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Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
Part Two
Chapter VIII: Conquest of Political Power
The fate of democracy is bound up, we have seen, with the
fate of the labour movement. But does the development of democracy
render superfluous or impossible a proletarian revolution, that is, the
conquest of political power by the workers?
Bernstein settles the question by weighing minutely the good and bad
sides of social reform and social revolution. He does it almost in the
same manner in which cinnamon or pepper is weighed out in a consumers’
co–operative store. He sees the legislative course of historic
development as the action of “intelligence,” while the revolutionary
course of historic development is for him the action of “feeling.”
Reformist activity, he recognises as a slow method of historic progress,
revolution as a rapid method of progress. In legislation he sees a
methodical force; in revolution, a spontaneous force.
We have known for a long time that the petty–bourgeoisie reformer
finds “good” and “bad” sides in everything. He nibbles a bit at all
grasses. But the real course of events is little affected by such
combination. The carefully gathered little pile of the “good sides” of
all things possible collapses at the first filip of history.
Historically, legislative reform and the revolutionary method function
in accordance with influences that are much more profound than the
consideration of the advantages or inconveniences of one method or
another.
In the history of bourgeois society, legislative reform served to
strengthen progressively the rising class till the latter was
sufficiently strong to seize political power, to suppress the existing
juridical system and to construct itself a new one. Bernstein,
thundering against the conquest of political power as a theory of
Blanquist violence, has the misfortune of labelling as a Blanquist error
that which has always been the pivot and the motive force of human
history. From the first appearance of class societies having the class
struggle as the essential content of their history, the conquest of
political power has been the aim of all rising classes. Here is the
starting point and end of every historic period. This can be seen in the
long struggle of the Latin peasantry against the financiers and
nobility of ancient Rome, in the struggle of the medieval nobility
against the bishops and in the struggle of the artisans against the
nobles, in the cities of the Middle Ages. In modern times, we see it in
the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism.
Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of
historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the
counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages.
Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the
development of class society. They condition and complement each other,
and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and
south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In
the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation,
while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society
that has already come into being. Work for reform does not contain its
own force independent from revolution. During every historic period,
work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the
impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion
from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it
more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on
only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution.
Here is the kernel of the problem.
It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a
long–drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of
reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ
according to their duration but according to their content. The secret
of historic change through the utilisation of political power resides
precisely in the transformation of simple quantitative modification into
a new quality, or to speak more concretely, in the passage of an
historic period from one given form of society to another.
That is why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different
goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society
they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society. If we
follow the political conceptions of revisionism, we arrive at the same
conclusion that is reached when we follow the economic theories of
revisionism. Our program becomes not the realisation of socialism, but the reform of capitalism;
not the suppression of the wage labour system but the diminution of
exploitation, that is, the suppression of the abuses of capitalism
instead of suppression of capitalism itself.
Does the reciprocal role of legislative reform and revolution apply
only to the class struggle of the past? It is possible that now, as a
result of the development of the bourgeois juridical system, the
function of moving society from one historic phase to another belongs to
legislative reform and that the conquest of State power by the
proletariat has really become “an empty phrase,” as Bernstein puts it?
The very opposite is true. What distinguishes bourgeois society from
other class societies – from ancient society and from the social order
of the Middle Ages? Precisely the fact that class domination does not
rest on “acquired rights” but on real economic relations – the
fact that wage labour is not a juridical relation, but purely an
economic relation. In our juridical system there is not a single legal
formula for the class domination of today. The few remaining traces of
such formulae of class domination are (as that concerning servants),
survivals of feudal society.
How can wage slavery be suppressed the “legislative way,” if wage
slavery is not expressed the laws? Bernstein, who would do away with
capitalism by means of legislative reforms, finds himself in the same
situation s Uspensky’s Russian policeman who said: “Quickly I seized the
rascal by the collar! But what do I see? The confounded fellow has no
collar!” And that is precisely Bernstein’s difficulty.
“All previous societies were based on an antagonism between an oppressing class and an oppressed class” (Communist Manifesto).
But in the preceding phases of modern society, this antagonism was
expressed in distinctly determined juridical relations and could,
especially because of that, accord, to a certain extent, a place to new
relations within the framework of the old. “In the midst of serfdom, the
serf raised himself to the rank of a member of the town community” (Communist Manifesto).
How was that made possible? It was made possible by the progressive of
all feudal privileges in the environs of the city: the corvée, the right
to special dress, the inheritance tax, the lord’s claim to the best
cattle, the personal levy, marriage under duress, the right to
succession, etc., which all together constituted serfdom.
In the same way, the small bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages succeeded
in raising itself, while it was still under the yoke of feudal
absolutism, to the rank of bourgeoisie (Communist Manifesto).
By what means? By means of the formal partial suppression or complete
loosening of the corporative bonds, by the progressive transformation of
the fiscal administration and of the army.
Consequently, when we consider the question from the abstract viewpoint, not from the historic viewpoint, we can imagine
(in view of the former class relations) a legal passage, according to
the reformist method, from feudal society to bourgeois society. But what
do we see in reality? In reality, we see that legal reforms not only do
not obviate the seizure of political power by the bourgeoisie but have,
on the contrary, prepared for it and led to it. A formal
social–political transformation was indispensable for the abolition of
slavery as well as for the complete suppression of feudalism.
But the situation is entirely different now. No law obliges the
proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism. Poverty, the
lack of means of production, obliges the proletariat to submit itself to
the yoke of capitalism. And no law in the world can give to the
proletariat the means of production while it remains in the framework of
bourgeois society, for not laws but economic development have torn the
means of production from the producers’ possession.
And neither is the exploitation inside the system of wage labour
based on laws. The level of wages is not fixed by legislation but by
economic factors. The phenomenon of capitalist exploitation does not
rest on a legal disposition but on the purely economic fact that labour
power plays in this exploitation the role of a merchandise possessing,
among other characteristics, the agreeable quality of producing value – more
than the value it consumes in the form of the labourer’s means of
subsistence. In short, the fundamental relations of the domination of
the capitalist class cannot be transformed by means of legislative
reforms, on the basis of capitalist society, because these relations
have not been introduced by bourgeois laws, nor have they received the
form of such laws. Apparently, Bernstein is not aware of this for he
speaks of “socialist reforms.” On the other hand, he seems to express
implicit recognition of this when he writes, on page 10 of his book,
“the economic motive acts freely today, while formerly it was masked by
all kinds of relations of domination by all sorts of ideology.”
It is one of the peculiarities of the capitalist order that within it
all the elements of the future society first assume, in their
development, a form not approaching socialism but, on the contrary, a
form moving more and more away from socialism. Production takes on a
progressively increasing social character. But under what form is the
social character of capitalist production expressed? It is expressed in
the form of the large enterprise, in the form of the shareholding
concern, the cartel, within which the capitalist antagonisms, capitalist
exploitation, the oppression of labour–power, are augmented to the
extreme.
In the army, capitalist development leads to the extension of
obligatory military service to the reduction of the time of service and
consequently to a material approach to a popular militia. But all of
this takes place under the form of modern militarism in which the
domination of the people by the militarist State and the class character
of the State manifest themselves most clearly.
In the field of political relations, the development of democracy
brings – in the measure that it finds a favourable soil – the
participation of all popular strata in political life and, consequently,
some sort of “people’s State.” But this participation takes the form of
bourgeois parliamentarism, in which class antagonisms and class
domination are not done away with, but are, on the contrary, displayed
in the open. Exactly because capitalist development moves through these
contradictions, it is necessary to extract the kernel of socialist
society from its capitalist shell. Exactly for this reason must the
proletariat seize political power and suppress completely the capitalist
system.
Of course, Bernstein draws other conclusions. If the development of
democracy leads to the aggravation and not to the lessening of
capitalist antagonisms, “the Social–Democracy,” he answers us, “in order
not to render its task more difficult, must by all means try to stop
social reforms and the extension of democratic institutions,” (page 71).
Indeed, that would be the right thing to do if the Social–Democracy
found to its taste, in the petty–bourgeois manner, the futile task of
picking for itself all the good sides of history and rejecting the bad
sides of history. However, in that case, it should at the same time “try
to stop” capitalism in general, for there is not doubt that latter is
the rascal placing all these obstacles in the way of socialism. But
capitalism furnishes besides the obstacles also the only possibilities of realising the socialist programme. The same can be said about democracy.
If democracy has become superfluous or annoying to the bourgeoisie,
it is on the contrary necessary and indispensable to the working class.
It is necessary to the working class because it creates the political
forms (autonomous administration, electoral rights, etc.) which will
serve the proletariat as fulcrums in its task of transforming bourgeois
society. Democracy is indispensable to the working class because only
through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for
democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and
its historic task.
In a word, democracy is indispensable not because it renders
superfluous the conquest of political power by the proletariat but
because it renders this conquest of power both necessary and possible. When Engels, in his preface to the Class Struggles in France,
revised the tactics of the modern labour movement and urged the legal
struggle as opposed to the barricades, he did not have in mind – this
comes out of every line of the preface – the question of a definite
conquest of political power, but the contemporary daily struggle. He did
not have in mind the attitude that the proletariat must take toward the
capitalist State at the time of the seizure of power but the attitude
of the proletariat while in the bounds of the capitalist State. Engels
was giving directions to the proletariat oppressed, and not to the proletariat victorious.
On the other hand, Marx’s well known sentence on the agrarian
question in England (Bernstein leans on it heavily), in which he says:
“We shall probably succeed easier by buying the estates of the
landlords,” does not refer to the stand of the proletariat before, but after its victory.
For there evidently can be a question of buying the property of the old
dominant class only when the workers are in power. The possibility
envisaged by Marx is that of the pacific exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat
and not the replacement of the dictatorship with capitalist social
reforms. There was no doubt for Marx and Engels about the necessity of
having the proletariat conquer political power. It is left to Bernstein
to consider the poultry–yard of bourgeois parliamentarism as the organ
by means of which we are to realise the most formidable social
transformation of history, the passage from capitalist society to socialism.
Bernstein introduces his theory by warning the proletariat against
the danger of acquiring power too early. That is, according to
Bernstein, the proletariat ought to leave the bourgeois society in its
present condition and itself suffer a frightful defeat. If the
proletariat came to power, it could draw from Bernstein’s theory the
following “practical” conclusion: to go to sleep. His theory condemns
the proletariat at the most decisive moments of the struggle, to
inactivity, to a passive betrayal of its own cause.
Our programme would be a miserable scrap of paper if it could not serve us in all eventualities, at all moments of the struggle and if it did not serve us by its application
and not by its non–application. If our programme contains the formula
of the historical development of society from capitalism to socialism,
it must also formulate, in all its characteristic fundamentals, all the
transitory phases of this development and it should, consequently, be
able to indicate to the proletariat what ought to be its corresponding
action at every moment on the road toward socialism. There can be no
time for the proletariat when it will be obliged to abandon its
programme or be abandoned by it.
Practically, this is manifested in the fact that there can be no time
when the proletariat, placed in power by the force of events, is not in
the condition or is not morally obliged to take certain measures for
the realisation of its programme, that is, take transitory measures in
the direction of socialism. Behind the belief that the socialist
programme can collapse completely at any point of the dictatorship of
the proletariat lurks the other belief that the socialist programme is generally and at all times, unrealisable.
And what if the transitory measures are premature? The question hides
a great number of mistaken ideas concerning the real course of a social
transformation.
In the first place, the seizure of political power by the
proletariat, that is to say by a large popular class, is not produced
artificially. It presupposes (with the exception of such cases as the
Paris Commune, when the proletariat did not obtain power after a
conscious struggle for its goal but fell into its hands like a good
thing abandoned by everybody else) a definite degree of maturity of
economic and political relations. Here we have the essential difference
between coups d’etat along Blanqui’s conception which are
accomplished by an “active minority” and burst out like pistol shot,
always inopportunely, and the conquest of political power by a great
conscious popular mass which can only be the product of the
decomposition of bourgeois society and therefore bears in itself the
economic and political legitimisation of its opportune appearance.
If, therefore, considered from the angle of political effect the
conquest of political power by the working class cannot materialise
itself “too early” then from the angle of conservation of power, the
premature revolution, the thought of which keeps Bernstein awake,
menaces us like a sword of Damocles. Against that neither prayers nor
supplication, neither scares nor any amount of anguish, are of any
avail. And this for two very simple reasons.
In the first place, it is impossible to imagine that a transformation
as formidable as the passage from capitalist society to socialist
society can be realised in one happy act. To consider that as possible
is, again, to lend colour to conceptions that are clearly Blanquist. The
socialist transformation supposes a long and stubborn struggle, in the
course of which, it is quite probable the proletariat will be repulsed
more than once so that for the first time, from the viewpoint of the
final outcome of the struggle, it will have necessarily come to power
“too early.”
In the second place, it will be impossible to avoid the “premature”
conquest of State power by the proletariat precisely because these
“premature” attacks of the proletariat constitute a factor and indeed a
very important factor, creating the political conditions of the final
victory. In the course of the political crisis accompanying its seizure
of power, in the course of the long and stubborn struggles, the
proletariat will acquire the degree of political maturity permitting it
to obtain in time a definitive victory of the revolution. Thus these
“premature” attacks of the proletariat against the State power are in
themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine
the point of the definite victory. Considered from this
viewpoint, the idea of a “premature” conquest of political power by the
labouring class appears to be a polemic absurdity derived from a
mechanical conception of the development of society, and positing for
the victory of the class struggle a point fixed outside and independent of the class struggle.
Since the proletariat is not in the position to seize power in any
other way than “prematurely,” since the proletariat is absolutely
obliged to seize power once or several times “too early” before it can
maintain itself in power for good, the objection to the “premature”
conquest of power is at bottom nothing more than a general opposition to the aspiration of the proletariat to possess itself of State power.
Just as all roads lead to Rome so too do we logically arrive at the
conclusion that the revisionist proposal to slight the final aim of the
socialist movement is really a recommendation to renounce the socialist
movement itself.
Next: Chap.9: Collapse
Last updated on: 21 July 2010
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