REVOLUTION AGAINST THE STATE: THE CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX'S LATER WRITINGS Author(s): Derek Sayer and

Philip Corrigan Source: Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1987), pp. 65-82 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29790218 . Accessed: 08/07/2013 12:57
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65

AGAINSTTHE STATE: THE CONTEXTAND SIGNIFICANCE REVOLUTION OF MARX'S LATERWRITINGS

Derek Sayer

PhilipCorrigan

In this centennial decade of Marx's death socialistswill be concerned to re-evaluate his political legacy and its relevance to our own times and struggles. This paper aims to contribute to that discussion. Its immediate stimulus was two seminal papers published several years ago in the pages of History and Teodor Workshop by Haruki Wada Shanin [1], on the significance of the
researches

1. Marx and Capitalist Development

Shanin maintains that there "remains" an

essential kernal of evolutionism in Capital, and that Marx's final break with this "arch model of the time" only began to take shape with the turn of the 1870s. By evolutionism Shanin understands "the assumption of an
pre-ordained stages." Built into such

and particularly those on Russia. Wada Shanin argue that thereare importantshiftsin "late Marx". SubsequentMarxism has for the most part either ignoredor suppressed these, yet they are highly germane to socialist struggles in the 20th century. Our paper extends the general line of argument in both Wada and pieces. We show that the shifts in Marx with respect toRussia Shanin identify
have no

and writings

of Marx's

last decade,

intrinsicallynecessary development through

evolutionism is "a highly optimistic teleology." Shanin allows that there were elements of multilinearism in Marx's view of to the 1870s, citinghis use of the historyprior Asiatic mode of production in concept of the plurality of possible routes out of primitive
communism. appearance unifier", But of 1853, and the Grundrisse's acceptance of a

texts of the 1870s and 1880s, notably the France. In draftsand textsof The Civil War in is there indeed short, something distinctive,
novel and

less important

counterparts

in other

of a basically evolutionist scheme.With the of evolution finally assume their global and
place". Thenceforth "the country a as capitalism for theMarx of 1867, "the "global iron laws

these remained

refinements

universal

which should cause us to rethinkhis political legacy as a whole. But first, it is necessary to qualify some aspects of the Wada/Shanin
argument.

important

about

"late

Marx",

Derek Alberta

Sayer

is Professor

and Chair

of Sociology, Ontario

University

of

that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future".At the end of theday capitalism is necessary, inevitable, and progressive. The political corollary is that such pre-capitalist social forces as seek to obstruct its forward march are objectively reactionary, however much they might engage our intuitive Hence Marx's rather sympathies.
embarrassing views on colonialism and

Philip Corrigan Studies

is Professor

of Sociology,

Institute for

in Education,

Toronto

peasants,

respectively expressed

in,

for

Dialectical Anthropology12: 65-82 (1987) ? MartinusNijhoffPublishers, Dordrecht

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66

instance, his 1853 articles on India and The Eighteenth Brumaire [2]. Shanin detects a twofold departure from thisposition byMarx in the 1870s and 1880s, which ismost in evidence in his writings on Russia. First,Marx moves beyond a picture of capitalism as straightforwardlyprogressive towards a more realistic grasp of the complexities and contradictions of what we would nowadays call dependent development. Second, he extends multilinearism to the Marx was envisaging future.By the late 1870s of roads of "a social multiplicity a within transformation, global frameworkof
mutual Marx's and differential picture re-evaluation

only form known to have impressedMarx) [4]. Darwin certainly did not believe in ordained stages." The essence of his theory is
random mutation. for whatever survive because, Species accidental reasons, they have "necessary development through pre?

which adapt them to developed characteristics theirenvironment theydo not acquire those characteristics inorder so to adapt. The latter is the Lamarckian view, not the Darwinian. Darwin's theory was specifically anti was part of why it so upset teleological 'this First, because whatMarx himselfwelcomed in Darwin's Origin of Species was precisely that, in his own words, "it deals the death-blow to teleology in the natural sciences [5]." And Darwin in this second, because in representing - not for the reveals Shanin way only time in his paper the extent to which he continues, Marx of Capital unquestioningly, to read the and before through the lens of a century of orthodoxy. The hoary parallel between a Hegelianized Marx and a Lamarckianized Darwin originatedwith Engels and theSecond International and remains a staple of Soviet Marxology to thisday. In this connection it is
worth to Margaret attention drawing of the well-worn excellent demolition Fay's myth the clerics). This matters for two reasons.

Evolutionism was dead. This revolution in

macro-historical entailed of a corresponding social

impact".

struggles in peripheral formations. Marx shifted his position on peasants, the obshchina, and the character of rulingclasses and State formson capitalism's periphery. In sharp contrast to thenext threegenerations of Marxists, Marx himself was "beginning to recognise forwhat they really are the nature, problems and debate concerning 'developing' and post-revolutionary societies of the
twentieth Wada's Marx's been century." story of the fate of the drafts of is a reminder

letter to Zasulich

that the

complaint against Shanin is that he concedes toomuch to the traditionalists. In brief, Marx
was never so consistent an evolutionist as

a merely academic Shanin's exercise. intervention is a timely one, for a new Marxist fundamentalism is resurgent [3], Our major

struggle for the soul of Karl Marx has never

thatMarx sought to dedicate Volume II of Capital to the great biologists [6]. In fact, pace Shanin, Marx's hostility to was overt and of long teleology inall its forms The German Ideology, a work Shanin seems to regard as a paradigm of crude evolutionism.There Marx was quite clear that any notion that "later history is... the goal of earlier history" is "a speculative distortion"; "what is designated by the words 'destiny',
'germ' or 'idea' of earlier history is more from later than an abstraction nothing 'goal', standing. Such hostility is a recurrent motif of

Shanin implies.And his intimationsas to the specific structures of peripheral capitalism long pre-date the 1870s. These are not scholastic points, for they affect our and our political evaluation of interpretation
Marx's

It is not entirely irrelevant to begin by of characterization the questioning evolutionismwhich Shanin offers, at least as regards itsDarwinian variant (whichwas the

legacy as a whole.

history [7]." The teleology of Proudhon's "providential history" was to be mercilessly lambasted the following year [8]. Indeed what ismost strikingin The German Ideology and Marx's refusal, in otherworks of thisperiod is

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67 terms quite as adamant as those of his famous

1877 letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski, of '' historico-philosophical any overarching is rather offered is a program What theory." for investigating "real, profane history" of an [9] empiricistkind. It is in this spirit that Marx and Engels warn their readers that the sketch of historical development in The German Ideology which Shanin cites is no
more means than "some afford a avowedly -

wife's death to know or care what he was doing. The reservationsabout thisPreface in Marx's covering letter to Lavrov, cited by Wada, cannot seriouslybe read as relating to What we know of anything other than style.
Marx's

some would

say embarrassingly

December 1880 and January 1881,moreover, is simply wrong in the suggest Wada Marx took refuge from his grief in anything, work, compiling at this time his massive chronology of world history,while lettersto Engels and others indicate a continuing interest in matters intellectual and political [12]. Here, Wada comes uncomfortably close to the mode or argument whose nadir is Riazanov's suggestion that theZasulich drafts indicate the lateMarx's encroaching senility. There can be little doubt that Marx believed that socialism required at least the levels of social production only capitalism had (so far) historicallyproved capable of delivering, and continued to believe this to the end of his life. But this does not in itselfadd up to the kind of tightarch-model of evolutionismattributed toMarx by Shanin. Marx certainly at times employed an evolutionist idiom in presenting his conclusions, as in the 1859Preface. But we would suggestthat the major reason for seeing at Marx any point as an evolutionist in Shanin's full-blown sense lies less in anything Marx himself wrote than in the incredibly
legacy of received powerful interpretations from the late Engels onwards. for Why, we in do Marx's regarding example, persist abundant anomalies! departures from a supposed consequences of Jenny Marx's death if

study

and

correspondence

in

"by historical examples", which "by no

recipe of schema, as does

... abstractions",

illustrated

the epochs of philosophy, forneatly trimming history [10]." One can certainly find passages inMarx's work which speak of the achievements of But one equally finds such sentiments in the late Marx. His 1874 notes on Bakunin's
S tat ism and Anarchy capitalism as a presupposition for socialism.

neglected byWada
a propos Russia,

and Shanin [11] - insists,

that "a radical social

- a text unaccountably

of

revolution ... is only possible where with the industrial capitalist development an at least important proletariat occupies position among themass of thepeople", and derides Bakunin forwanting "the European social revolution, premised on the basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level
the Russian or Slavic peoples." Marx and agricultural this penned after the claims

pastoral supposed

was brought about by readingChernyshevsky. establishes his major contention thatby 1881 Marx had abandoned his formeropinion that an obshchina-bzsed socialism in Russia required a successfulproletarian revolution in West. Wada presents no evidence for this the other than Marx's failure to reiterate this requirement in the drafts of his letter to Zasulich, and has to dismissMarx's explicit endorsement of his former position, in the joint 1881 Preface to the Russian edition of the Manifesto, by the flimsyand speculative Marx was too devastated by his argument that
Relatedly, Wada never satisfactorily

sea-change

in his views Wada

unilinear evolutionism prior to

There are other

1870 as
in

addition to those conceded by Shanin, like Marx's untroubled acceptance in his 1857 General Introduction of the sui generis character of a society like pre-Columbian Peru, inwhich thehighest formsof economy, e.g. co-operation, a developed division of labour, etc., are found, even though there is no kind of money [13]." We want finally to question Shanin's

"departures"

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68

interpretationof the famous passage from Marx's Preface to the 1867 edition of Capital I, which Shanin treats as incontrovertible evidence ofMarx's evolutionism. Let us quote what Marx actually says in full:
In this work production, corresponding classic is used ground as I have to examine the capitalist to the present mode of

return to this below.

Marx actually writes. The only iron necessity he speaks of concerns theworking out of the
consequences of the "natural

Look,

moreover,

at what

list production", and theonly phases of deve? lopment to which he refers are those of
society", i.e., capitalism. Nothing

laws of capita?

"modern

and the conditions to that mode. is England. That

of production Up

and exchange time, their of my and

is the reason why England in the development the English reader shrugs his industrial fashion "De comforts te fabula that It is a

he says in any way way bears on the separate issue of whether capitalism as such is a neces? ral historical development. And
course, exactly what Marx was sary phase in a law-governed process

the chief ideas. at

illustration of

theoretical shoulders agricultural

If, however, or

the German

the condition labourers, I must

this is, of
to ma?

of gene?

in optimistic tell him,

himself

himself with nearly narratur!"

the thought

that in Germany plainly it is not a question

things are not of the higher or

so bad;

ke plain in his clarification (which iswhat it was, not a recantation) againstMikhailovsky:

Now what application historical capitalist countries... nation after to Russia could my critic make wants of of this a sketch? Simply this: If Russia to become

Intrinsically,

lower degree of development result from the natural question working country of with these laws

of the social antagonisms production. these of

laws of capitalist themselves, towards

tendencies results. The shows, to

the example

the West-European of the capi? laws li? its inexorable

iron necessity

inevitable future.

then, once drawn she will have nations

into the whirlpool to endure

that is more

developed

industrially

only

talist economy, ke other profane

the less developed,

the image of its own

[15].

Later Marx adds, in similar vein

And even when a society has got upon of the natural of modern aim of this work, laws of itsmovement the right track for the - and it is the

evolutionist Marx's

It was the fact thatGermany was already in the "whirlpool'' in 1867, not some general
"De "arch-model", te fabula narratur!" that Wada licensed is pro?

discovery ultimate motion

to lay bare the economic law of can clear neither it society by bold the obstacles development offered [14].

leaps, nor remove by legal enactment, by the successive phases of its normal

Marx thought Rus? bably right,however, that sia analogous to Germany in 1867 and later changed his mind on this specific point.
To turn now prehensions to the question of Marx's ap? as to the structures of dependent do not for a moment in his late texts. But

To those convinced of it already, undeniable

confirmation

it?
Recall,

of Capital's

evolutionism. Marx

But

is

hing, in Germany, a book whose empirical material ismostly drawn fromEngland. He is understandably concerned to assert its rele? vance to German conditions. Since Germany is a society inwhich capitalism has already ta? ken hold, its "normal development" might reasonably be expected to follow a broadly "English" path. But this in no way implies any necessity for societies inwhich capitalism is not already established to do the same. In? ternal evidence from the same text,Capital I, suggests it highly unlikely thatMarx in 1867 would have expected, say, India or Ireland simply tomirror theEnglish pattern.We will

first, the context.

is publis?

gestMarx's picture of capitalist development was until the 1870s one of straightforward not just referringto his denunciations of the incidental brutalities of capitalist expansion here, but to his evaluation of itshistorical con? sequences.Marx knew that capitalist develop? ment could well sustain, strengthenor even
create forms of "backwardness" on progressiveness travesties the facts. We are

We development. the great advances

deny to sug?

phery, long before his studies of Russia. Some examples. The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)
asserted castrian an intimate relation between Lan?

its peri?

slavery is just as much thepivot of bourgeois industryas machinery, credits, etc. Without

"modernity"

and barbarism:

"Direct

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69

slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry ... Slavery is an economic category of thegreatest importance [16]." The point is extended inMarx's wri? American civilwar: the slave sta? tingson the tes "grew and developed simultaneouslywith themonopoly of theEnglish cotton industry on theworld market [17]." The same articles severelyqualify the progressivistconclusions, referredto by Shanin, ofMarx's 1853 articles in India:
England misrule pays now, in fact, the penalty empire. The for her protracted two main obstacles at supplanting of

Russian revolutionaries might have drawn so? me lessons here, as Marx goes on to illustrate his point with the experience of theDanubian Principalities of theTsarist Empire. Later on unevenness inCapital he suggestsa systematic in capitalist development:
A new and international to the requirements division of labour, a division suited of the chief centers of modern

springs up, and converts one part of the globe agricultural which field of production, for supplying remains a chiefly industrial field [22].

industry into a chiefly

the other part

of that vast Indian

This concludes a discussion of the forcible

destruction

she has now American

to grapple with

in her attempts

cotton by Indian cotton are the want of means and transport throughout circumstances. Both state of the Indian peasant, favourable have themselves disabling

communication serable proving English

India, and the mi? him from im? the these difficulties

to thank for [18].

mentions Marx on Ireland. By Shanin himself was England Marx was quite clear that it 1867
that "struck down the manufactures of Ire?

land, depopulated her cities, and threw her people back upon the land". "Every time Irelandwas about to develop industrially,she
was crushed and land", reconverted one "forced agricultural into a purely to contribute

dia, Java, etc., with capitalist penetration, and the conversion of these countries into raw material suppliers for metropolitan industries. Far from Marx's Russian studies of the 1870s coming fromout of theblue to torpedo a secu? re evolutionism, theyfitted into- whilst, cer? tainly,deepening a set of apprehensions as to "the specificstructures of backward capita? lism" which were already very well established in his work.

of indigenous

manufactures

in In?

cheap labour and cheap capital to building up 'the great works of Britain' [19]." The same MS documents theunderdevelopment of Irish
land? agriculture itself by a predatory absentee ru? to the whose lordism, English importance in Marx underlines class many ling letters and speeches [20]. contemporary We do not wish to claim thatMarx had any?

2. Capitalist Development mation

Shanin's version of Marx

and State For?

not make
draw on Russia

something

of a simplification.

pre-1870 may be But this does late writings or important.

our attention

the developments he and Wada

to inMarx's

Marx did take up radically new positions in tional and Bolshevik) was silentafterhis death [23].What we want now to show is that such were by no means confined to his Russi? shifts an writings, but exist equally in other "late" texts.There is a wider rethinkin late Marx (of which laterMarxism has generally been no
more these texts, for the most part in directions on which mainstream Marxism Interna? (Second

any the less genuine

thing like a worked out theoryof dependent development by 1867 (nor yet by 1883). Capi? taldoes however venture some pertinentgene?
ralizations:
[a]s soon as people, into the whirlpool the capitalist mode for export of slavery, horrors of overwork serfdom, whose production still moves within the

lower forms of slave-labour,

corvee-labour,

etc., are drawn dominated by

of an international market of production,

the sale of their products interest, the civilised horrors

becoming

their principal etc. [21].

are grafted on to the barbaric

scured byWada's
and Shanin's

aware),

whose obsession

true dimensions with

are ob?

exclusive focus on Russia

evolutionism.

A preliminary aside regarding periodizati

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70

on. There is real novelty in the late Marx. But not the least interesting featureofMarx's late texts is theirrestatement,albeit in verymuch
more concrete E.P.

measures

pp.162, 159), but its potentialities as a politi? cal form. "Whatever themerits of the single re was its own organisation"
of course, "political of the Commune, its greatest measu? ...

tral to his thoughtas farback as the early and

mid-1840s.

terms, of themes that were Thompson's suggestion

cen? that

(p. 153). For

originate

Marx,

forms

Marx's mature writings are hopelessly trapped within the conceptual net of thePolitical Eco? nomy theyare fighting[24] is exaggerated, but
the argument contains a kernel of truth as re? more overt preoccupations. It is gards Marx's

in the material conditions of life [27]." He did not therefore laud theCommunal Constituti? on in the abstract, but only insofar as itwas
a means towards the emancipation of labor:

surelyno accident that the concernswe will be discussing here should have been most to the fore during the two periods when Marx was most actively engaged in politics, namely the 1840s and from 1864 onwards. There is a con? tinuityof concern between the "early" and
the "late" focus on in areas with Marx, Marx the "mature" too exclusive of Grundrisse a

"Except on this last condition, theCommunal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion" (p.76). We will return to this below. But what ismore novel, and certainly far less often remarked, in these texts, is the stress Marx lays on the contrary dependence:
The working rent phases conditions class know that they have to pass through diffe? of class struggle. They know conditions of free and associated be made that the superseding

of the economical

and Capital has often obscured.We would ho? Marx pe that one resultof "discovering" late more us to seri? make therefore be take might ously his insightsinto theanatomy of bourge? ois civilization in texts like The German Ideology, "On the JewishQuestion" and the
Paris Manuscripts. This

of the slavery of labour by the labour can only be the pro? the Communal

gressive work of time ... But they know at the same time that great strides may at once through form of political

organisations

(pp. 154-5).

economistic pentantly as Gerry Cohen's Marx

tant given the present popularity of as unre

an

is particularly

impor?

ly, itdraws attention to the dangers involved in any simple and unilinear periodization of
work. will concentrate texts of Marx's here on some other key late years, the two We

of interpretation book [25]. More wide?

The Commune "affords the rationalmedium through which the class struggle can run most rational through itsvarious phases in the and humane way" (p. 154).
The obverse

have honored more in the breach than in the

observance:
the working political political class cannot and simply lay hold on the ready-made wield it for their own purpose. The cannot serve as the first (p. 196). The

of this is a warning

socialists

Marx's

state-machinery

instrument of their enslavement instrument of their emancipation and destroy

neglected

Fran? drafts and final textof The Civil War in ce. Marx saw farmore than the heroism of a
lost cause in the Paris Commune. It was "the

conditionforthe hold[ing]of politicalpower is to transform

working machinery it - an instrument of class

rule (p. 196).

greatest revolution of this century" {Writings on the Paris Commune, p. 147) [26]. The
Commune was, moreover, a social

of theprofoundest significance,"the political form at last discovered under which to work

out the economical

discovery

What so excitedMarx in theCommune was not itspolicies as such (whichhe saw as having "nothing socialist in them" and actingmainly "for the salvation of the middle class" -

emancipation

of labour."

Economic and social emancipation of labor requires political formswhich are themselves emancipatory. A century's experience since Marx's death during which socialism has repeatedlybeen deformed by statism (whether in Bolshevik or Social Democratic forms) underscores his point. That Marx himself thought this conclusion both extremely importantand a definite advance in termsof his own ideas is indicated not only by its

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71

frequent reiteration in the second draft and final textof The Civil War, but above all by the fact that Marx and Engels again cite it,as self-criticism, in their Preface to the 1872 reissue of the Communist Manisfesto [28]. This Preface endorses the "general Manifesto, with theproviso principles" of the that theirapplication will always depend upon historical conditions. There then follows a and Engels say, should be placed on the original text.For
in view February Commune, political of the practical and where power Revolution, then,

The

true antithesis was

to the Empire executive, the

itself

- that is to the state the Second - was the not against or republican against of society, a faction to break

power, Empire Commune this or

the centralised only ... This was, that,

of which formula

exhausting

therefore, a Revolution constitutional, abortion

legitimate,

Imperialist the State

form of State Power.

It was a Revolution

by thepeople for thepeople of itsown social resumption

life. It was not a revolution to transfer it from one but a Revolution of classdomination of the ruling classes down Second Empire was was to another,

itself, of this supernaturalist

specific correction.

"No

special

stress", Marx

this horrid machinery

itself... The therefore, the

the final form of this State usurpation. its definite negation, and, of the 19th century (pp.

The Commune

"revolutionary

measures"

proposed

in the

initiation of the social Revolution 150-51).

experience

gained,

first

in the

still more,

in the Paris has

the proletarist

for the first time held this programme thing especially was working class State machinery,

for two whole

months, One viz.,

in some details become proved cannot by

antiquated.

the Commune,

that "the

simply lay hold of the ready-made and wield it for its own purposes."

Readers are then referredto The Civil War, "where thispoint is further developed." The dominant motif of the "revolutionary measures" in the Manifesto to which this in the hands of the State [29]." Engels later qualified another text contemporarywith the Manifesto along similar lines.His and Marx's call in 1850 for"the really revolutionaryparty
[in Germany] centralisation" on to carry through the strictest is now (1885) seen as "based a misunderstanding" of French history. administrative now machine "pro? it was passage relates is precisely "centralisation ...

To understand the full significance of this (which we would argue Marxism in general has not) [31]we need to look indetail at what the drafts and textof The Civil War have to say both about the State and about its antithesis the Commune. To do so is to highlight one of the oddest of gaps inMarx fullest discussion of the State since the mid-1840s. And this just happens to be the one area where Marx indicated he thought Capital most in need of his personal supplementation [32]. The Civil War offers both a historical sketch of the evolution of the French State and an implicittheoryof themodern State as
a political tous and clerical form. The roots of France's military, organs, "centra? commentary. For these texts contain Marx's

lised statemachinerywhich, with its ubiqui?

complicated and judiciary bureaucratic, entoils (inmes

They had at one time thought the French

centralized gressive. But rather "provincial revolution", argues that Engels and local self-government"

hes) the livingcivil society like a boaconstric tor" lie in the period of Absolutism. It was society in its struggleof emancipation from feudalism": seigneurial privileges were "transformed into the attributesof a unitary state power", feudal retinues replaced by a standing army, feudal dignitaries supplanted by salaried state functionaries,and "the che? quered (partycoloured) anarchy of medieval powers" superseded by "the regulatedplan of division of labour' (p. 148).
a Statepower, with a systematic and hierarchic first forged as "a weapon of nascent modern

which was "the most powerful lever of the was "a pure instrument of reaction from the beginning [30]." This brings us to the heart of Marx's argument.Quite simply, theCommune was a rational form for the emancipation of labor precisely to the extent that itwas not a State but specifically set out to smash it.He makes theiropposition unmistakeably clear:
whilst Napoleon's centralization

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72

The
and

1789 revolution took "centralisation

of state power" further.

"With its task to found national unity (to create a nation)" it"had to break down all lo? cal, territorial,townish and provincial inde?
pendence." also

organisation

and attributes" of the State, the revolution

increased its "independence, and its su

In expanding

the "circumference

pernaturalist sway of real society" (p. 148). The ensuing national unity,Marx observes, "if originally brought about by political for? ce" become "a powerful coefficientof social production" (p. 75). The Napoleonic Empire perfected this "parasitical [excresence upon] civil society" (p. 148). At home it "served ... to subjugate theRevolution and annihilate all
liberties", popular ment of the French abroad Revolution it was "an instru? ... to create for

France on theContinent insteadof feudalmo? narchiesmore or less states after the image of France" (p. 149).
So "this

a means to break tion of the middle class, first down feudalism, then a means to crush the
emancipatory aspect now count. As
the modern and capital,

state power

forms in fact the crea?

the working class"

comes

aspirations

of

(p.

150). This

the producers, in Marx's

second
ac?

to the fore

only perfected the statemachinery instead of throwing off this deadening incubus" (p. 149). The Second Empire ofNapoleon III was the "last triumph of a State separate of and independent from society" (p. 151). "At first Marx writes: 'to view, apparently [elsewhere the eye of the uninitiated ...' - p. 150] the usurpatory dictatorship of the governmental body over society itself,risingalike above and humbling all classes, it has in fact, on the European Continent at least, become theonly possible state form inwhich the appropriating class can continue to sway it over the producing class" (p. 196). Professing to rest on the producing mass of the nation, the peasantry, and claiming to be above the labor/capital conflict, theEmpire "divest[ed] the state power from itsdirect form of class despotism" (p. 198). We come now to a delicate but critical distinction in Marx's analysis. On the one hand the State really "had grown so independent of society itself that a grotesquelymediocre adventurerwith a hungry band of desperadoes behind him sufficedtowield it" (p. 149). But on theother was not less a bourgeois State for that. hand it "Apparently the final victory of the was only the last degraded and the only possible form of that class ruling" (p. 150). This amounts to an implicit and important
criticism of the model of governmental power over society ... in fact it

struggle of classes, assumed shape underwent

the struggle between

labour

the state power struggle, re develop and political ment economic

trance of society state-power,

and form, the physiognomy of a striking change ...With the en? itself into a new phase, the phase of class

the character its character

of its organized public force, the could not but change also ... and more and mo? as the instrument of class despotism, the social enslave? of the of wealth over by its appropriators, labour (p. 197).

engine forcibly perpetuating

of the producers

rule of capital

Successive popular revolutions (1830, 1848) served only to transferstate power from one fractionof the rulingclasses to another, while
with

which Marxists have habitually drawn from The Eighteenth Brumaire, of a genuinely independent state resting on a stalemate of class forces. In thepast such a model has been used to "explain" both Hitler and Stalin! Marx is writing here of France, and does not see French State forms as universals of capitalism. He notes that "peculiar historical
circumstances" corrupt vestries, ferocious poor-law counties" allowed jobbing

"Bonapartism"

ped and more mercilessly used" (p. 197). So too was the financial burden of the state on
the people,

every revolution "the repressive charac? ter of the state power was more fully develo?

complete the great central State organs by

and councillors, in the towns, guardians Marx does

England

"to

tion" (p. 149). In sum, "all revolutions thus

amounting

to "a

second

exploita?

and virtually hereditary magistrates in the

(p. 75). Nonetheless see

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73

France

classical representing "the .... of form the of bourgeois development government" (p. 75). Mechanical applications of this notion have sometimes had a baneful influence in English Marxist historiography, and we ought to remember that all histories
are

as

Marx's

peculiarities deviations from an otherwise "normal" model [33],But such qualifications elementsof should not blind us to the fruitful a general theoryof the bourgeois state to be - or much That the State is an instrument better,aform of organization of class power is a commonplace of Marxist theory. But other themes inMarx's analysis here usually
receive much found in these analyses.

"peculiar"

rather

than

understand

by

writings of the 1840s: that "civil - here society" meaning bourgeois society Gesellschaft] "must assert itself [b?rgerliche in its external relations as nationality and must organise itselfas State [36]." internally this occurred through the In France a quasi-independent central of development State bureaucracy, in England through the
gradual transformation, over a much longer

period, of existingformsand resources,giving more apparent continuity (and leaving Marxist historianswith thepseudo-problem of finding an English "equivalent" for 1789). But in both cases national state organization Max Weber called thenational citizen of those class [37] was essential to the formation of
modern

especially where they touch on the issues of the roots of themodern State form as such. The Marxist mainstream, taking itsdeparture in Engels' Anti-Duhring, identifies the State with government of people (as distinct from administrationof things) ingeneral and sees it as coterminouswith class society [34].Marx's usage here (though not everywhere in his writings) is notably more historically precise. Marx uses the termhere are States in the sense
modern inventions. The modern State as such

less prominence

in commentary,

gives the State this historical specificity, indeed constitutes it as a State, is its very separation from "civil society". The novelty of the bourgeois organization of its collective class power lies in theexerciseof this power through a distinct policy or arena of What depoliticized civil society, the realm of the individual, particular and private.Marx drew attention to this as early as 1843:
The establishment into individuals of the political state and the dissolution - whose relations with one in the ... is

capitalism.

general

interests,

whose

counterpart

is a

is specifically a form of organization of the class power of the bourgeoisie, a form forged against theworking class. This is not to say
that there was no coercive in struggles first against feudalism and then

of civil society another

depend on law, just as the relations of men on privilege system of estates and guilds depended by one and the same act [38]. accomplished

the bourgeoisie, merely that thisdid not take Marx's present the specific formof a State in
sense.

governance

before

This separation of the State from civil society

-

The converse of this is equally important. Marx says inThe Civil War makes Everything it evident that for him State formationwas inseparable from, and indispensible to, the making of the capitalistmode of production. The State is an essential relation [35] of any normal sense of that unfortunate term. The State is not the political icing on the
economic cake but one of itsmost bourgeois society, not a "superstructure" in

employ the latterterm in his latewritings is central to both the analysis of theState inThe Civil War and Marx's insistenceon the need for socialism to smash it. The growing separation of theState, up to a point where it into "elaborated becomes seeming is a from 151), society" (p. independence sketch of the historical theme major summarized above. Marx repeatedly links this separation to the wider social divisions of
labor characteristic

and

it is instructive

that Marx

continues

to

This recuperatesa major themeof ingredients.

important

"the state insofar as it forms through the

of bourgeois

society.

It is

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74

division of labor a special organism separate from society" (to quote another "late" text) [39] that forms the specific target of his critique.What is new in the writings of the 1870s as against the 1840s is the greater materialism ofMarx's grasp of thisdivision of
labor.

As is clear fromMarx's analysis of the Second Empire, this independenceof theState is in one very material sense real. The specialization of themachinery of State did
allow

generally this specialization provides the key to the disjuncture Marx recognizes between the general character of the State as a bourgeois organization, and theparticulars of who commands its apparatuses at any given point in time. The institutional independence of theState allows thepossiblity of itscontrol, at different times, by competing fractions of the bourgeoisie or even by non-bourgeois forces (as inMarx's - dubious - analysis of the British Constitution in which the "aristocracy" wield State power) [40]. This recognition is fundamental to the empirical richness of Marx's political sociology, in which the State is clearly not just a pliant
bourgeois tool. It also allows due room for the

its capture

by an "adventurer".

More

what counts and can be practiced circumscribe as politics, not just conceptually but materially through themeans of action they make available or deny. The divisions of labor through which the State is constructed constituteand limitboth the permitted sphere of political debate and action and themodes to of political participation available individuals. located and groups differentially We are of course talking about the attempted ratherthan theachieved: this social geography is a landscape of struggle.But the point we want to emphasize here is that in thiswider context any "independence" of the State is purely illusory.Far frombeing independentof society, the State is an essential form of organization of b?rgerlicheGesellschaft itself. That iswhy it cannot be used by labor for its
own emancipation.

3. Socialist Against

Construction the State

as Revolution

wider

specific interestsof State servants. But this should not be confused with independence of the State from bourgeois relations in any
sense. Marx who State is equally adamant that no controls it, momentarily as such remains bourgeois. the It

Which brings us to theCommune, for Marx "the the social political form of precisely of the liberation of labor" (p. emancipation, 154).What then is this sphynx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind? One way of readingThe Civil War is simply
as a manifesto would This focus of extreme political democracy. on Marx's enthusiasm for achievement were elections more of real represen? sifted, ne?

matter modern

the Commune's tation "Never

remains bourgeois by virtue precisely of its form, that is, by virtue of its relationship to civil society. The modern State form as such is intrinsically bourgeois because the boundaries of political and private, general and personal, collective and individualwhich itpresupposes and articulates are those corresponding to the
conditions of

decisions
resources,

commodity instance,

regarding
for

the

production. are

Most

allocation
outside

of
the

political sphere (at best theState "intervenes" These boundaries in "The Economy").

ver delegates fuller representing the masses fromwhich theyhad sprung" - p. 147) and genuine public accountability, ensured by openness of sittings, publication of procee? dings and revocability of delegates. Some might perhaps pause to note thatadministrati? ve and judicial personnel were also to be elec? tive and revocable (pp. 140, 153, 200). And thosewith a materialist bentmight remind us that thisdemocratization of the polity was to be protected by disbanding the army, arming the people, and paying Communal functiona?
ries workmen's wages. If we add the caveat

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75

that everythingis contingentupon "expropri? ating the expropriators" we will have reached thepoint Lenin does inhis commentaryon the text in The State and Revolution - a reading we cannot ignorebecause of itsauthority [41]. This is,we should be clear, to go a longway. Lenin's commentary highlights the silences and distortions of the Second International Marxists, remindsus of Marx's correction of theCommunist Manifesto, and above all in? Marx theState was somethingto sists that for be smashed. Nonetheless for Lenin (who did not, incidentally,know the drafts) The Civil War remained about "the reorganization of the state, thepurely political reorganizationof society [42]." The language is revealing. For Lenin - writing, we might note, in
Russia Tsarist autocratic, of armed men, simply "bodies the State prisons, was etc.",

published afterLenin's death. A knowledge of thesematerials and the drafts of The Civil War might perhaps have led Lenin to reason Historical experience since 1917 differently. should certainly lead us to reason differently. The gist ofMarx's argument is that since the existenceof a separate political sphere is itself testimony to the alienation of human social powers, any merely political emancipation remains partial (albeit still desirable):
Only when man as has recognised forces, and and organised social his "forces no longer have been

propres" separates power,

consequently

social power only

from himself human

in the shape of political

then will [48].

emancipation

accomplished

"a

special force for the suppression of a

class" incarnated machine [43]." in "the Hence,

For Marx what is needed is not so much political emancipation, as emancipation from politics, understood as the specialization of
social concerns into a particularized general set of activities, occasions, and institutions no matter how democratic. States presuppose

particular

introduced as "democracy fully and as at is all conceivable consistently [44]" is tantamount to smashing the State, inasmuch as it does away with such a special force. Lenin is explicit:
The Commune ... appears "only" to have replaced the smashed ... But ... this

bureaucratic-military

and regulate relations within which individuals cannot collectively control the conditions of theirreal lives in "civil society". The State is an "illusory community" which existswhere real communitydoes not [49]. So to smash it entails more than breaking the
obvious

state machine

by fuller democracy

a of certain "only" replacement signifies gigantic of a institutions institutions by other fundamentally is exactly a case of "quantity different type. This being transformed into quality" ... [45]

not just the class content of State power but the alienation inherent in the State form as
such.

apparatuses

of class

rule. The

issue is

This
emphases

leads Marx
from

to a different set of
The Commune's

Lenin's.

"the state begins to wither away" [46].Marx did not use the dangerously bland "withering away" formulation (it comes from Saint Simon viaAnti-Diihring) [47], he spoke of the need actively to smash. And he had inmind
far more than Lenin realizes.

It is, Lenin

continues,

"in

this sense"

that

primary significance lies in its being a social form throughwhich this alienation can be
challenged. Revolution It is, in a against the telling State "a contrast, ... a itself

had contrasted what he called human emancipation inhis essay and political of 1843 on the Jewish question, a textLenin ignores inThe State and Revolution (if indeed he knew of its contents). The argument is taken furtherin The German Ideology, only

Marx

resumptionby thepeople for thepeople of its own social life" (p. 150). At slightly more was length, it
the reabsorption by the popular instead of political artificial of the State power by society as its own it, living forces instead of as forces controlling masses themselves, force of the organised and subduing

forming their own their suppression

force the

form of their social force (appropriated

emancipation,

instead of the (their own

by their oppressors)

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76
force opposed to and them) of

organised

wielded for their enemies (p. 152). oppressionby their

against

society

emancipation because, and to the extent that, it is a material and present challenge to those
relations which

is perhaps rather abstract, but it iass important to grasp the overall thrust of Marx's analysis (and note its continuitieswith 1843). The way he develops his argument, however, is highlymaterialist. Against the Anarchist absurdity that the State can be decreed away, Marx argued the necessity of transforming those material conditions of civil society which sustain it. The Commune "had no ready-madeUtopias to introducepar deer et du peuple" (p. 77). Time, and long class struggles, would be needed for labor to free itselffrom themuck of ages [50].The Commune was no more than This
a "rational
As

ordination. Central to the latter is the separa? tion between a specialized State and a civil so? ciety without social control. Breaking down this separation is thereforenot for Marx one
of communism's

perpetuate

labor's

sub?

dispensible part of any conceivable means for itsattainment. What needs to be understood is that Marx is being everybit as materialist here as in his critique of the Anarchists. If the ob? is labor's self-emancipation themeans jective
have

remote objectives,

but an in

medium"

for those
and parliamentarism but only the political

struggles:
are not the real general

the State machinery

life of organs is not general

the ruling classes, of their dominion, the social movement regeneration The Commune

the organised guarantees class

and forms and of a means the class

and expressions

of the old order of things, so the Commune of the working but does of mankind, the organised class

of action. struggles, abolition

not do away with

of all classes

the working through which ... (p. 154).

strives to the

Marx

of

(which the late Mao Tsetung would have appreciated [51]) between the class struggles
socialist construction and the centuries

goes

on

to draw

an

the only ones which will work. Extending the principles of election and revocability to administrative and juridical functionaries, for instance, is significant in this context as an extension of the sphere of social control beyond the realm of the polity as traditionally understood. So too are the Commune's infractions upon the erstwhile "private jurisdiction" of employers in "their" factories and mills, one of the very few measures Marx hails as being for the working class (p. 138). The Critique of the Gotha Programme extends this awareness of
the needs for certain

to be "prefigurative",

because

they are

explicit

parallel

long struggles through which slavery was transformed into feudalism and feudalism intocapitalism (pp. 154-55).This emphasis on the complexity and protractedness of class struggle after anything thatmight be called "the" socialist revolution is a general feature of Marx's latewritings [52]. what we might But thisdoes not legitimate call theBolshevik absurdity thata "proletarian State" can be used and will then either "wi? ther away" or be "thrown away" [53]. Sixty years after theOctober revolution, is itnot ti? me socialists abandoned thisamiable butmur? derous fantasy?There is not a whiff of it in The Civil War inFrance. The Commune can
be an appropriate form for labor's self

bourgeois right [54]. More generally,Marx celebrated the fact that "the initiative in all matters of social life [was] to be reserved to the Commune" (p. 200). What saves this from being a blueprint for totalitarian State is that the forms through which this "social control" was exercisedwere not in the least statelike, but part of a wider revolution within civil societyagainst any such alienation of social powers. This concept of "social control" isa key one in Marx [55].His meaning is exactly theopposite of that sense ithas since acquired in orthodox and radical sociologies alike. Marx is not referringto the attempted control of society by the State, but to members - a situationwhich in society by its his view would render States both impossible
conscious, collective and egalitarian control of aggrandizement of a strengthened central

despotic

inroads

upon

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77 and unnecessary.

The measures on which Lenin focuses, for full political democracy, are of course an important part of this, but not in and of themselves (nor yet, we might add, when merely supplemented by expropriation of capitalists if the program for socialist constructionthenpursuedmakes use of Statist formsof economic and other regulation,as in theBolshevik case [56]).What Lenin neglects, andMarx attends to indetail - above all in the drafts- is thewider contextof revolutionizing circumstances and selves which alone makes
such socialist measures meaningful transformation. Marx elements of is clear that the

more importantfeatureof We have leftthe Marx's account until the end. The means for all thiswas a sustained attack on thedivisions of labor that constitute administration and functionsonly to be trustedto thehands of a trained caste" (p. 153). It is of the utmost importance, first, that Marx brands this, unequivocally, as "a delusion" (p. 153), and both can second, that it is a delusion he insists and must be materially challenged now, not in the communist hereafter.Breaking down this central and constitutive facet of capitalism's wider division of labor was not something to and requisite levels of popular education on the one hand and the technical sophistication of the machinery of centralgovernmenton the other, as The State and Revolution more than hints [58]. The Commune was such a challenge, and thatwas whyMarx hailed itas a social discovery ofmonumental significance for the emancipation of labor. He is clear:
The delusion as if administration transcendent trained and political governing were mysteries, the hands sycophants the with themselves the of a and functions only to be trusted to caste - stateparasites, richly paid in the higher posts, and turning and absorbing away the them against

government

as

"mysteries,

transcendent

Commune stood for a once and for all reduction in the scale, power and cost of any central societal authority. Abolition of the standing army has a multiple significance
here.

await development

of "the productive

forces"

revolution.But equally important toMarx, it was "the first economical conditio sine qua for all social improvements, discarding at once this source of taxes and state debts" (p. 152).Marx saw theCommune as arguring"all France organised into self-workingand self
governing communes

Yet,

it does

disarm

the

counter?

functions reduced to a few functions for general national purposes (p. 154).What was
sought was "the

stateparasites

removed

... with the army of ... [and] the state

sinecurists, of

intelligence state

the masses

in the lower places hierarchy

in the hierarchy. Doing replacing

altogether

society

itself

political

unity

of French

through

the Communal
centralisation

which has done its service against feodality, mere unity of an artificial but has become the
body, armies, resting on

organisation"

instead

of "that

masters of the people into always removable haughteous servants, a mock responsiblity by a real responsiblity, as they act continuously under public supervision. Paid like skilled workmen pretentions consisting publicly, broad ... The whole was of done simple away sham of state-mysteries and state mostly [with] by a Commune, men ... doing their work complicated difficult and

working

167-68). This is a far cry from themodel of

centralism" Lenin somewhat

repressing

red and black gendarmes, the life of real society" (pp.

simply, under

the most

circumstances, itself behind blunders

and doing it ... for a few pounds, acting in daylight with no pretentions to infallibility, not hiding circumlocution offices, not ashamed to confess

"democratic

casuistically extractsfrom the final textof The Civil War [57]. It is abundantly clear from the Marx's approval was for a highly drafts that decentralized form of society, with local Communes being sovereign in all except the very few functionsgenuinely "necessitated by
the general and common wants of the

in one order the public by correcting them. Making functions real administrative, military, political trained caste instead of the hidden attributes of a functions, ... Whatever the merits of the single measures

workmen's

of

organisation

was the Commune, its greatest measure its own ... proving its life by its vitality, confirming its thesis by its action ... giving body to the aspirations of the class of all countries (p. 153).

working

country" (p. 100).

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78

4. Marx's Materialism - Continuities Contradictions The

and

community elaborated undergo

can by

thus the

adopt

the positive

achievements to of first

system without capitalist having ... it can become the direct point its hardships system towards which modern cast off its old skin without and it can

full significance of Marx's later on when Russia theyare only emerges writings seen in context - the immediate context of Marx's otherwritings of the 1870s and 1880s (and thepolitical experiencewhich gave rise to them), and the broader context of the development of his thoughtas a whole. Wada effectively ignores the first,while Shanin in our view at least greatly oversimplifies the
second. Wada's and Shanin's articles are in

origin of the economic develops

society

suicide [61]. committing

"It would, of course, be only a gradual change, which would begin by establishing the normal state of the community in itspresent form [62]." There exists already a basis for
socialist transformation in "the collective

mode

many ways path-breaking. They document real and important developments inMarx's thinking on peasants, the obshchina, and peripheral capitalism, and draw out relevant and timely implications for traditional evolutionist, progressivist readings of Marx. But their neglect or simplications of context
also means,

of production" in jointly-owned meadowlands, whilst thepeasants' familiarity with the artel would "greatly facilitate the transition from agriculture by individual plot to collective agriculture [63]." But thispossibility, indeed the obshchina's very existence, is threatenedby a conspiracy of powerful interests:
What menaces the life of the Russian nor a social community is neither historical have it is the oppression and cost of

respectsWada
importance

paradoxically,

that

in

other

and Shanin undervalue the

necessity,

theory:

of "late Marx".

who by theState and theexploitation by capitalistintruders

been made peasants powerful at the expense by the very same State [64]. the

When read against the background of Marx's writings on the Paris Commune, for most strikingin thedrafts of instance,what is the letter to Vera Zasulich (and virtually
ignored exactly hand,

the State to capitalist development on the one

and the appropriateness of the

by both Wada parallel concern

and

with

is an Shanin) the centrality of

The State has acted as a "hothouse" [65] for capitalist development. Since the 1861Eman?
community was cipation "the Russian the State into an abnormal economic this "oppression conflicts within put by situati? it?

on", and unleashed class

from the outside" the community

obshchina as a form throughwhich labor can

itself on the other. Marx's emancipate scenario is once again a communal revolution against the State. Marx detects a "deep-seated

self [66]. This is not "historic necessity", it is

similarly holds "govern? struggle. Marx mental fetters" rather than any inherent pri

dualism"

[59] within the Russian village collective community, of private and

tendencies. This permits "an alternative

development" [60] towards the disintegration of the community or towards socialism, the historical entirely on depending
environment.
The communal

mitivism responsible for perpetuating the isolation of communities [67].What is there? fore needed is firstand foremosta revolution against "this coincidence of destructive in?
fluences":
If such a revolution its forces community, element of superiority to assure takes place in time, if it concentrates all

One

alternative

is hopeful:
it [the village and existence of conditions scale. of The

ownership

of the soil offers for collective

of the rural the free development the regenerating this later will soon become it and the factor giving Russian society, the countries enslaved by the capitalist

community] its historical capitalist

a natural basis environment, labour,

appropriation,

over

the contemporaneous on a vast

system[68]. Marx's later writings as a whole can

production,

lends it all the material organised

co-operative

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79

- or be seen as a sustained reflection fruitfully better, a highly focussed and productive moment ina lifetime'sreflection,informed by Marx's deep involvement in the political strugglesof the time on appropriateforms
for socialist

over the political economy of capital [73]. Such egalitarian and collective formsof social life, forms which permit its conscious and democratic control by all in the interests of all,
are
now.

socialism's

one hand, for social forms within present which are capable modes of life and struggle of advancing the emancipation of labor, a call search for what we nowadays sense not in anyUtopian prefigurativeforms, but as material and effective means for
furthering socialist transformation. And a

transformation.

search,

on the

starting-point

in the here and

The other, equally importantside of this is Marx's critique in his later textsof formsof bourgeois civilization which will not further the self-emancipationof labor, and therefore
cannot be treated

on theother hand, of the sober identification, myriad social formsand relations goingwell beyond manifest property relations [69]: State, division of labor, forms of social classification and identity"encouraged" by complexmodes of moral and legal regulation - which block that emancipation and fetter
that transformation.

amongst these is the State, and the wider divisions of labor in bourgeois society of which its separability is one expression. But the point applies more generally. Raymond Williams has put itwell:
There was is the one level at which we can say that a specific form and therefore historically historically productive - in to valuable that sense it was a major contribution human culture. But we must also be able to say, in a distinct but connected way, that it was a disastrously one can or powerful the its political of their contribution. productive which In the same way capacity of bourgeois oneself

instrument ally. Pre-eminent

This concern is not of course a feature of Marx's post-Capital writingsonly, though it is most developed there. His praise for the emancipatorypotential of theParis Commune (despite what he considered itsmany errors [70]) or the obshchina (notwithstanding its "private side") has antecedents inhis eulogies to the success of theTen Hours Bill and to the Address to the First International [71] though he well knew the extreme limitations
of co-operatives co-operative movement in his 1864 Inaugural

acknowledge

society,

institutions, and yet distance not only progress. later become, constitution human always were,

from them as creations freedom or even

but in the very mode

blocks on human

If you cannot make

the first judgement,

then all history becomes

to be any history. know what an affiliation me [74].

a current morality, and there ceases If you cannot make the second, I do not to the working class would be for

Wada's Marx's

and

Shanin's

no lover of the law. Going furtherback we find this salient comment on trade union
activities:
In order to rightly appreciate we must not allow insignificance all things the value ourselves of strikes and by

in a capitalist

world,

and was

growing not unheralded)

(though reservations

demonstration of as we have shown, in his late texts

about

the actual
takes

forms which

capitalist

development us to make progressivist,

combinations, the apparent hold above

to be blinded

of their economical their moral

results, but and political

in view

consequences

[72].

These are all what Marx calls "great facts" for socialism, prefigurative victories however

the political economy of labor ("social production controlled by social foresight")

contradictory

or compromised

for

of the Capital itself,just as Marx's treatment in of his labor late texts State and thedivision should lead us to read anew his still marginalized writings of the 1840s. It would be a pity if Shanin's claims for "late Marx" (coupled perhaps with Thompson's labellingGrundrisse and Capital an "anti-Political Economy") had the same sort of effect on perceptions of Capital as Althusser's periodization of Marx had for a

is germane here. It ought too linear, too re-think our too economistic of reading

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80

time on evaluations of the "early writings". We do not argue a continuity in Marx's work in the sense of denying genuine discovery in thewritingsof the 1870s and 1880s.There was novelty aplenty, leading at times as we have shown to explicitor implicitself-criticism. But there is a continuityof concern and the real importance of Marx's late writings for his overall legacy lies in helping us see where this lies. For us the late writings put beyond any doubt the centralityof what are too readily dismissed as Utopian elementswithinMarx's thought, to the end of his days. Marx was never a Utopian socialist, still lesswas he an Anarchist. He foughtbitter struggles with the Anarchists in the 1870s, in the course of which he denounced "political indifferentism" with Swiftian irony [75]. But nor was he an instrumentalist,a despised "Realpolitiker" [76].He was as passionate a criticof Lassalle's "state socialism" as he was of Bakunin or does not Proudhon. Political indifferentism with the facts of But power. engage bourgeois to do because the so, Realpolitik only appears
means are themselves it employs forms of our In domination. times, the latter bourgeois seems pertinent lesson. We a lot from Marx's close attention to forms. the more can learn

5. Marx Selected SC).

to Engels, Edward

January

16,

1861.

In Marx/Engels, in his The Merlin, to

Correspondence Thompson of Theory 255-6. Fay, "Did

(Moscow, makes

1975; hereafter cited as

the same point Essays (London:

Poverty 1978) pp. 6. Margaret Darwin? History 7. The

and Other

Marx

Offer no.

to Dedicate 1 (1978). 5, p. 50.

Capital

A Reassessment of Ideas,

of the Evidence", MECW MECW

Journal

of the

vol. XXXIX,

German

Ideology, of Phiosophy,

Compare 106. see, Inter

Grundrisse 8. The Poverty 9. For

(Harmondsworth:

Penguin, injunctions

1973) p. 173-4. in Marx

6, pp.

typically "empiricist" 3 (Harmondsworth: to Capital, 1970), 1976) p. p. 214 in Value: vol.

Alia,MECW 5, pp. 31, 35, 43;MECW 6, p. 170;Capital,

vol. Penguin, 1 (London: notes by Marx Althusser 1981) pp. 927-8; and Afterword Wishart, Textbook Park, those who Lawrence

19; Marginal Studies and passim. "Works Penguin,

on A. Wagner's (London: was New see his amongst

found

such "empiricism" 1969) pp. and After 1974;

disturbing; 31-8.

remarks on Marx's (Harmondsworth: 10. MECW 11. 5, p. 37. In The First Harmondsworth, no. 2, Paris 12. See D. Note". 14. Capital 15. Letter Wada). 16. MECW, 17. K. Marx 18. In T. p.

of the Break",

in For Marx

International Penguin,

(ed. D.

Fernbach, as FI);

hereafter

cited

first English publication inCahiers de riSEA, 91 serieS,

(1959). "Karl Shanin 102. 8, 10. Zapiski, (?) November 1877 (see Marx 1867-1883: op. A Biographical cit (ed), Late Marx, Sayer.

13. Grundrisse,

I, pp.

to Otechestvenniye SC, pp. 291-4. 167. 6, p.

and F. Engels,

The Civil War Publishers,

in the United 1974) p. 84.

States

(New York:

International

NOTES
1. T. Shanin, "Marx and and the Peasant Revolutionary in T. Road (London: Commune", Russia", Shanin Routledge, and H. History (ed.), Late 983). A note on Wada Workshop Marx much and "Marx (12)

Ibid. p. 19. The text goes on to repeat The Poverty of of the indispensability of black analysis Philosophy's slavery to the English cotton industry. in K. Marx of a Report on the Irish Question", 19. "Outline and F. Engels for example Ireland 451. Ireland and

1981. Reprinted

1978)pp. 139, 142, 143.

20. See "Notes Ireland" letters on 21. Capital (Ireland and I, p. 236. p. See

the Irish Question Undelivered pp.

(Moscow, on

the Russian

for An

Speech

reduced

version of the present paper by Derek

is also available

the Irish Question in FI, K. pp.

130-5) and the

in the latter source, "late Marx" 2. K. Marx, "The

together with a biographical Sayer. in India" and "Future

collected

158-171.

British Rule

Results

22.

Ibid.,

further, Monthly

Mohri, vol. formulation absolute Colletti's New

"Marx 31, no. of what

and 11, he

of the British Rule

in India",

Works (hereafter citedasMECW) vol. 12; MECWU,

187-8. 3. Represented Theory Press, Capitalism 4. On Engels and Cultural Issues 1978); in different areas a Defense Warren, Macmillian, J. Mepham B. by e.g. G. (Oxford: Imperialism: 1980). "Natural Ruben see Benton,

inMarx/Engels,

Collected

Underdevelopment", 1979. We might (untypically)

Review,,

pp.

recall here Marx's

referred to as "The Capital see Lucio

general brilliant

law of

Cohen, Marx's University Pioneer of

capitalist 23. On "Bernstein his From

accumulation", and

I, pp. 643-4. essay in International" Left Books, Ramsay, Theory Review Harvie

of History: (London:

Oxford

the 2nd International

the Marxism to Lenin Phillip

of the 2nd (London: Corrigan, York,

Rousseau

and Darwinism, Struggle",

Science (eds),

1972); Derek

on Bolshevism, Sayer, Socialist Macmillian,

and D.

Construction and New

and Marxist Monthly

inMarxist

Philosophy

(Brighton

1979) vol. 2.

(London:

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81
1978) and "Bolshevism and the USSR", New 41. In his Selected Works pp. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 312-327. p. 318. pp. 292, 317, 313. p. 317. pp. 316-7. p. 317. p. 307. The government of of things antithesis with it is when in the name is from Saint become in 3 volumes 1970) vol. 2,

Press,

Left

(Moscow,

ReviewNo. 125, (1981). 24. Thompson suggeststhis inPoverty of Theory,pp. 247f.

Even in Grundrisse there are extensive passages on for

instance law, individuality,subjectivity in bourgeois

civilization Economy", work. Derek 4. 25. Op. 26. H. cit., note 3 above. Draper (ed), Writings Review on the Paris 1971). All Commune subsequent (New in-text But and Capital, going there were well beyond an "anti-Political form of the notwithstanding the Hegelian

important

shifts between Grundrisse elsewhere. See 2nd ed.,

47. Anti-Duhring, Simon. The

on which we have commented (Harvester,

persons/administration danger administered away. 48. MECW 49. MECW 50. The I, p. 168. 5, p. 83.

Sayer, Marx'sMethod

1983) ch.

persons

like things

of States withering

York: Monthly page references

Press,

to this source. and Wishart, 1971) p. 20.

A Contributionto the 27. 1859 Preface to Critique ofPolitical 28. TheManifesto of theCommunistParty (Moscow, 1973)
pp. 7-9. 29. Ibid., pp. 74-5. 10, pp. 285-6n. A towering exception Harvie Ramsay, 1980). for Capital to Kugelmann on said that the volume on "capital isMao Derek Tsetung. Sayer, For 30. MECW Economy (London: Lawrence

image is from The German

Ideology: MECW

5, p. 53. Phoney FI,

51. See above all his 4415Theses", inOn Khrushchev's ... Communism 1964). (Peking: FLP, 52. Compare 53. See e.g. Critique of the Gotha 1919 Lecture 19, p. 488. and Sayer, "How Programme, 346-7, and passim. for instance Lenin's Works 346-7. op. cit. its use in Capital vol.

pp. in his

on the State,

Collected 54. FI, 55. See pp.

31. See note 23 above. See Mao Philip of

See Corrigan

the Law

Corrigan, his

Rules",

(London:

Macmillan, plans

for instance

I (Harmondsworth: is "Control and Aveling on the Part

32. Writing December in general"

Penguin,

1976 translated)

p. 412. The Moore

28, 1862, Marx

edition otherwise used

in this paper Socialist and

of of the rest(withtheexception perhapsof the relations

different state forms to different economic structures of

was "the quintessence",

and "the development

of Society" (p. 298).

56. See Corrigan chs. Lenin et al, 2, 3, Construction and the and Marxist remarkable 1969). from B. Theory, collection 57. The State 58. Ibid., passim, 323-5.

couldbe easilyaccomplished by otherson thebasis society)

thus Martin opus means provided" Lawrence, to discuss after (Letters n.d.). the State: to Dr. Marx Kugelmann, had always London: intended his are the in his

on the Soviet Apparatus pp.

(Moscow,

and Revolution,

the drafts of The Civil War to it, and provide or otherwise

pp. 322-3. This should be read with the passage the lecture on the State cited in note 53 above. to Zasulich, 2nd draft, in P. Blackstock to Europe

the nearest,

1867, he came

59. Letter Hoselitz Allen

and

for evaluating

the continuity

(eds), The Russian

Menace

(London,

themes of the analysis thought of themajor in the 1840s. had developed 33. See E. P. Thompson's reprinted Herr Eugen brilliant English", 34. F. Engels, pp. 35. See "The 306-8. further MECW State as a 5, p. Relation 52; Corrigan, of in The Poverty Duhring's

of the State he of the

"Peculiarities of Theory. Revolution

& Unwin, 1953) p. 223. Cf. 3rd draft pp. 220, 221. Translations from this source amended throughout. 60. Ibid., 3rd draft, p. 221. 61. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., in a 1st draft, p. 225. Marx famous passage p. 751, which power". 1st draft, p. 225. It is perhaps were to point out collectivized political also used the hothouse that (State) in Capital concludes I (Moore image and Aveling force "is pp. 221-2. 2nd draft, p. 224. 62. 63. 64. 65.

in Science 1972) Sayer, in Philip and Marxist

(Anti-Duhring)

(New York:

International

Publishers, Ramsay,

Production",

Corrigan 36. MECW 37. See

(ed), Capitalism, 5, p. 89.

State Formation

translation) 66. Letter Ibid., Ibid.,

Theory (London:Quartet, 1980).

his General Economic History (New 3, p. York: Collier, 67. 68. 167. Cf. pp. 32, on law - a closely

itself an economic to Zasulich,

2nd draft, p. 225. 1st draft, p. 226. apposite in the USSR

1966) p. 249 and Part 38. On 197-9. We

4 passim.

the Jewish question, MECW

that peasants and productive Collectivization it proceeds

eventually

work have discussed Marx's - in detail in and Sayer, "How the related topic Corrigan in B. Fryer, et al (eds), Law, State and Society Law Rules" (London: 39. Critique 40. "The Croom Helm, 1981). in FI, p. 356. MECW 14, pp. 53-6. of the Gotha Programme,

forcibly, from above,

with predictably

disastrous

consequences. has only ever been at all successful when of existing co-operative community, as Marx suggests here, in China. See Jack Gray, "The Two

from an assessment the case

elements

in the peasant

British Constitution",

and as was

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82
in S. R. Schram to first International, formulations on the Paris Politics is in FI, pp. 78-9. Marx of The 138, 155. New

Roads", Part 69. On

CulturalChange inChina (Cambridge,1973)orForMao,

2, Essay property 2. relations as understood by Marx see Poverty

(ed), Authority,

Participation

and

73.

Inaugural Address twice uses Civil War.

FI,

these same Writings Williams,

in the drafts pp.

Commune,

MECW 6, p. 197;"MoralisingCriticism", ofPhilosophy,

Ibid., p. 336; German as "the of others" Ideology, power MECW 5, p. 46, which of the labour of labour and to of sees property power 70. of disposing that "division identical

74. Raymond 75. The 76.

and Letters 327-332.

Left Books, 1979)p. 307.

relevant article pp. See Marx(s letter to Kugelmann "Lassalle only Association.

(London:

of February imitated

23,

1865 (in of

and asserts are, after all,

FI,

pp.

148-153)

the gentleman he

private property See Marx's Kugelmann May

expressions." 6, 1871, and Varlin

the National 'reaction' hands Those with

But while

they invoked Prussian class, shook in so the proletariat. the interests ... while the be

letters to Liebknecht of April 12, 1871,

of April to Frankel

in the interests of the middle Bismarck in the interests of justified is accustomed his nose as were more

13, 1871, to Beesly the Paris

of June 12, 1871, and to Domela Commune. -

Nieuwenhuis of February 22, 1881, all in Draper (ed),

Writings On 71. 72. In FI, 169. "Russian p. pp. 73-81. policy against Turkey

gentlemen

than Lassalle,

far as the bourgeois lying immediately working class,

to regard 'reality' of

before

in the very nature (p. 150).

things, must

Chartism".

MECW

12,

honestly

'revolutionary'

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