bonapartism (420)
17. Bonapartism and the "Progressive Despot"
1. The Napoleonic state (428) ... 2. The littleness of Napole-on the Great (432) ... 3. The line of political opposition (436) ... 4. The case of Bolívar (438)
18. Bonapartism in Extremis
1. Bonaparte's "socialism" (439) ... 2. The Crédit Mobilier (442) ... 3. The state and "industrial feudalism" (444) . . . 4. Toward a Bonapartist state economy? (446) ... 5. The autonomous economic policy (448)... 6. What class supports the regime? (451) ... 7. "The Rule of the Pretorians" (453) ... 8. By the sword alone (456) ... 9. Limits of the Bonaparte model (459)
19. State Autonomy in Precapitalist Society
1. The state that swallowed up society (465) ... 2. The fusion of politics and economics (468) ... 3. Private property under feudalism (472) ... 4. Absolute monarchy and state auton-omy (475) ... 5. Absolute monarchy: the down phase (480) ... 6. From absolutism to Bonapartism (482)
20. State Bureaucracy and Class
l. The view from 1843 (486) . . . 2. The absolutist bureaucracy before 1848 (490) . . .
. . . 2. The absolutist bureauc-3. The test case of Friedrich Wilhelm IV (493) ... 4. The bureaucracy in bourgeois society (497) ... 5. The question of class provenance (501) . . . Caste or class? (505) ... 7. Bureaucratic hypertrophy (510)
21.Oriental Despotism: The Social Basis
1.Marx starts with state property (516) ... 2. Looking to China-1850 (518) ... 3. Scots and Taipings-1853 (519) . . . 4. Looking to India-1853 (522) ... 5. The key to the Orient (524) ... 6. The village community as beehive (527) . . . Theory of precapitalist forms (530) ... 8. The "general slavery" (534) ... 9. The meaning of the Asiatic mode (537) ... 10. The "archaic formation" (542)
22.Oriental Despotism: State and Bureaucracy
1. The transition to the state (545) ... 2. The transition to a ruling class (548) ... 3. The tribute-collecting state (550) . . . Symbiosis: localism and Oriental despotism (554) . . . The case of Spain (556) ... 6. The tribute-collecting class (558) ... 7. The "political dependency relationship" (562) . . . 8. Theocrats and priest rule (567) ... 9. The "innermost secret" of society and state (568)
23.Russian Czarism: State and Bureaucracy
1. The Asiatic side (572) ... 2. The revolution from above (575) ... 3. The state breeds a capitalist class (578) ... 4. The role of the czarist bureaucracy (580) ... 5. The general theory of the state (584)
APPENDICES
Special Note A.
Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype
1. The pattern in Germany (592) ... 2. The universality of pixillation (595) ... 3. Roots of the economic Jew (597) . . . 4. Ex post facto anti-Semitism (600) ... 5. How to manufac-ture anti-Semites (604)
Special Note B.
Rhyme and Reason: The Content of Marx's Juvenile Verse
Special Note C.
The State as Political Superstructure: Marx on Mazzini
Special Note D.
The "State Parasite" and the "Capitalist Vermin"
1. In The Eighteenth Brumaire (622) ... 2. In The Civil War in France (624) ... 3. "Parasitic" capitalism (627)
Special Note E.
Oriental Despotism Before Marx: the Wittfogel Fable
1. The contemporary issue (629) ... 2. Wittfogel's claims (631) ... 3. The classical economists (633) ... 4. The dream of enlightened despotism (638) ... 5. Sinomania in Germany (640) ... 6. France: Voltaire to Quesnay (642) ... 7. Hegel and Oriental despotism (646) ... 8. Hegel to Marx (650) .. . 9. Hess and Custine (652) ... 10. The image of the Oriental bureaucracy (655)
Special Note F.
Oriental Despotism and Engels
Reference Notes
Bibliography (Works Cited)
Index
Subject Headings
