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RESULTS and
PROSPECTSTheoretical Journal of the Revolutionary Socialist Organization
Theoretical sloppiness always takes cruel vengeance in revolutionary politics. - Leon Trotsky
Issue No.2/2012
Price. 2.00
www.revolutionarysocialism.blogspot.com
Special Bodies of
Armed MenThe Development of the Theory
of the State of Marx and Engels
Also inside:- Unemployment in Britain- Theses on Revolutionary Interven-tions in Workplaces and Trade Unions
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Results and Prospects No. 2 / 20122
Introduction
Contents
Unemployment in Britain; An Attempt at an Explanation
The Development of the Theory of the State by Marx and Engels
Preface
Main
Afterword
Theses on Revolutionary Interventions in Workplaces and Trade Unions
Who we are
p. 3
p. 14
p. 14
p. 16
p. 23
p. 27
p. 31
Introduction
Welcome to the second is-sue of our theoretical Jour-nal Results and Prospects. The
Revolutionary Socialist Organiza-
tion has been around in Britain for
more than half a year now. And an
important 6 months it has been! On
November the 30th Britain saw the
largest strike action since the gen-
eral strike in 1926. While millions
of workers on the street showedtheir determination to ght, the Un-
ion bureaucracy sold out quickly
afterwards for more than moderate
concessions. Further strike action
has constantly been delayed. This
shows that the union bureaucracy
is clearly unwilling to take on the
ght.
Meanwhile, encouraged by the in-activity of the workers movement,
the capitalists and their Tory gov-
ernment continue their onslaught
of public welfare. Without much
of an uproar they have pretty much
privatized the NHS, continuing the
work of the previous capitalist la-
bour government opening up the
NHS for business. These attacks
on working peoples livelihood
derstand the state throughout their
work, and how it was only Leninwho was able to fully systemise
their ndings. This is accompaniedby a new introduction by Michael
Bonvalot, written for the re-pub-
lication in German. In the current
protest movements it seems as if
things were turned on their head,
and the Tories were the ones ght-
ing the state whilst the left cameout to defend it. Only by going
back to Marx and Engels can we
understand that the workers have
no stake in the capitalists society
and its state.
The second article by James Ste-
vens looks at the historic develop-
ment of unemployment and how
it intrinsically linked to the devel-opment of capitalism. As an addi-
tion to those texts, we have alsopublished the RSOs theses on
nterventions in Trade Unions andWorkplaces, an important pro-
grammatic document of our organi-
sation, putting forward our political
understanding of approaching the
working class in workplaces and
trade unions.
will unquestionably go on until
the capitalists are shown a proper
ght back. Like in the school play-
ground, we have to stand up to thebullies and not hand them our lunch
money willingly.
It is evident that neither the union
bureaucrats nor the labour party
will stand up for the workers. In
fact, this is the crux of the issuewe have to stand up for ourselves.
Today however, the working class
lacks a united voice and a coherent
set of ideas to overcome the mis-
ery forced upon it by the capital-
ists. What is necessary is to once
again nd the way to the ideas ofrevolutionary socialism, the only
ideas that are truly able to change
the world. Results and Prospectstries to contribute to the clarica-
tion of ideas in the working class
and in the political left.
In this issue we publish for the
rst time our pamphlet The de-
velopment of the theory of the state
by Marx and Engels in English. In
it, Christina Stojanovic explains
how Marx and Engels came to un-
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Britain
The misery that unemploymentwreaks cannot be underestimated.For the working class to be unemployedin Britain today means to be living in
extreme poverty. It means having to
endure the morale-sapping routine of
searching through a list of potential,menial jobs, none of which would payenough to raise one completely out of
poverty. It means spending hours of
time working to produce a CV, that isyour personal advert, and lling it withbuzz words devoid of any meaning.
One has to play the game of picking
the right buzz word for each differentjob. If the person reading the CV anddeciding who gets the job doesnt seeany of these magic buzz words on the
CV then they automatically consign itto the unwanted pile. It is a pile that
towers over the prospective candi-
date pile in height. Being unemployed
means having to endure this process
day after day, spending life applyingfor jobs only to be rejected time aftertime, making one question ones ownworth and usefulness. It means having
to write down each job one has ap-plied for on a grey piece of recycled
paper, because thats obviously all oneis worth, to show to the job advisor
so as not to get barred from receiv-
ing the paltry 53 a week job seek-
ers allowance, or the dole as it usedto be known. On the way home from
the job centre thoughts turn into fears.Fears about how youre ever going to
make that next rent payment; that next
gas bill payment; how youre going to
eat, whether youll ever be able to af-ford a pair of shoes that arent falling
apart; whether youll ever have enough
money to go out and meet a friend for a
pint. It means being alive but it doesnt
mean living. It means surviving, just,
ever in insecurity, ever unable to trulyenjoy oneself, ever just one mean jobsadvisor away from absolute destitution
and starvation.
The reality of the situation
in 2012
According to the latest gures fromthe Ofce of National Statistics 2.67million people in the United Kingdomare unemployed. The gures, releasedin March, reveal that 8.4% of the
population able to work and actively
seeking work are unable to nd work.Amongst this number are 1.04 million
unemployed 16-24 year olds, meaning
that 22.5% of Britains 16-24 year oldsare currently out of work. This is the
highest rate of unemployment in Brit-ain since 1994.
The reason for the current state of
affairs, in which one in ve of Brit-ains young workers do not have jobs,has been the subject of much debateamongst the bourgeois media. Some
blame an inux of immigrant workerstaking the jobs that would be done byBritish workers. Some blame China forstealing British jobs as the factories of
the orient pump out goods that wereformally made here. Some even go so
far to say that the reason that 2.67 mil-
lion people are unemployed is because
these 2.67 million people are simply
lazy, feckless, work-shy scroungerswho refuse to get up in the morning to
go to work. They cry that the problem
is a generation of people who have de-
veloped a sense of entitlement and lack
the industrious work ethic that formal-
ly made Britain great.
There is some truth in the statement
that jobs that might formally have beentaken by British born workers are be-
ing taken by workers born abroad. It
Unemployment in Britain
An Attempt at an Explanation
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survive. Everyone was employed for
the benet of the society, a state knownas primitive communism.
As mankind developed farming tech-
niques it was able to create a surplus of
food so now not every individual in the
society was needed to dedicate their
work to collecting the necessities of
life. Instead a class arose that admin-
istered society, originally in an attemptto maximize efciency, but whichgradually developed into a ruling class
with interests separate to those of the
people who laboured to produce the
means of subsistence.
The slave mode of production de-
veloped whereby civilizations would
enslave prisoners of war and their
offspring. Society was broadly divid-
ed into two classes, slaves and slaveowners. The slaves would perform
the labour that was necessary for the
development of society and the slave
owners would live off the surplus the
slaves created. If a slave refused to
work they could be sold, whipped orexecuted as they were the property of
the slave owner. If a free person was so
destitute they could not eat they might
be enslaved and forced to perform la-
bour in return for the necessities of life.
Because the slave owners saw theirslaves as property they had to look
after them, feed them, cloth them andprovide them with shelter. Not making
use the labour of the slaves was pure
folly as that would automatically mean
to lose ones investments.
Employment in the Feudal
Mode of Production
The slave mode of production devel-
oped into the feudal mode of produc-
tion whereby the labouring class in
society was the peasantry who owned
their own small plots of land that they
could cultivate themselves. They were
necessities of life, which they need forsurvival. Workers are thus forced to
work for somebody else who will pay
them money with which they purchase
the necessities of life. If the individual
worker can not nd another individualcapitalist willing to employ him, thenthe worker is unemployed.
Furthermore to be unemployed does
not imply that the person does not do
anything at all, for work is meant in itsmodern usage, meaning paid employ-ment. The specialization of work (and
the meaning of work) to paid employ-
ment is the result of the development
of capitalist productive relations. To
be in work or out of work is to be in a
denite relationship with another class,which has control over the means of
production. It is only in this sense that
a woman running a house and bringingup children can be said to be not work-
ing. In addition unemployment statis-
tics include only those people who are
actively seeking work. The gures dis-guise those people who are not work-
ing but who have given up all hope of
ever nding a job due to demoralisa-tion. How many people fall into this
categoryis hard to determine but their
sufferings are even worse than that of
those who have not yet given up hope
of nding a job.
To understand the reasons for unem-
ployment it is necessary to look at his-
tory and learn where it stems from.
A History of Unemployment
In the beginning there was no money.
People lived in hunter gatherer groups
living off the land, which was ownedby the tribe collectively or by no one,subsisting as best they could. Every-
one knew how to build a re or makea shelter and everyone in the society
participated in the gathering of the ne-
cessities of life that the tribe needed to
is also true that there has been in the
last decades a wholesale destruction of
Britains once mighty manufacturing
industry and a huge expansion in the
Chinese manufacturing industry. Andit is also true that workers in Britain
enjoy better working conditions andrates of pay than their Chinese coun-terparts whose work ethic bourgeois
commentators hold in such high es-
teem. These factors though, whilst partof the picture, do not by themselvesexplain the rise in unemployment to its
current rate.
The cause of the rise in unemploy-
ment is really rather simpler to explain.
When the global capitalist economy is
in recession unemployment generally
increases. When the global capitalist
economy is booming unemployment
generally decreases. The global capi-talist economy is currently suffering
from the effects of the worst recession
since the great depression of the 1930s
and the 2.67 million people in Britain
unable to nd work are a consequenceof this.
Unemployment is an inherent by-product of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction. Unemployment is specic toa mode of production in which the pro-
ducers are separated from the means ofproduction and have to sell their labour
according to the needs of the capital-
ists. The individual is not the personal
property of another person as in the
slave mode of production nor are they
bound by feudal ties to perform labour
for their feudal lord. The individual is
never forced to perform labour. The
compulsion to sell ones labour to an-
other is provided not by the whip but
by the individuals need to earn money
to eat or else face destitution and star-
vation. The individual will face desti-
tution because they own no means of
production themselves. They do not
own the tools they need to produce the
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however tied by feudal law to spend
a part of their time labouring for their
feudal lord who owned much big-
ger tracts of land. If they refused the
knight or lord would evoke the letter of
the law and use violence to punish the
peasant for refusing to fulll their du-ties to him. These peasants though still
did not work for a wage, they workedfor the lord because they were legally
bound to and they subsisted by tilling
their own plots of land. They produced
the means of subsistence on their own
land. This system was the predominant
one in England until the middle of the
14th century.
The seeds of the capitalist mode of
production, and the rst examples ofunemployment, can be found in the feu-dal mode of production. Every mode of
production places certain limits on theextent to which mankind can expand
its productive capacities, the feudalmode of production reached this limit
in England as early as the 13th century,due to the natural limits of the land.
Particularly successful peasants had
discovered that they could sell some
of the surplus of their own production
at markets and with the money they
received in exchange could buy other
things they needed. Some of them dis-
covered the benets of long distancetrade and market towns emerged wherepeople would come from afar to trade
in goods. These towns were largely
free from the grips of feudal lords ex-
torting the population as they did in the
villages of the countryside. Craftsmenbecame concentrated in the towns and
they would produce goods not for their
own consumption but specically forthe purpose of exchange. The success-
ful craftsmen amongst them who pos-
sessed extra capital would hire other
people to work for them producing
goods and pay them with money. The
embryo of what was to become the
capitalist class had developed.
At the same time of this development
in the towns, a great change occurredin the countryside. Since the early
13th century a process of commuta-
tion had been taking place whereby a
feudal lord commuted the labour ser-
vice owed to them by their serfs in
exchange for a payment of money, orrent. This development was in the in-
terest of both parties as the lords found
wage labour to be more efcient andthe former serfs found it a less harsh
system. Following the Black Death in
the middle of the 14th century though
between a third and a half of Englands
population died, creating a great short-age of labour. Fields were left unsown,crops untendered and prices doubled
within a year. The peasants demanded
higher wages and, so great was themortality during the plague, that the
peasant labourers were able to dictatetheir own terms to the lord and in most
cases received a rise in real wages.
The parliament consisting almost en-
tirely of landowners passed the statute
of labourers in 1350 in an attempt to
check their labour costs, ordering thatthe labourers work for the lower wages
they received before the plague. The
law made it an offence for anybody
able in person to be idle, on punish-
ment of being committed to gaol (pris-on) and gaol was also the punishment
for anyone refusing to work for the
lower wages. The peasant labourers
and serfs however were able to circum-
vent the law by playing the landlords
off against one another. If one did not
grant them their wage demands then
they would run the low risk of being
caught as a fugitive and simply go and
sell their labour to a lord who would.
The historian A.L. Morton writes that,the old village community in which
families had lived generation after
generation upon the same land began
to break up and a migratory class of la-
bourers and peasants moving from one
job and holding to the next arose.
The feudal lords reaction to this de-
velopment was to enclose their arable
land for use in sheep farming which
required far less labour and was much
more protable due to the boomingtrade in wool. This enclosure led to
many evictions of residents and in-
creased the number of labourers who
had no land of their own, roaming thecountry and seeking work. The lords
also introduced a new kind of land
tenure, the stock and land lease. In thissystem a tenant farmer would take a
lease on a plot of land for a number of
years and the lord would provide the
tenant with the seed, cattle and imple-ments needed for farming. In return the
lord would receive a rent calculated to
cover both the value of the land and
the cost of the stock and at the endof the lease the stock would have to
be returned in good order. At rst theholdings rented would have been small
but in time many of them grew and the
tenants themselves began to employ
labourers.
The attempts by the lords to roll back
the gains of the peasants and labourers
provoked anger and led to the Peasants
Revolt in 1381. The rebellion was put
down but there was no complete returnto the pre-black death conditions. After
the revolt Villein unions continued toexert pressure for higher wages and for
the commutation of services of peas-
ants still bound by feudal ties. Peasant
agriculture began to replace the open
eld system and though enclosures forsheep farming continued to cause local
and temporary hardships it wasnt until
around 1500, when the population hadreturned nearly to pre-black death lev-
els, that it began to drive the peasantsoff the land on a large scale.
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majority of yeoman farmers and it wasonly large landowners who possessed
sufcient capital to fund changes intechnique. Consequently, the techni-cal revolution led to, and developedalongside of, a social revolution thatchanged the whole structure of rural
England.
Whilst the enclosures of earlier times
had been made with the object of turn-ing arable land into land for sheep
pasture those of the 18th century trans-formed the communally cultivated
open elds into large, compact farmson which the new and more scienticmixed farming could be more prot-ably carried out. In addition, muchcommon land not then under plough,land on which the villagers had certain
long standing customary rights of pas-
turage or wood or turf cutting, as wellas other land which had been merely
waste was enclosed. It has been cal-
culated that between 1740 and 1788the number of separate farms declined
by over 40,000. From 1717 to 1727Parliament passed 15 enclosure acts,from 1728 to 1760 it passed 226, from1761 to 1796, 1,482 whilst from 1797to 1820, the period of the NapoleonicWars, there were 1,727 passed. In allover four million acres were enclosed
under these acts. As soon as Parliamenthad passed an act of enclosure the
business of redistributing the land was
conducted by a powerful commission
under the inuence of wealthy land-owners so that re-allotment amounted
practically to conscation of smallerlandowners plots. The sums received
under the conditions were usually too
small to be employed successfully in
any other business even if the farmer
had the know how to make good use
of them. The class of cottagers, whohad lived in the past by a combina-
tion of domestic industry, the keepingof a few beasts or some poultry or ir-
regular work for wages now found it-
In 1572 unlicensed beggars were to be
ogged and branded unless someonewas willing to employ them. For a sec-
ond offence they were to be executed
unless someone would take them into
service, for a third offence they wereto be executed anyway. Toward the end
of the century however the industries
of the expanding towns had absorbed
a large part of the unemployed and
the increased demand for food in the
towns meant arable farming became
more protable and enclosure forsheep farming was checked. The farms
though were now no longer tilled by
peasants who owned their plots but
were, by and large, large scale farmswhich would become capitalist farms.
With the decline in the number of un-
employed came legislation to deal with
those people who were still unable to
nd work. The Poor Law of 1601 in-cluded arrangements for setting the
poor to work upon a convenient stock
of ax, hemp, wool thread, iron andother necessary ware and stuff rmlyestablishing the principle that if relief
were to be given to the poor it was to
be given only in the most humiliating
and degrading circumstances depriv-
ing the unemployed person of any dig-
nity. From this act developed the whole
system of Poor Rate, Workhouse and
settlement by parish that lasted untilthe shock of the industrial revolution.
The 18th century saw major im-provements in both agricultural and
industrial technique which had huge
implications for the working lives
of the majority of people. Improvedcrop rotation methods imported from
the Netherlands meant farms could
yield far more food than before and
improved breeding methods meant
that the amount of meat that could
be acquiesced from livestock also in-
creased. The changes though were en-
tirely incompatible with the primitive
open eld method still practiced by the
In the 16th century the preconditions
for the capitalist society developed.
The peasantry had to be atomized, bro-ken up into solitary defenceless units
before they could be reintegrated into
a mass of wage labourers taking part
in capitalist production. This was done
through the acceleration of the process
of enclosure which combined with the
steep rise in population meant a gener-
al dispossession of the peasantry from
their land. Henry VIIIs sale of themonasteries to the big landlords of the
new type also added to the ranks of the
landless and property-less as these men
exploited the former church estates to
the utmost. England was thus in the
early part of the 16th century faced
with the problem of a huge army of
unemployed for whom no work could
be found. Their descendants eventu-
ally found work in the growing clothindustry or the commercial enterprises
of the towns but the process was slow.
The government attempted to remedy
the problem of the unemployed by
passing acts limiting the expansion of
enclosure but the laws were ignored by
the local Justices of the Peace as these
were the same men who were prot-ing from enclosure. What the nascent
capitalism required, consciously orotherwise, was not the plough in the
hands of the owners but, a degradedand servile condition of the mass of thepeople, the transformation of them intomercenaries, and of their means of la-
bour into capital!
A far more effective remedy in the
eyes of the government was the series
of penal laws passed over the century
handing out draconian punishments
for the offence of being unemployed.
In 1536 it was decreed that sturdy
vagabonds should have their ears cut
off, and death was the penalty for athird offence. In 1547 anyone who re-
fused to work was condemned to be
the slave of whoever denounced him.
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self thrown back entirely on the last of
these resources. The enclosing of the
elds in the 18th century led to massimpoverishment of the working popu-
lation there and had three results with
consequences that went far beyond the
sphere of agriculture.
The consequences of the Agricultural
revolution were:
- Firstly it increased the productiv-
ity of the land and so made possible
the feeding of the great industrial
populations of the new towns.
- Second it created a reserve army
of wage earners, now free com-pletely from any connection with
the soil, men without ties or placeor property. It provided a force of
free labourers over the same periodthat the bourgeoisie had accumu-
lated mass amounts of capital and
came at a time when the large scale
production of commodities was at
last possible with the advent of the
industrial revolution.
- Thirdly, it created a home marketfor manufactured goods. The sub-
sistence farmer could make what
he needed domestically so might
consume a great deal but buy verylittle. The labourer that he had now
become was usually compelled to
consume a great deal less but eve-
rything he consumed had to be
bought on the market.
The Era of Capitalism
The Industrial Revolution in Britain
beginning in the latter part of the 18thcentury created what Marx referred
to as the proletariat. People had been
driven off of the soil due to enclosure
and the cottage industries were driven
out of business as the bigger mills were
able to produce commodities much
cheaper with their superior techniques.
Formerly insignicant hamlets, suchas Manchester, became great industrialcities over the course of half a centu-
ry as people migrated en mass to the
new towns hoping to eek out a living.
The capitalists owning not only the
raw materials but also the machinery
needed for production and the building
where the goods were produced, need-ed a great number of labourers to work
in their new industries and offered to
pay these people if theyd perform la-
bour for them.
The people of the countryside, in des-peration, ocked in greater and greaternumber each year to where there was
work. Adding to the numbers of this
mass were Irish men and women who
had been reduced to near starvation
by English rule and immigrated to theemerging cities of England. As the
populations of the towns swelled the
number of workers seeking jobs out-grew the number of jobs the capital-ists were offering. The workers were
competing against one another for
the same jobs. The capitalists realisedthis and used it to their advantage.
They would offer worse terms for the
same job to the workers. The capital-ist would say to the worker take this
job and work longer hours for less paythan you were before. If the workerrefused these worsened terms the capi-
talist would say, no matter, I will ndsome other worker who will take the
job, and inevitably some poor desper-ate soul would accept the job on theworse terms. The original worker who
refused the job would now, with noproperty or source of income, be un-employed. With no income he would
be facing starvation so he could either
turn to criminal activity, with all the
danger that this entails, or, far more of-ten, would have to accept another jobon whatever terrible terms the capi-
talist was now offering. This system
meant misery for the worker whether
employed or unemployed and huge
prots for the capitalists who wouldcheapen labour as far as the working
class would let them without ghtingback.
However there were never enough
jobs for everyone, even in the goodtimes, but something that plagues thecapitalist mode of production that
hadnt affected previous modes is pe-
riodical crises. There comes a point
where the produce of the capitalists
factories cannot be sold anymore be-
cause those with money already have
the commodities they need and those
on low wages cannot afford to purchase
the things they produce. Unable to sellall their stock at a prot the capitalistsstop or limit production of commodi-
ties until they can sell the stock alreadyproduced. The problem in capitalist
crisis is not that there is not enough to
go around but the opposite, that thereis too much to go around that can not
be sold at a ludicrous enough price to
please the capitalist. During these peri-
ods of recession many more people are
thrown out of work.
This happened after the end of the
Napoleonic wars as the British gov-
ernment, no longer at war, no longerneeded to purchase vast amounts ofsupplies for the military. The manu-
facturers hoped that the loss of the
military contracts would be alleviated
by increased demand from a Europe
no longer under blockade but Europe
had been so devastated by war that it
was nancially unable to provide thedemand the British manufacturers
needed. As a result thousands of work-
ers found themselves without jobs. InShropshire 24 out of 34 blast furnaces
went out of production and thousands
of iron workers and colliers were
thrown out of work. There was a reviv-
al of industry beginning in 1820 due to
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the poverty stricken people of East
London that a mass movement of theunemployed emerged during the win-
ter of 1886/1887. The Social Demo-cratic Federation and the Socialist
League made attempts at organizingthis mass movement of the unem-
ployed and called a demonstration in
Trafalgar Square for 13th November
1887. The demonstration though wasattacked by the police who killed three
protestors and injured hundreds moreafter which the mass movement of the
unemployed quietly evaporated as the
destitute reverted to a state of general
disheartenment.
The plight of workers unlucky enough
to be unemployed only worsened in the
rst years of the 20th century. The situ-ation was worsened by the steep rise
in prices that occurred between 1895and 1914 with the purchasing power of
20 shillings in the hands of a working
class housewife diminishing to 14 shil-
lings 7d over that period. The increas-
ing militancy of the working class and
the rise of the inuence of the labourparty, as well as the decreasing physi-cal health of the working class causing
severe troubles for the army to nd trecruits, forced the liberal governmentin 1911 to pass the National Insurance
Act which provided a small amountof insurance to workers who often
found themselves unemployed due to
the seasonal nature of their work, suchas those in the shipbuilding industry.
The act though made no provision for
dependants and unemployment still
equaled destitution.
The imperialist world war of 1914-
1918 briey alleviated the problem ofunemployment as men were drafted ei-
ther into the factories to make weapons
or into the army to be slaughtered onthe elds of France. Afterwards how-ever, the problem of unemploymenttook on new proportions. The U.S.A
Engels describes the lot of the poor
man, cast into the whirlpool, he muststruggle through as well as he can. If
he is so happy as to nd work, i.e. ifthe bourgeoisie does him a favour to
enrich itself by means of him, wagesawait him which scarcely sufce tokeep body and soul together; if he can
get no work he may steal, if he is notafraid of the police, or starve, in whichcase the police will take care that he
does so in a quiet and inoffensive man-
ner. Engels then writes that during his
residency in England of less than two
years he knew of 20 to 30 people who
had died of simple starvation in the
most revolting circumstances.
The period from 1845 to 1875 was theGolden Age of the Manufacturers, atime when Britain was the Workshop
of the World. Capitalists were prot-ing immensely from Britains virtual
monopoly over world trade enforced
by the powerful Royal Navy. They
needed so many workers in their facto-
ries that unemployment was relatively
low apart from that caused by the cot-
ton famine during the American CivilWar when 60% of Lancashire Textileworkers became unemployed. The
crisis of 1875 however was more pro-found than those that had preceded it
and was followed by others in 1880and 1884. The recovery of British in-dustry was much slower after each cri-
sis and whilst it still continued to pro-
gress it was at a much slower rate. The
reason for this slowing of industrial ex-
pansion was that the British manufac-
turing monopoly was being broken by
the rapidly industrialising nations Ger-
many and America. The effects of this
crisis were felt especially hard in the
East End of London which was popu-lated by hundreds of thousands of un-
employed, destitute dockers, unskilledand casual workers who had witnessed
the shipbuilding industries migration
to Clyde in the 1860s. It was amongst
Britain holding a monopoly on indus-
try at the time but the cycle of boom
and bust would now be the one which
dictated to millions of workers whether
they would be able to keep their heads
just above the poverty line or wheth-er theyd be condemned to suffer the
worst consequences of unemployment.
By 1830 Britain was again sufferinga slump in trade. Factories were clos-
ing down, unemployment increasedrapidly and the wages of those still
employed fell. This crises was again
followed by a period of boom in trade
which was again followed by a crisis
of overproduction. In 1834 the govern-ment revised the poor law in an attempt
to deal with the problem of unemploy-
ment as the parish relief system was
judged to be costing the bourgeoisie far
too much money. The principle of thenew system was simple: every person
in need of relief must receive it inside
of a workhouse. For the new system to
work it was necessary that the condi-
tion of the pauper should be less eli-
gible, than that of the least prosperousworkers outside. At a time when mil-
lions were on the verge of starvation,this objective could only be achieved
by making the workhouse the home of
every imaginable form of meanness
and cruelty. Families were broken up,food was poor and scanty and the tasksimposed were degrading and senseless,oakum picking and stone breaking be-
ing amongst the most common.
The misery that this system was
wreaking by the middle of the nine-
teenth century is documented superb-
ly in numerous literary works, suchas those of Charles Dickens, whichsympathized with the plight of the op-
pressed. It is a work though by one of
the founders of Marxism, FriedrichEngels that best describes the horrors
of the capitalist system. In The Condi-tion of the Working Class in England
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the rate of prot to decline howeveris an inviolable law of capitalism and
from 1973 onwards the global econo-
my began to suffer more pronounced
recessions. In 1971 unemployment
rose above 1 million for the rst timesince the thirties and by the end of the
decade numerous oil crises, economicstagnation and ination had contrib-uted to 1,500,000 people being out ofwork, a rate of 5%.
The election of Margaret Thatchers
Conservative government in 1979marked the end of the post war consen-
sus and the rejection of the policy offull employment. The neo-liberal poli-
cies implemented by Thatchers gov-
ernment, the privatizing of previouslystate owned industries, tax cuts for therich, deregulation of the nancial sec-
tor and a war on the trade unions whichled to spiraling unemployment, werean unmasked expression of the capital-
ists desires,. By July 1982 3 millionpeople were unemployed in Britain
for the rst time in fty years and onceagain whole communities, especiallyin the north of England were devastat-
ed. The ofcial number of unemployedfell briey to 1.6 million after 1986 butin 1990 recession hit again, and againthere were 3 million people out of
work. The economy recovered as newspheres for investment were opened up
in the formerly soviet states in Eastern
Europe and Russia and unemployment
fell so that when the Labour Govern-ment came to power in 1997 it was at a
rate of 8%. New Labour continued onwith roughly the same economic poli-
cies of the conservatives promoting a
deregulated nancial sector, de-indus-trialization and a general deskilling of
the working class. It was less the result
of these economic policies and more
the long economic boom that capital-ism enjoyed which allowed the unem-
ployment rate to fall to around 5.5% byJuly 2005.
Britain only began to crawl out of the
depths of depression once the govern-
ment began rearming in preparation for
World War Two. The worst poverty was
still being endured by people in indus-
trial communities though until the war
broke out in 1939 and the government
enlisted every hand in its efforts to win
yet another imperialist war. During the
war the victory of British imperialism
was at times so threatened though that
the state had to take control of indus-
try and instill a spirit in the workers of
self sacrice to achieve greater things.The workers bought into this but once
the war had been won they realised
the greater things they had been ght-ing for were different from those the
capitalists had envisaged. The workers
refused to regress to the poverty they
had endured in the 1930s and any gov-
ernment attempt to make them do sowould probably had resulted in revo-
lution. Thus the post war consensus
was born. For the next thirty years all
parties in government agreed on some
principles for how the state should be
run. One was the maintenance of a
welfare state with a National Health
Service, decent pensions, unemploy-ment benets etc. Another was thestriving to maintain full employment,a policy which was largely successful
with the average unemployment ratebetween 1945 and 1973 being 1.3% asthe table shows.
The low unemployment was the re-
sult of the governments Keynesianeconomic policy where it would spend
money to stimulate the economy and
put certain limits on the freedom of
nance capitalism to do whatever itwanted. The government in the post
war decades beneted from the eco-nomic boom, this boom was the result
of new spheres for prot making beingopened up by the immense destruc-
tion of capital that had occurred dur-
ing World War Two. The tendency of
had come out of World War One as the
worlds industrial powerhouse whilst
Britain, burdened by the immense costof the war, had been knocked off her
perch as the worlds undisputed su-
perpower. Struggling to compete with
the superior technique of foreign com-
petitors British industry entered into
the terminal decline it is still suffering
from today. Unemployment during the1920s hovered at between 10% and12%, about one million people, and thedecade was one of great class strug-
gle, climaxing with the general strikeof 1926. The lot of the working class
only worsened as the great depression
followed the Wall Street crash in 1929.
By the end of 1930 unemployment had
hit 2.5 million (20%) and by the end of1931 had reached 3 million. In some
of the industrial towns and villages of
north east England the unemploymentrate was 70% and entire communitiesqueuing for soup became a norm.
It was during these years that the dole,or Job Seekers Allowance as it is now
called was developed. In August 1931,the 1911 National Insurance scheme
was replaced by a fully government-
funded unemployment benet system.This system, for the rst time, paid outaccording to need rather than the level
of contributions a person had madewhilst employed. This unemployment
benet was subject to a strict meanstest, and anyone applying for unem-
ployment pay had to have an inspec-
tion by a government ofcial to makesure that they had no hidden earnings
or savings, undisclosed source(s) ofincome or other means of support. For
many poor people, this was a humiliat-ing experience and was much resent-
ed and anyone who has had to jumpthrough the innumerable hoops put in
front of them by the Job Centre PLCtoday would attest to.
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ceases but they will be needed by the
capitalists when they expand again.
Marx point out that, the whole formof the movement of modern industry
depends, therefore upon the constanttransformation of a part of the labour-
ing population into unemployed or half
employed hands.
As a side the half employed hands
Marx refers to are a part of the popu-
lation we understand today as people
working part time or people in vul-
nerable employment. According to
the latest Ofce of National Statis-tics gures in March 2012 there were6,600,000 half employed hands inBritain. Most of these part time work-
ers are only working part time because
they are unable to nd full time work.The trend in the labour market back to-
wards casual work, with the increasingdominance of employment and temp-
ing agencies, is as worrying as the risein actual unemployment. There are
currently 1.5.million temporary work-
ers in Britain who can be hired and
red at an hours notice, be paid lessfor doing the same job and lack rightssuch as paid holidays and redundancy
pay. All these workers provide compe-
tition for workers in full time jobs andcontribute to the willingness of those
workers to be further exploited. Thegovernment encouraged trend of work-
ers in part time employment however
is an issue that requires an article all
to itself. We must now though go back
to the 19th century to learn more from
Marx.
As the technology used in the fac-
tories became more sophisticated,capitalists no longer needed highly
skilled, better paid labour as unskilledpoorly paid labour could perform the
menial tasks required in production.The capitalist could therefore buy
more individual labour with the same
outlay of capital. This not only meant
Unemployment, far from nat-
ural
This history of unemployment dem-
onstrates that for a human being to be
unemployed is not something natural
in the slightest. Unemployment is aconcept that only exists when a human
being is separated from the means of
production. The ruling class rst hadto separate people from the soil before
they would be willing to be exploited
in the capitalistic manner, that is, fora wage. It is a condition of existence
that has been engineered for the benetof the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Ithas been shown above, that the devel-opment of unemployment was insepa-
rably linked to the development of the
modern proletariat. The rst to fullygrasp the interrelation, the dialectics of
this process, was Karl Marx, especiallyin his major work, Capital.
Unemployment explained by
Marx
Karl Marx explains unemploymentin Capital as the concept of relativesurplus population. In chapter 25, sec-tion 3 of the rst volume he writes,A surplus labouring population is a
necessary product of accumulation
or of the development of wealth on acapitalist basis, this surplus-populationbecomes, conversely, the lever of capi-talistic accumulation, nay, a conditionof existence of the capitalist mode of
production. It forms a disposable in-
dustrial reserve army, that belongs tocapital quite as absolutely as if the
latter had bred it at its own cost. He
means that as the capitalist mode of
production expands in ts and starts,the ts being recessions, the starts be-ing booms, capitalism needs a mass ofunemployed labourers ready to be em-
ployed in industry during the periods
of expansion. They are then thrown
out of work again when expansion
Gordon Brown, then Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, talked about the endof boom and bust. He foolishly im-
agined that he had found a way to
circumvent one of the inherent laws
of capitalism which Marx pointed out
in the 19th century. If Gordon Brown
had tried to understand the economic
system he was supposed to be regu-
lating then he would have understood
that, in capitalism, periodic crises areinevitable and that there is a tendency
for each of these crisis to be worst than
the last. The Great Depression of the
1930s was the worst recession in capi-
talisms history up to that point and
economic recovery was only ensured
through the massive destruction of
capital as a result of World War Two.
The current economic crisis which be-
gan in 2007 with the collapse of the
sub-prime mortgage market, continuedwith the credit crunch, the collapse ofLehmann brothers and the bailing outof the banks is today inicting suffer-ing upon the working class in the age
of austerity.
In the age of austerity it has been the
policy of government to make enor-
mous cuts to funding for public ser-
vices. In Britain this is leading to the
loss of 710,000 public sector jobs. The
governments justication for mak-ing hundreds of thousands of peopleunemployed is that reduced govern-
ment spending will open up opportu-
nities for private sector companies to
expand and create jobs. So far thoughthis creation of jobs in the private sec-tor had been largely non existent and
in actuality many large private sector
employers have shed jobs during therecession as they look to squeeze more
value out of each worker rather than
hire in greater numbers. The result, as
mentioned already, is that as of March2012 2.67million people in the U.K.are unemployed, a rate of 8.4%.
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the displacement of skilled labour by
unskilled but also meant the displace-
ment of adult labour by child labour.
It always benets the capitalists tosqueeze more labour out of one worker
than hire two so they do their level best
to overwork their employees. But, theoverwork of the employed part of the
working class swells the ranks of the
reserve, whilst conversely the greaterpressure that the latter by its competi-
tion exerts on the former, forces theseto submit to over-work and to subju-gation under the dictates of capital.
The condemnation of one part of the
working class to enforced idleness by
the overwork of the other part, and theconverse, becomes a means of enrich-ing the individual capitalists.
The amount an employer is willing
to pay in wages is dependant on thenumber of people seeking jobs. Marxwrites, taking them as a whole, thegeneral movements of wages are ex-
clusively regulated by the expansion
and contraction of the industrial re-
serve army, and these again correspondto the periodic changes of the industri-
al cycle. They are, therefore not deter-mined by the variations of the absolute
number of the working population, butby the varying proportions in which
the working class is divided into ac-tive and reserve army, by the increaseor diminution in the relative amount of
the surplus-population, by the extent towhich it is now absorbed now set free.
We can observe this law in motion to-
day by comparing different historical
periods. During the post war consensus
period when there was almost full em-
ployment the smaller industrial reserve
army meant that workers in employ-
ment could demand higher wages, andreceived them as the industrial reserve
army (unemployed persons) was rela-tively small. Today as there is a large
industrial reserve army employers are
able to keep wages low. In local gov-
ernment the practice had been to give
workers an ultimatum of signing a new
contract on a lower wage or lose their
jobs. Workers, in the knowledge thatthere are millions of people out there
willing to take their job for the lowerwages, sign the contracts consentingto lower wages and over work. Marx
points out that in this manner the sup-
ply of labour, to a certain extent, be-comes independent of the supply of
labourers.
The Problem and the Solu-
tion
It is obvious to see that in capitalism
keeping a section of the population
unemployed benets the capitalists asit allows them to more easily exploit
the worker. It is in their interest to
keep unemployment relatively high.Conversely the worker is forced to toilharder and for a lesser wage due to the
threat from the industrial reserve army.
It is against their interests to have high
unemployment. It is in the workers
interest to have no one unemployed
but this can not be achieved within the
connes of the capitalist mode of pro-duction. The experience of low unem-
ployment after the Second World War
was unique in that it was only possible
for the capitalists to grant the workerstheir demands due to the high protsthey were able to reap from post war
reconstruction. Excluding another, in-evitably even more destructive world
war such concessions will not be made
again and unemployment in the mil-
lions will be the lot of the working
class.
The only way that the working class
can escape from the misery unemploy-
ment causes, both for the employed and
the unemployed, is to do away with thesystem that creates these conditions.
That is to create a new system in which
the chief concern is to provide for the
needs of its citizens not for the private
prot of a parasitic few capitalists. Insuch a society, socialism, the workerswill democratically plan their econo-
my instead of subordinating it to blind
market forces. The workers will, frominformation gained in this process, beable to organize their labour to create
all needs of life. Those who can work
will have to work, those who will notwork, will not eat. Work will be sharedout evenly between all members of
society, following the guide of eachaccording to his/her abilities. Therewill be work that needs to be done and
everyone will be needed to chip in to
get in done, unemployment will notexist. With the labour of everybody in
society put to work creating only the
things the society needs, as opposed touseless things like giant private yachts,
as well as by making full use of all la-bour saving machinery, even those thatdo not create prots for capitalists, theamount of labour each person will have
to contribute will be signicantly lessthan it is today. This massive increase
in time that has not to be spent on nec-
essary labour will enable humanity to
fully live up to its potential, cultivatetheir abilities and give a huge impetus
to general culture.
To get to socialism however theworking class must organize itself to
ght collectively against the rule of thebourgeoisie. Workers are constantly
competing for jobs and those with jobsare constantly at risk of losing their
job to someone without one. Both theemployed and the unemployed must be
organised so that they are not compet-
ing against each other for the capital-
ists benet. The organisation of thosein employment has seen relative suc-
cesses in the concessions won by the
trade unions. The organisation of theunemployed however, a task that isalso of vital importance for the success
of the revolution, has met with mixed
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to even entertaining the prospect of
revolution. Both the Communist Partyof America and The American Fed-
eration of Labour both eventually en-dorsed the Roosevelt governments
New Deal which included innumer-
able anti working class measures and
actively tried to sabotage the efforts of
anyone who organized to oppose the
New Deal.
Despite the seemingly insurmount-
able challenges the Trotskyists faced
they did achieve some success in unit-
ing the struggles of employed and un-
employed. In Minneapolis the Trotsky-
ists set an example of working-class
unity which even the Stalinists found
impossible to ignore. Even before the
three strikes in 1934 which established
the General Drivers Local 574, under
Trotskyist leadership, and transformedMinneapolis into a union town, themilitant Teamsters sought to organise
the unemployed. During the strikes
this paid off as many of the 4,000 un-employed workers of the Minneapolis
Central Council of Workers (MCCW)militantly defended the truck drivers
picket lines.
The tale during the depression over-
all though was one of defeats for the
labour movement with unemploymentwreaking untold misery for millions.
It was a decade in which the unem-
ployed had to learn that destitution was
not a personal failing of their own or
a temporary condition, as claimed bythe ruling class, but a permanent fea-ture of capitalism which could only be
eradicated by the overthrow of capital-
ism itself. Unemployed organizers hadto learn that by themselves the unem-
ployed are difcult to organize into astable formation and are prey to right
wing ideologies and tempted to scabon employed workers. Leadership inthe unemployed struggle must ulti-
mately fall to the employed workers
the inuence of the NUWM ultimate-ly proved to weak to play a decisive
role in events and the number of un-
employed workers remained in the
millions right up until outbreak of the
second world war.
Unlike Britain, the 1920s in Amer-ica was a period of relative economic
prosperity. It was not until the Wall
Street crash, and the Great Depressionthat followed it, that unemploymentskyrocketed peaking at 18 million in1933. Left to themselves the legionsof unemployed workers provided a
ready pool of scab labour for strike-
breaking employers to exploit and use
to blackmail their workers into accept-
ing worse terms of employment. What
was needed to deal with the rampant
unemployment was a mass organisa-
tion including both employed and un-employed workers to unite the whole
working class in a single struggle. In
struggle against a system which by
protecting the prots of a few indus-trial and nancial moguls subjectedthe masses of working people to untold
privations.
Unfortunately the activists, union or-ganizers and revolutionaries who tried
to create such an organization were
hampered, harassed, persecuted bymen who claimed to be forwarding theinterests of the working class but were
in reality protecting the interests of the
ruling class. The Communist Party ofAmerica was but an organ of Stalin-
ist foreign policy in the U.S.A. and,as such, was more concerned with de-stroying the inuence of the Trotsky-ist left opposition in the labour move-
ment than alleviating the suffering of
the unemployed. At the same time the
American Federation of Labour, the
union with the largest membership inAmerica was crippled by the conserva-
tism and opportunism of its leaders
and was therefore virulently opposed
successes.
Learning lessons from previ-
ous attempts at organizing
the unemployed
In the U.K. the Communist Partyof Great Britain established the Na-
tional Unemployed Workers Move-ment (NUWM) in 1921 with the twingoals of preventing unemployed work-
ers becoming blackleg strike breakers
and of improving their general condi-
tion which in 1921 was dire. Around
2 million workers were unemployed
and nearly 2 million more were only
on short time work. To make matters
worse in March 1921 the government
halved the post war benet to the un-employed. In response to this the
NUWM raised a number of demands
which were: 1. Raise the benet of theunemployed 2. Remove the not genu-
inely seeking work clause from the
conditions of denying relief to a per-
son 3. Restore benets to all those ex-cluded by previous governments 4. No
disqualication unless refused workon trade union rates of pay 5. Shorter
working day without loss of pay 6. Ad-
equate pension for all over 60.
In contrast to previous campaigns
against unemployment which relied onappeals for charity the NUWM wageda tremendously energetic campaign
which brought dignity to the ght ofthe unemployed, arguing for militantdirect action. Demonstrations, hungermarches, raids on the ofces of thecouncil guardians who were responsi-
ble for providing relief, strike solidar-ity and even raids on factories against
overtime working and piece rates were
organised. The NUWM even managedto organise unemployed workers to
join strikers in their struggles duringthe engineers lockout in 1922 and the
dockers strike of 1923/4. Concessionswere won through these struggles but
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who can utilize their economic power
and organisation derived from their po-
sition in capitalist production.
The Challenges of Today
This article has focused heavily on
unemployment and attempts to organ-
ize in an attempt to end the misery
that it causes historically, but the onlyvalue in history is to learn lessons from
it, to avoid making the same mistakestwice so we can positively shape the
future. According to the International
Labour Organisation in 2012 there are200 million people unemployed world-
wide whilst there are 1.5 billion people
in vulnerable employment meaning
they are liable to become unemployed
at any moment. The International
Monetary Fund in its annual World
Economic Outlook report is warningthat the global economic recovery is
very fragile and the risk of a relapse
that triggers an even bigger crisis than
the last is high. If the crisis worsens,which it increasingly looks like it will,this will bring with it yet more joblosses and even higher unemployment
creating a situation ever more like the
one workers worldwide barley sur-
vived in the 1930s. In that situation
capitalism failed to solve its inherent
contradictions and the only way to endthe economic crisis was to enter into
a second inter-imperialist war which
resulted in the deaths of more than 70
million people. Such a scenario is not
unforeseeable in the near future.
We have to understand that there can
only be an end to unemployment when
the majority of humanity is no longerprey to the uctuations in the anarchiccapitalist system, which puts peopleout of work according to the needs of
prots while putting more and morepressure upon those still in employ-
ment. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky,today the most concrete thing we can
do to ght against unemployment isto awaken the attention of all workers
to the facts of unemployment. Every
worker in employment today could
be unemployed by tomorrow and un-
employment will always hang like the
sword of Damocles above the head of
those workers standing up and ghtingfor their interests. The capitalists will
not shun for a single second the oppor-
tunity to play the workers off against
each other for their own benet. It isonly by consequently dismantling the
bourgeois lies of undeserving poor
and lazy scroungers and ghting acommon struggle against the common
enemy, capitalism, that a better society,free from misery and poverty can be
brought about.
James Stevens, RSO Manchester
Bibliography
Engels, F. The Condition of the Work-
ing Class in England in 1844
Jones, O. Chavs
Marx, K. Capital
Moore, T. Utopia
Morton, A.L. A Peoples History ofEngland
Orwell, G. The Road to Wigan Pier
Steinbeck, J. The Grapes of Wrath
Thompson, E.P. The Making of the
English Working Class
Tressel, R. The Ragged Trousered Phi-
lanthropists
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Theory
The Development of the
Theory of the State by
Marx and Engels
The more the vulnerability of capi-talism becomes apparent, the morethe ideas of Marx and Engels resurface.
In bourgeois papers there a more hints
to the economic theories of Marx and
Engels and also in leftist social demo-
cratic and trade union circles there is
increased discussion about Marx. But
the restriction on the economic analy-
sis of Marx and Engels also means a
misrepresentation, because the two
were not only theoreticians, but alsopolitical activists in the service of arevolutionary transformation of socie-
ty. Furthermore, while they were work-ing on theoretical problems, this wasnot a simple examination of capitalist
society, but an examination of the waythis society could be overcome. In fact
it is exactly the achievement of Marx
and Engels to have found that theory
and practice cannot be separated. The-
ory, for Marx and Engels was always aguide to action.
In this contribution we want to tracethe development of the theory of the
state by Marx and Engels. Marx and
was developed in the real struggles of
the working class. The Paris Commune
gave them not only a conrmation ofearlier assumptions, but also showedthem the new form of government, inwhich the proletariat has taken power.
This enabled them to nally realizewhat it exactly means to smash the
state. And Friedrich Engels was able to
declare in 1891:
Of late, the Social-Democraticphilistine has once more been
lled with wholesome terror at the
words: Dictatorship of the Prole-tariat. Well and good, gentlemen,do you want to know what this
dictatorship looks like? Look at theParis Commune. That was the Dic-tatorship of the Proletariat. [3]
This processing of the experience of
the Commune was central, and a sig-nicant development of Marxism. But,even before that, Marx and Engelswere of course committed to revolu-
tionary development. Friedrich Engels
had already written in 1847 The prin-ciples of Communism;
Engels went through an important de-
velopment of their own analysis. For
Marx and Engels, it was clear thatthe working class taking power is a
prerequisite for the development of
communism. [1] However, they werenot aware of what this dictatorship of
the proletariat - ie the working class
instead of the capitalists as the ruling
class - meant for the development of
the form of the state. For a long time
Marx and Engels thought it possible
that a workers party could take over
the bourgeois state apparatus, for ex-
ample through a majority in an elec-tion. But after the Paris Commune of1871, Marx wrote in a letter:
... If you look at the last chapter
of my Eighteenth Brumaire you
will nd that I say that the next at-tempt of the French revolution will
be no longer, as before, to transferthe bureaucratic-military machine
from one hand to another, but tosmash it, and this is essential forevery real peoples revolution on
the Continent. [2]
The theory of the state of Marx and
Engels was not carved in stone, but
Preface
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Theory
Question 16; Will the peaceful
abolition of private property be
possible? It would be desirable if
this could happen, and the commu-nists would certainly be the last to
oppose it. Communists know onlytoo well that all conspiracies are
not only useless, but even harmful.They know all too well that revolu-
tions are not made intentionally and
arbitrarily, but that, everywhere andalways, they have been the neces-sary consequence of conditions
which were wholly independent of
the will and direction of individual
parties and entire classes. But they
also see that the development of the
proletariat in nearly all civilized
countries has been violently sup-
pressed, and that in this way the op-ponents of communism have been
working toward a revolution withall their strength. If the oppressed
proletariat is nally driven to revo-lution, then we communists willdefend the interests of the proletar-
ians with deeds as we now defend
them with words. [4]
It has to be remarked critically that
the positions of Marx and Engels were
not consistent even after the events of
the Paris Commune. Marx limited his
knowledge of the precondition forevery real peoples revolution on the
continent, so did not include Britainor the USA. Later we nd in Engels(especially in his later phase) positions
that even mean a clear step backwards.
Thus Engels wrote in 1895 in his newintroduction to Marxs Class Strugglesin France:
The irony of world history turns
everything upside down. We, therevolutionaries, the overthrow-ers we are thriving far better on
legal methods than on illegal meth-
ods and overthrow. [5]
And he continued:
his concept. In his book State and
Revolution, Lenin to a large extentgeneralised his positions on the need
to smash the bourgeois state apparatus.
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky andothers are not saints or idols. They have
made very important contributions, butthat does not mean that they were free
of mistakes. For us its about applying
the Marxist method - and where it is
necessary, to make use of this samemethod to criticize important Marxists.
In the second part of our contribution,we go into detail of this question i.e.
response to a readers letter.
This contribution was rst publishedas a pamphlet by the AGM (Arbeits-
gruppe Marxismus), one of the fore-runners of the RSO. We are pleased
to now republish this text for the rsttime in the English language and hope
to make a small contribution to the de-
bate on Marxist theory.
Michael Bonvalot (RSO Vienna)
__________________________
[1] What I did that was new was to prove: (1)
that the existence of classes is only bound up
with particular historical phases in the devel-
opment of production (historische Entwick-
lungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class
struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of
the proletariat,[1] (3) that this dictatorship itself
only constitutes the transition to the abolition of
all classes and to a classless society .Karl Marx,
letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, 1852
[2] Karl Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann,
MEW 33, p.205
[3] F. Engels, Introduction to K. Marx, 1891:
Civil War in France, MEW 17, 623ff.
[4] Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Commu-
nism
[5] Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Introduction to
Marx, Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850,MEW 22/2}
[6] Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Manifesto of
the Communist Party
Its [the German social democra-
cies] growth proceeds as sponta-
neously, as steadily, as irresistibly,and at the same time as tranquilly
as a natural process.
Engels conclusion was that the legal
parliamentary struggle was now far
more realistic than the armed struggle
on the barricades. This position was
clearly a product of the peaceful co-
existence, that Engels entered at theend of his life with the then already
partially reformist SPD and demon-
strates once again that it is necessary
to also look upon the classics with a
certain critical distance.
However, despite the later writingsof Engels it is evident that the experi-
ence of the Commune meant an essen-
tial incision for Marx and Engels. Thetwo even found it necessary to correct
the Communist Manifesto. In the lastpreface to the German edition of The
Communist Manifesto, signed by itstwo authors, dated 24 June 1872, Marxand Engels declare, that the programof the Communist Manifesto has insome details been antiquated..
One thing especially, they contin-ue, was proved by the Commune,
viz., that the working class cannotsimply lay hold of the ready-madestate machinery, and wield it for itsown purposes.[6] (Interestingly
Britain is not named as an excep-
tion here.)
The analyses of Marx and Engelswere later developed and generalised
primarily by the Russian Marxists.
Lenin, however, had a long way to goto reach this conculusion, this jour-ney led him from half-hearted agree-
ment with the position represented by
Nikolai Bukharin, who built upon theexperience of Marx and Engels after
the Paris Commune, to fully embrace
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society . Marx concluded from that ,as he later wrote, the anatomy of thiscivil society, however, has to be soughtin political economy.: [8]
In this context the use of the termcivil society has to be explained
quickly. In fact, Marx used this termin two ways. On the one hand, Marxuses the term to describe generally the
sphere that includes the whole mate-
rial intercourse of individuals within
a denite stage of the developmentof productive forces. that is to say the
economic base. On the other hand, heuses it to describe this specic sphereat the time of the bourgeoisie. In the
rst section of The German IdeologyMarx himself explained the dual use of
this term: Civil society as such onlydevelops with the bourgeoisie; the so-
cial organisation evolving directly outof production and commerce, whichin all ages forms the basis of the State
and of the rest of the idealistic super-
structure, has, however, always beendesignated by the same name. [9] Po-
litical state and civil society are also
the two categories around which Marx
developed his criticism in On the Jew-
ish Question, by investigating the rela-tionship of political and general human
emancipation.
The state, taken as an expression ofa deciency or secular conict, rep-resents to Marx the general entity, inwhich people encounter as abstract
equals - the state as illusory commu-
nity. Concretely however, people existin civil society where they face each
other as isolated, egotistic individu-als. This separation of political state
and civil society corresponds to the
separation of people into citizen and
bourgeois, citizen of a state and citi-zen. As a citizen an individual is an ab-
stract moral person, a member of thatimagined community. As part of civil
society, however, he is a labourer, a
cism is, therefore, rst religious andpolitical, which is directed against theexisting conditions in Germany, partic-ularly in the Prussian State. It is there-
fore obvious that Marx, who alongwith philosophy and history has stud-
ied law, when in the theoretical eld,deals with realm questions of law rst.Marxs critique of Hegels Philosophy
of Right, which falls into the time be-fore the long-term collaboration with
Engels, documents Marxs transition tomaterialism and is still strongly char-
acterized by his break with the idealis-
tic approach. [6]
By the example of the criticism ofreligion, Marx developed the under-standing that being is not the realiza-
tion of consciousness, but that con-sciousness is produced by the social
being. But man is no abstract beingsquatting outside the world. Man is
the world of man state, society. Thisstate and this society produce religion,which is an inverted consciousness of
the world, because they are an invertedworld. [7] These factual circumstanc-
es, the law and politics must thereforebe subjected to criticism.
Marx starts with the criticism of theGerman political and legal philosophy
because in Germany the developmentof the modern countries of Europe
was only imitated in the realm of phi-
losophy, the German legal and politi-cal philosophy (an imitation in itself)
is just the ideal expression of thosedevelopments, that, in other countries,have been completed through revolu-
tions. Marx shows that the contradic-
tions inherent in the Hegelian phi-
losophy of law are expressions of the
actually existing contradictions within
the state on the one hand and its world-
ly circumstances on the other. How-
ever the key to understanding lies in
these very material conditions of life,which Hegel called in summary civil
Marxs and Engelss writings, inwhich they deal with the questionof the state, fall into four groups; First,those writings that came into being in
the wake of Marx criticism of the tra-
ditional legal philosophy (Critique ofHegels Philosophy of Right, On theJewish Question) [1] Second, thosewritings in which Marx and Engels set
out for the rst time in a comprehensivemanner the materialist understanding
of history that were produced prior to
the Revolution of 1848 (The GermanIdeology, The Communist Manifesto)[2] , Third the articles, statements andwritings, which were the product of the
processing and assessment of current
political events (The Eighteenth Bru-
maire of Louis Bonaparte, The CivilWar in France) [3] , And fourth, a se-ries of polemics against the anarchists
and different trends in social democ-
racy, which however will not be dealtwith in this article because in those po-
lemics Marxs and Engelss previous
ndings are compactly summarized,but are not fundamentally developed
further (Political Indifferentism, OnAuthority, Critique of the Gotha Pro-gram, Anti-Duhring ...) [4]. Finally,
outside of this division or as a groupof its own stands Friedrich Engels The
Origin of the Family, Private Proper-ty and the State [5] , in which Engelsworks out the elementary results of the
marxist theory of the state and espe-
cially arranges them in the ,until then,most general form.
Critique of Hegels Philoso-
phy of Right
Marx begins his political and jour-
nalistic appearance as a ghter againstreligious, spiritual and government op-
pression in the most consistent wing of
the democratic movement. His criti-
Main
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Theory
merchant or a farmer, man in his realsociety.
Marx sees this separation unfoldfully only in the purely political or
modern state, which has alreadybrought about the political emancipa-
tion of men and which is quite com-
pletely elevated above the civil soci-
ety. The Christian state, which is stilldominated by feudalism and in which
the political order is still very much in-
tertwined with the social order is, bycomparison to the modern state, evena non-state [10] , because it has notyet dared to proclaim itself as the pure,
political state. The so-called Chris-tian state is the imperfect state, andthe Christian religion is regarded by itas the supplementation and sanctica-tion of its imperfection.(...)It makes a
great difference whether the completestate, because of the defect inherent inthe general nature of the state, countsreligion among its presuppositions, orwhether the incomplete state, becauseof the defect inherent in its particular
existence as a defective state, declaresthat religion is its basis. [11] There-
fore the political state does not free the
people from religion; it is simply de-
clared a private matter.
Similarly, the emancipation throughthe political state is not the real humanemancipation. Political emancipationmeans equality in the sphere of the
state, equality as a moral person. Thisis done by declaring that the base of
inequality is not political and therefore
moves it into the realm of civil society,in which it can begin to unfold freely.
So the state, for example, abolishesprivate property politically by abolish-
ing property-bound suffrage. Never-
theless, the political annulment of pri-vate property not only fails to abolish
private property but even presupposes
it. The state abolishes, in its own way,distinctions of birth, social rank, edu-
cation, occupation, when it declaresthat birth, social rank, education, oc-cupation, are non-political distinctions(...) The perfect political state is, by itsnature, mans species-life, as opposedto his material life. All the precondi-
tions of this egoistic life continue to
exist in civil society outside the sphere
of the state, but as qualities of civil so-ciety.[12]
Political emancipation is, there-fore, the reduction of man, on the onehand, to the member of civil society,on the other hand, to the citizen of thestate. General human emancipation
can therefore not stop at the stage of
political emancipation: Only when
the real, individual man re-absorbs inhimself the abstract citizen, and as anindividual human being has become
a species-being in his everyday life,in his particular work, and in his par-ticular situation, only when man hasrecognized and organized his own
powers [13] as social powers, and,consequently, no longer separates so-cial power from himself in the shape
of political power, only then will hu-man emancipation have been accom-
plished. [14]
Already here the idea of taking backthe state into society, to neutralize thealienation of humanity within the state,reversing the separation of bourgeois
and citizen, becomes apparent. Marxformulated this idea, of course, onlyas an ideal goal to be aimed for, with-out insight into the historical material-
ist conditions of its implementation.
However Marx expands this idea in a
concrete form later on (see The CivilWar in France).
The German Ideology
In The German Ideology, writtenin 1845/46, Marx and Engels take animportant step closer to the task of ex-
plaining how the general human eman-
cipation would come about. Marx and
Engels give an account of their shared
understanding that the particular social
structure, the state, the religion andthe consciousness of a society emerge
consistently from the material condi-
tions of life found on a certain social
level. And further that the productive
force in the course of its development
comes into conict with these existingsocial relations, which cause radicalchanges in society. The origin of the
disintegration of the interests of each
individual and the common interest of
all individuals, that is the raison dtreof the state, they locate already in thedivision of labour.
The contradiction between town andcountry, a product of the division of la-
bour, begins with the transition frombarbarism to civilisation, from tribe toState, from locality to nation, and runsthrough the whole history of civilisa-
tion to the present day (the Anti-CornLaw League). The existence of thetown implies, at the same time, the ne-cessity of administration, police, taxes,etc.; in short, of the municipality, andthus of politics in general. [15] The
development of the state therefore
takes place materially in the develop-
ment of special bodies and institutions,which no longer coincide with themass of the people. This in itself has a
certain level of a division of labour as
a prerequisite. A nding that is indeedessential for the understanding of the
state in general and the conditions of
its abolition. Marx, and Lenin in par-ticular build upon this idea when they
develop the tasks of the proletariat in
relation to the state. The possibility
that the productive power, social rela-tions and consciousness do not have to
enter into conict with each other any-more is seen by Marx and Engels, in ananalogy to Marxs conclusions in On
the Jewish Question in the abolition of
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old conditions of production, thenit will, along with these conditions,have swept away the conditions for
the existence of class antagonisms
and of classes generally, and willthereby have abolished its own su-
premacy as a class. [17]
With the abolition of class antago-
nism the necessity of a public political
force, the organisation of one class tooppress another, meaning the necessityof the state, is thus abolished too. Thisis also true for the ideological function
of the state. The necessity to maintain
an illusory community will disappear
once man has become a real species-
being.
Here Marx also formulated thethought that the state can not be abol-
ished by a single stroke and that thebourgeois society can not be over-
come by a trick. The proletariat, in atransitional phase, must make use ofits political supremacy to create the
conditions for the withering away of
all class distinctions. In this period, thestate, in the sense of the oppression ofone class by another - the bourgeoisie
being oppressed by the proletariat - has
to continue to exist, but annuls itself associalized economic development pro-
gresses.
Even in On the Jewish QuestionMarx shows a tendency, to regardonly the modern state, which developsalongside the bourgeoisie, as the pure,fully developed state. In The German
Ideology Marx develops this thought
parallel to the different stages of prop-
erty, from tribal property to pure pri-vate property, which corresponds to themode of production of the bourgeoi-
sie. Real private property began with
the ancients, as with modern nations,with movable property. (Slavery
and community) (dominium ex jureQuiritum). In the case of the nations
This achievement represents a quali-
tative step on the path of development
of the Marxist theory of revolution and
the state and nds its clear program-matical conclusion immediately before
the Revolution of 1848 in the Mani-festo of the Communist Party;
In depicting the most general
phases of the development of the
proletariat, we traced the more orless veiled civil war, raging withinexisting society, up to the pointwhere that war breaks out into open
revolution, and where the violentoverthrow of the bourgeoisie lays
the foundation for the sway of the
proletariat.(...)
We have seen above, that the rst
step in the revolution by the work-ing class is to raise the proletariat to
the position of ruling class to win
the battle of democracy. The prole-
tariat will use its political suprem-
acy to wrest, by degree, all capitalfrom the bourgeoisie, to centraliseall instruments of production in the
hands of the State, i.e., of the prole-tariat organised as the ruling class;
and to increase the total productive
forces as rapidly as possible. (...)
When, in the course of develop-ment, class distinctions have disap-
peared, and all production has beenconcentrated in the hands of a vast
association of the whole nation, thepublic power will lose its political
character. Political power, properlyso called, is merely the organised
power of one class for oppressing
another. If the proletariat during
its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of cir-
cumstances, to organise itself as aclass, if, by means of a revolution,it makes itself the ruling class, and,as such, sweeps away by force the
the division of labour. Now, however,they already mention it as a necessity
on the way, an important intermediarystep;
...And out of this very contradic-
tion between the interest of the
individual and that of the commu-
nity the latter takes an independent
form as the State, divorced fromthe real interests of individual and
community, and at the same time asan illusory communal life, always
based, however, on the real tiesexisting in every family and tribal
conglomeration such as esh andblood, language, division of labouron a larger sca