sayer and corrigan on marx and state 22012014

8/13/2019 Sayer and Corrigan on Marx and State 22012014

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REVOLUTION AGAINST THE STATE: THE CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX'S LATERWRITINGSAuthor(s): Derek Sayer and Philip CorriganSource: Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1987), pp. 65-82Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29790218.

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65

REVOLUTIONAGAINSTTHE STATE: THE CONTEXTANDSIGNIFICANCE F MARX'SLATERWRITINGSDerek SayerPhilipCorrigan

In this centennial decade ofMarx's deathsocialistswill be concerned to re-evaluatehispolitical legacy and its relevance to our owntimes and struggles. This paper aims tocontribute to that discussion. Its immediatestimuluswas two seminal papers publishedseveral years ago in the pages ofHistoryWorkshop by Haruki Wada and TeodorShanin [1], on the significance of theresearches and writings of Marx's last decade,particularly those on Russia. Wada andShanin argue that there re important hifts n"lateMarx". SubsequentMarxism has forthe

most part either ignoredor suppressed these,yet they are highly germane to socialiststruggles in the 20th century. Our paperextends thegeneral line of argument in bothpieces. We show that the shiftsWada andShanin identifynMarx with respecttoRussiahave no less important counterparts in othertexts of the 1870s and 1880s, notably thedrafts nd texts f The Civil War in rance. Inshort, there indeed is somethingdistinctive,novel and important about "late Marx",which should cause us to rethinkhis politicallegacyas a whole. But first, t isnecessary toqualify some aspects of theWada/Shaninargument.

1. Marx and Capitalist DevelopmentShanin maintains that there "remains" an

essential kernal of evolutionism inCapital,and thatMarx's final break with this "archmodel of the time" only began to take shapewith the turnof the 1870s. By evolutionismShanin understands "the assumption of anintrinsicallynecessary development throughpre-ordained stages." Built into suchevolutionism is "a highly optimisticteleology." Shanin allows that therewereelementsofmultilinearism inMarx's view ofhistoryprior to the 1870s,citinghis use of theconcept of theAsiatic mode of production in1853, and the Grundrisse's acceptance of aplurality of possible routes out of primitivecommunism. But these remained refinementsof a basically evolutionist scheme.With theappearance of capitalism as a "globalunifier", for theMarx of 1867, "the iron lawsof evolution finallyassume theirglobal anduniversal place". Thenceforth "the countrythat is more developed industrially onlyshows, to the lessdeveloped, the imageof itsown future".At the end of theday capitalismisnecessary, inevitable,and progressive.Thepolitical corollary is that such pre-capitalistsocial forces as seek to obstruct its forwardmarch are objectively reactionary,howevermuch they might engage our intuitivesympathies. Hence Marx's ratherembarrassing views on colonialism andpeasants, respectively expressed in, for

Derek Sayer isProfessor and Chair of Sociology, University ofAlbertaPhilip Corrigan isProfessor of Sociology, Ontario Institute forStudies inEducation, Toronto

DialecticalAnthropology 2: 65-82 (1987)? MartinusNijhoffPublishers, ordrecht

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66instance,his 1853 articles on India and TheEighteenth Brumaire [2].Shanin detects a twofold departure fromthisposition byMarx in the 1870s and 1880s,which ismost in evidence inhis writingsonRussia. First,Marx moves beyond a pictureofcapitalism as straightforwardlyprogressivetowards a more realistic grasp of thecomplexities and contradictions of what wewould nowadays call dependent development.Second, he extends multilinearism to thefuture.By the late 1870sMarx was envisaging"a multiplicity of roads of socialtransformation,within a global framework fmutual and differential impact".Evolutionism was dead. This revolution in

Marx's macro-historical picture entailed acorresponding re-evaluation of socialstruggles in peripheral formations. Marxshifted his position on peasants, theobshchina, and the character of rulingclassesand State formson capitalism's periphery. Insharpcontrast to thenext threegenerationsofMarxists, Marx himself was "beginning torecognise forwhat theyreallyare thenature,problems and debate concerning 'developing'and post-revolutionary societies of thetwentieth century."Wada's story of the fate of the drafts ofMarx's letter to Zasulich is a reminder that thestrugglefor the soul of Karl Marx has neverbeen a merely academic exercise. Shanin'sintervention is a timely one, for a new Marxistfundamentalism is resurgent [3], Our majorcomplaint against Shanin is that he concedestoomuch to the traditionalists. nbrief,Marxwas never so consistent an evolutionist asShanin implies.And his intimations s to thespecific structures of peripheral capitalismlong pre-date the 1870s. These are notscholastic points, for they affect ourinterpretationnd our political evaluation ofMarx's legacy as a whole.It is not entirely irrelevant to begin byquestioning the characterization ofevolutionism which Shanin offers, at least asregards itsDarwinian variant (whichwas the

only form known to have impressedMarx)[4]. Darwin certainly did not believe in"necessary development through pre?ordained stages." The essence of his theory israndom mutation. Species survive because,for whatever accidental reasons, they havedeveloped characteristicswhich adapt themtotheir nvironment theydo not acquire thosecharacteristics norder so to adapt. The latteris theLamarckian view, not theDarwinian.Darwin's theory was specifically antiteleological 'thiswas part of why it so upsetthe clerics). This matters for two reasons.First,because whatMarx himselfwelcomed inDarwin's Origin of Species was precisely that,inhis own words, "it deals the death-blow toteleology in the natural sciences [5]." Andsecond,because inrepresentingarwin in thisway Shanin reveals - not for theonly time inhis paper - the extent towhich he continues,unquestioningly, to read theMarx ofCapitaland before through the lens of a centuryoforthodoxy. The hoary parallel between aHegelianized Marx and a LamarckianizedDarwin originatedwithEngels and theSecondInternationaland remains a staple of SovietMarxology to thisday. In this connection it isworth drawing attention to Margaret Fay'sexcellent demolition of the well-worn myththatMarx sought to dedicate Volume II ofCapital to thegreat biologists [6].In fact,pace Shanin, Marx's hostility toteleologyin ll its formswas overtand of longstanding. Such hostility is a recurrent motif ofThe German Ideology, a work Shanin seemsto regard as a paradigm of crudeevolutionism.There Marx was quite clear thatanynotion that"later history is... thegoal ofearlierhistory" is "a speculativedistortion";"what is designated by the words 'destiny','goal', 'germ' or 'idea' of earlier history is

nothing more than an abstraction from laterhistory [7]." The teleology of Proudhon's"providential history" was to be mercilesslylambasted thefollowingyear [8]. Indeedwhatismost striking nThe German Ideology andotherworks of thisperiod isMarx's refusal, in



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67terms quite as adamant as those of his famous1877 letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski, ofany overarching ''hist rico-philosophicaltheory."What is ratheroffered isa programfor investigatingreal, profanehistory"of anavowedly - some would say embarrassingly[9] - empiricistkind. It is in this spiritthatMarx and Engels warn their readers that thesketch of historical development in TheGerman Ideology which Shanin cites is nomore than "some ... abstractions", illustrated"by historical examples", which "by nomeans afford a recipe of schema, as doesphilosophy, forneatly trimming heepochs ofhistory [10]."One can certainlyfindpassages inMarx'swork which speak of the achievements ofcapitalism as a presupposition for socialism.But one equally finds such sentiments n thelate Marx. His 1874 notes on Bakunin'sS tat ism and Anarchy - a text unaccountablyneglected byWada and Shanin [11] - insists,a propos Russia, that "a radical socialrevolution ... is only possible where withcapitalist development the industrialproletariat occupies at least an importantposition among themass of thepeople", andderides Bakunin forwanting "the Europeansocial revolution, premised on the basis ofcapitalistproduction, to takeplace at the levelof the Russian or Slavic agricultural andpastoral peoples." Marx penned this after thesupposed sea-change in his views Wada claimswas broughtabout by readingChernyshevsky.Relatedly, Wada never satisfactorilyestablisheshismajor contention thatby 1881Marx had abandoned his former pinion thatan obshchina-bzsed socialism in Russiarequireda successfulproletarian revolution intheWest. Wada presentsno evidence for thisother than Marx's failure to reiterate thisrequirement in the drafts of his letter toZasulich, and has to dismissMarx's explicitendorsement of his formerposition, in thejoint 1881 Preface to the Russian edition oftheManifesto, by the flimsy nd speculativeargumentthatMarx was too devastated byhis

wife's death to know or care what he wasdoing. The reservations bout thisPreface inMarx's covering letter to Lavrov, cited byWada, cannot seriouslybe read as relatingtoanythingother than style.What we know ofMarx's study and correspondence inDecember 1880 and January 1881,moreover,suggest Wada is simply wrong in theconsequences of Jenny Marx's death - ifanything,Marx took refugefromhis grief inwork, compiling at this time his massivechronology of world history,while letterstoEngels and others indicate a continuinginterest inmatters intellectualand political[12].Here, Wada comes uncomfortablycloseto the mode or argument whose nadir isRiazanov's suggestionthat theZasulich draftsindicate the lateMarx's encroaching senility.There can be little oubt thatMarx believedthat socialism required at least the levels ofsocial production only capitalismhad (so far)historicallyproved capable of delivering,andcontinued tobelieve thisto theend of his life.But this does not in itself dd up to the kindof tight rch-modelof evolutionismattributedtoMarx by Shanin. Marx certainlyat timesemployed an evolutionist idiom inpresentinghis conclusions, as inthe 1859Preface. Butwewould suggest hatthemajor reason forseeingMarx at any point as an evolutionist inShanin's full-blownsense lies less inanythingMarx himselfwrote than in the incrediblypowerful legacy of received interpretationsfrom the late Engels onwards. Why, forexample, do we persist in regarding Marx'sabundant departures from a supposedunilinear evolutionism prior to 1870 asanomalies There are other "departures" inaddition to those conceded by Shanin, likeMarx's untroubled acceptance in his 1857General Introduction of the sui generischaracter of a society like pre-ColumbianPeru, inwhich thehighest formsof economy,e.g. co-operation, a developed division oflabour, etc., are found, even though there isno kind ofmoney [13]."We want finally to question Shanin's



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interpretationof the famous passage fromMarx's Preface to the 1867 edition ofCapitalI, which Shanin treats as incontrovertibleevidenceofMarx's evolutionism.Let us quotewhatMarx actually says in full:In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode ofproduction, and the conditions of production and exchangecorresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, theirclassic ground is England. That is the reason why Englandis used as the chief illustration in the development of mytheoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader shrugs hisshoulders at the condition of the English industrial andagricultural labourers, or in optimistic fashion comfortshimself with the thought that in Germany things are notnearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, "De te fabulanarratur " Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher orlower degree of development of the social antagonisms thatresult from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is aquestion of these laws themselves, of these tendenciesworking with iron necessity towards inevitable results. Thecountry that ismore developed industrially only shows, tothe less developed, the image of its own future.

LaterMarx adds, in similar veinAnd even when a society has got upon the right track for thediscovery of the natural laws of itsmovement - and it is theultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law ofmotion of modern society - it can neither clear by boldleaps, nor remove by legal enactment, the obstacles offeredby the successive phases of its normal development [14].

To those convinced of italready, undeniableconfirmation of Capital's evolutionism. But isit?Recall, first, the context. Marx is publis?hing, inGermany, a book whose empiricalmaterial ismostly drawn from ngland. He is

understandably concerned to assert its rele?vance toGerman conditions. Since Germanyisa society inwhich capitalismhas already ta?ken hold, its "normal development" mightreasonably be expected to follow a broadly"English" path. But this in no way impliesany necessityfor societies inwhich capitalismisnot already established to do the same. In?ternalevidence from the same text,Capital I,suggests ithighlyunlikely thatMarx in 1867would have expected, say, India or Irelandsimplytomirror theEnglish pattern.We will

return to this below. Look, moreover, at whatMarx actuallywrites. The only ironnecessityhe speaks of concerns theworking out of theconsequences of the "natural laws of capita?list roduction", and theonly phases of deve?lopment to which he refers are those of"modern society", i.e., capitalism. Nothinghe says inanyway way bears on theseparateissueofwhether capitalismas such is a neces?sary phase in a law-governed process of gene?ral historical development. And this is, ofcourse, exactly what Marx was himself toma?ke plain inhis clarification (which iswhat itwas, not a recantation) againstMikhailovsky:

Now what application toRussia could my critic make of thishistorical sketch? Simply this: If Russia wants to become acapitalist nation after the example of theWest-Europeancountries... then, once drawn into thewhirlpool of the capi?talist economy, she will have to endure its inexorable laws li?ke other profane nations [15].

Itwas the fact thatGermany was already inthe "whirlpool'' in 1867, not some generalevolutionist "arch-model", that licensedMarx's "De te fabula narratur " Wada is pro?bably right,however, thatMarx thoughtRus?sia analogous toGermany in 1867 and laterchanged his mind on thisspecific point.To turn now to the question of Marx's ap?prehensions as to the structures of dependentdevelopment. We do not for a moment denythe great advances in his late texts. But to sug?gestMarx's picture of capitalist developmentwas until the 1870s one of straightforwardprogressiveness travesties the facts. We arenot just referring o his denunciations of theincidental brutalities of capitalist expansionhere,but tohis evaluation of itshistoricalcon?sequences.Marx knew thatcapitalistdevelop?ment could well sustain, strengthen r evencreate forms of "backwardness" on its peri?phery, longbeforehis studiesofRussia. Someexamples. The Poverty ofPhilosophy (1847)asserted an intimate relation between Lan?castrian "modernity" and barbarism: "Directslavery is just asmuch thepivot of bourgeoisindustry s machinery, credits, etc.Without



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69slaveryyou have no cotton; without cottonyou have nomodern industry .. Slavery isaneconomic categoryof thegreatest importance[16]." The point is extended inMarx's wri?tingson theAmerican civilwar: the slave sta?tes "grew and developed simultaneouslywiththemonopoly of theEnglish cotton industryon theworldmarket [17]." The same articlesseverely ualify theprogressivistconclusions,referred oby Shanin, ofMarx's 1853articlesin India:

England pays now, in fact, the penalty for her protractedmisrule of that vast Indian empire. The two main obstaclesshe has now to grapple with in her attempts at supplanting

American cotton by Indian cotton are the want of means ofcommunication and transport throughout India, and themi?serable state of the Indian peasant, disabling him from im?proving favourable circumstances. Both these difficulties theEnglish have themselves to thank for [18].

Shanin himselfmentionsMarx on Ireland.By1867Marx was quite clear that itwas Englandthat "struck down the manufactures of Ire?land, depopulated her cities, and threwherpeople back upon the land". "Every timeIrelandwas about todevelop industrially, hewas crushed and reconverted into a purelyagricultural land", one "forced to contributecheap labourand cheap capital tobuildingup'thegreatworks of Britain' [19]." The sameMS documents theunderdevelopmentof Irishagriculture itself by a predatory absentee land?lordism, whose importance to the English ru?ling class Marx underlines in manycontemporary letters and speeches [20].We do not wish to claim thatMarx had any?thing like a worked out theory f dependentdevelopmentby 1867 (noryetby 1883).Capi?taldoes howeverventure somepertinentgene?ralizations:

[a]s soon as people, whose production stillmoves within thelower forms of slave-labour, corvee-labour, etc., are drawninto thewhirlpool of an international market dominated bythe capitalist mode of production, the sale of their productsfor export becoming their principal interest, the civilisedhorrors of overwork are grafted on to the barbaric horrorsof slavery, serfdom, etc. [21].

Russian revolutionariesmight have drawn so?me lessonshere, asMarx goes on to illustratehis pointwith theexperienceof theDanubianPrincipalities of theTsarist Empire. Later oninCapital he suggests systematic nevennessin capitalistdevelopment:A new and international division of labour, a division suitedto the requirements of the chief centers of modern industrysprings up, and converts one part of the globe into a chieflyagricultural field of production, for supplying the other partwhich remains a chiefly industrial field [22].

This concludes a discussion of the forcibledestruction of indigenous manufactures in In?dia, Java, etc., with capitalist penetration,and theconversionof thesecountries intorawmaterial suppliersformetropolitan industries.Far fromMarx's Russian studiesof the 1870scoming from ut of theblue to torpedoa secu?re evolutionism, theyfitted nto whilst, cer?tainly,deepening - a setof apprehensions asto"the specificstructures f backward capita?lism"whichwere alreadyverywell establishedinhiswork.

2. Capitalist Development and State For?mationShanin's version of Marx pre-1870 may be

something of a simplification. But this doesnot make the developments he and Wadadraw our attention to inMarx's late writingson Russia any the less genuine or important.Marx did take up radicallynew positions inthese texts, for themost part in directions onwhich mainstream Marxism (Second Interna?tional and Bolshevik)was silent fterhis death[23].What we want now to show is that suchshiftswere bynomeans confined tohisRussi?an writings,but exist equally inother "late"texts. here isa wider rethink n lateMarx (ofwhich laterMarxism has generally been nomore aware), whose true dimensions are ob?scured byWada's exclusive focus on Russiaand Shanin's obsession with evolutionism.A preliminaryaside regardingperiodizati



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70on. There is realnovelty inthe lateMarx. Butnot the least interesting eatureofMarx's latetexts is theirrestatement, lbeit inverymuchmore concrete terms, of themes that were cen?traltohis thought s farback as theearlyandmid-1840s. E.P. Thompson's suggestion thatMarx's mature writingsare hopelessly trappedwithin theconceptual net of thePolitical Eco?nomy they re fighting 24] isexaggerated,butthe argument contains a kernel of truth as re?gards Marx's more overt preoccupations. It issurelyno accident that theconcernswe will bediscussing here should have beenmost to thefore during the two periods whenMarx wasmost actively engaged inpolitics, namely the1840s and from 1864 onwards. There isa con?tinuityof concern between the "early" andthe "late" Marx, in areas with too exclusive afocus on the "mature" Marx of GrundrisseandCapital has often obscured.We would ho?pe thatone resultof "discovering" lateMarxmight therefore e tomake us takemore seri?ously his insights nto theanatomy of bourge?ois civilization in texts like The GermanIdeology, "On the JewishQuestion" and theParis Manuscripts. This is particularly impor?tantgiven thepresent popularity of as unrepentantly economistic an interpretation ofMarx as Gerry Cohen's book [25]. More wide?ly, it draws attention to thedangers involvedin any simple and unilinear periodization ofMarx's work.

We will concentrate here on some other keyneglected texts of Marx's late years, the twodraftsand final textof The Civil War in ran?ce.Marx saw farmore than the heroism of alost cause in the Paris Commune. It was "thegreatest revolutionof thiscentury" {Writingson the Paris Commune, p. 147) [26]. TheCommune was, moreover, a social discoveryof theprofoundest significance, the politicalformat lastdiscovered underwhich toworkout the economical emancipation of labour."What so excitedMarx in theCommune wasnot itspolicies as such (whichhe saw as having"nothing socialist in them" and actingmainly"for the salvation of themiddle class" -

pp.162, 159), but itspotentialitiesas a politi?calform. "Whatever themerits of the singlemeasures of theCommune, itsgreatest measu?re was its own organisation" (p. 153). ForMarx, of course, "political forms ... originateinthematerial conditionsof life [27]." He didnot therefore aud theCommunal Constituti?on in theabstract, but only insofaras itwasa means towards the emancipation of labor:"Except on this lastcondition, theCommunalConstitutionwould have been an impossibilityand a delusion" (p.76).We will returnto thisbelow. But what ismore novel, and certainlyfar less often remarked, in these texts, is thestressMarx layson thecontrarydependence:

The working class know that they have to pass through diffe?rent phases of class struggle. They know that the supersedingof the economical conditions of the slavery of labour by theconditions of free and associated labour can only be the pro?gressive work of time ... But they know at the same time thatgreat strides may be made at once through the Communalform of political organisations (pp. 154-5).

The Commune "affords the rationalmediumthrough which the class struggle can runthrough tsvarious phases inthemost rationaland humane way" (p. 154).The obverse of this is a warning socialistshave honored more in thebreach than in theobservance:

theworking class cannot simply lay hold on the ready-madestate-machinery and wield it for their own purpose. Thepolitical instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as thepolitical instrument of their emancipation (p. 196). The firstcondition or the old[ing] fpoliticalpower is totransformworking machinery and destroy it

-an instrument of classrule p. 196).

Economic and social emancipation of laborrequires political formswhich are themselvesemancipatory. A century's experience sinceMarx's death during which socialism hasrepeatedlybeen deformedby statism whetherin Bolshevik or Social Democratic forms)underscores his point. That Marx himselfthought this conclusion both extremelyimportant nd a definite advance in termsofhis own ideas is indicated not only by its



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frequent reiteration in the second draft andfinal textof The Civil War, but above all bythefact thatMarx and Engels again cite it, sself-criticism, in their Preface to the 1872reissue of the Communist Manisfesto [28].This Preface endorses the "generalprinciples" of theManifesto, with theprovisothattheir pplicationwill always depend uponhistorical conditions. There then follows aspecific correction. "No special stress", Marxand Engels say, should be placed on the"revolutionary measures" proposed in theoriginal text.For

in view of the practical experience gained, first in theFebruary Revolution, and then, still more, in the ParisCommune, where the proletarist for the first time heldpolitical power for two whole months, this programme hasin some details become antiquated. One thing especially wasproved by the Commune, viz., that "the working classcannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery,and wield it for its own purposes."

Readers are then referredto The Civil War,"where thispoint is further eveloped." Thedominant motif of the "revolutionarymeasures" in the Manifesto to which thispassage relates is precisely "centralisation ...in the hands of the State [29]." Engels laterqualified another textcontemporarywith theManifesto along similar lines.His and Marx'scall in 1850for"the reallyrevolutionary arty[in Germany] to carry through the strictestcentralisation" is now (1885) seen as "basedon a misunderstanding" of French history.They had at one time thought the Frenchcentralized administrative machine "pro?gressive. But now Engels argues that it wasrather "provincial and local self-government"which was "the most powerful leverof therevolution", whilst Napoleon's centralizationwas "a pure instrument f reaction fromthebeginning [30]."This brings us to the heart of Marx'sargument.Quite simply,theCommune was arational form for the emancipation of laborprecisely to the extent that itwas not a Statebut specificallysetout to smash it.He makestheir pposition unmistakeably clear:

The true antithesis to theEmpire itself - that is to the statepower, the centralised executive, of which the SecondEmpire was only the exhausting formula - was theCommune ... This was, therefore, a Revolution not againstthis or that, legitimate, constitutional, republican orImperialist form of State Power. Itwas a Revolution againstthe State itself, of this supernaturalist abortion of society, aresumptiony thepeople for thepeople of its wn sociallife. It was not a revolution to transfer it from one factionof the ruling classes to another, but a Revolution to breakdown this horrid machinery of classdomination itself... TheSecond Empire was the final form of this State usurpation.The Commune was its definite negation, and, therefore, theinitiation of the social Revolution of the 19th century (pp.150-51).

To understand the full significanceof this(whichwe would argueMarxism in generalhas not) [31]we need to look indetail atwhatthedrafts and textof The Civil War have tosay both about the State and about itsantithesis the Commune. To do so is tohighlightone of the oddest of gaps inMarxcommentary. For these texts contain Marx'sfullest discussion of the State since themid-1840s. And this just happens to be theone area where Marx indicated he thoughtCapital most in need of his personalsupplementation [32].The Civil War offers both a historicalsketch of the evolution of the French Stateand an implicittheory f themodern State asa political form. The roots of France's "centra?lised statemachinerywhich, with its ubiqui?tous and complicated military, bureaucratic,clerical and judiciary organs, entoils (inmeshes) the livingcivil society likea boaconstrictor" lie in theperiod of Absolutism. Itwasfirst forged as "a weapon of nascent modernsociety in its struggleof emancipation fromfeudalism": seigneurial privileges were"transformed into theattributesof a unitarystate power", feudal retinues replaced by astandingarmy, feudal dignitaries supplantedby salaried state functionaries, nd "the che?quered (partycoloured) anarchy of medievalpowers" supersededby "the regulatedplan ofa Statepower, with a systematic and hierarchicdivision of labour' (p. 148).



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72The 1789 revolution took "centralisation

and organisation of state power" further."With its task to found national unity (tocreatea nation)" it"had tobreak down all lo?cal, territorial,townish and provincial inde?pendence." In expanding the "circumferenceand attributes" of the State, the revolutionalso increased its "independence, and its supernaturalist sway of real society" (p. 148).The ensuing national unity,Marx observes,"if originallybrought about by political for?ce" become "a powerful coefficientof socialproduction" (p. 75). The Napoleonic Empireperfected this "parasitical [excresence upon]civil society" (p. 148).At home it"served ...to subjugate theRevolution and annihilate allpopular liberties", abroad itwas "an instru?ment of the French Revolution ... to create forFrance on theContinent insteadof feudalmo?narchiesmore or less states after the imageofFrance" (p. 149).So "this state power forms in fact the crea?tion of themiddle class, first means tobreakdown feudalism, then a means to crush theemancipatory aspirations of the producers,the working class" (p. 150). This secondaspect now comes to the fore in Marx's ac?count. As

the modern struggle of classes, the struggle between labourand capital, assumed shape and form, the physiognomy ofthe state power underwent a striking change ...With the en?trance of society itself into a new phase, the phase of classstruggle, the character of its organized public force, thestate-power, could not but change also ... and more and mo?re develop its character as the instrument of class despotism,and political engine forcibly perpetuating the social enslave?ment of the producers of wealth by its appropriators, of theeconomic rule of capital over labour (p. 197).

Successive popular revolutions (1830, 1848)servedonly to transferstatepower fromonefractionof therulingclasses toanother,whilewith every revolution "the repressive charac?ter of the state power was more fully develo?ped and more mercilessly used" (p. 197). Sotoowas the financial burden of the state onthe people, amounting to "a second exploita?tion" (p. 149). In sum, "all revolutions thus

only perfected the statemachinery instead ofthrowing off this deadening incubus" (p.149).The Second Empire ofNapoleon III was the"last triumph of a State separate of andindependentfromsociety" (p. 151). "At firstview, apparently [elsewhereMarx writes: 'tothe eye of the uninitiated ...' - p. 150] theusurpatory dictatorship of the governmentalbody over society itself, ising like above andhumbling all classes, it has in fact, on theEuropean Continent at least,become theonlypossible stateform inwhich theappropriatingclass can continue to sway it over theproducing class" (p. 196). Professing to reston the producing mass of the nation, thepeasantry, and claiming to be above thelabor/capitalconflict, theEmpire "divest[ed]the statepower from itsdirect form of classdespotism" (p. 198). We come now to adelicate but critical distinction in Marx'sanalysis. On the one hand the State really"had grown so independentof society itselfthata grotesquelymediocre adventurerwith ahungry band of desperadoes behind himsufficedtowield it" (p. 149).But on theotherhand itwas not lessa bourgeois State forthat."Apparently the final victory of thegovernmental power over society ... in fact itwas only the last degraded and the onlypossible formof that class ruling" (p. 150).This amounts to an implicitand importantcriticism of the model of "Bonapartism"whichMarxists have habitually drawn fromThe Eighteenth Brumaire, of a genuinelyindependent state restingon a stalemate ofclass forces. In thepast suchamodel has beenused to "explain" bothHitler and StalinMarx iswriting here of France, and doesnot see French State forms as universals ofcapitalism.He notes that"peculiar historicalcircumstances" allowed England "tocomplete the great central State organs bycorrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, andferocious poor-law guardians in the towns,and virtually hereditarymagistrates in thecounties" (p. 75). Nonetheless Marx does see



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73France as representing "the classicaldevelopment .... of the bourgeois form ofgovernment" (p. 75).Mechanical applicationsof thisnotion have sometimeshad a banefulinfluence inEnglishMarxist historiography,and we ought to remember thatall historiesare "peculiar" rather than understand bypeculiarities deviations from an otherwise"normal" model [33],But suchqualificationsshould not blind us to thefruitful lementsofa general theoryof thebourgeois state to befound in these analyses.That theState is an instrument ormuchbetter, form of organization - of class poweris a commonplace of Marxist theory. Butother themes inMarx's analysis here usuallyreceive much less prominence in commentary,especiallywhere they touch on the issues ofthe roots of themodern State formas such.TheMarxist mainstream, taking itsdepartureinEngels' Anti-Duhring, identifiesthe Statewith governmentof people (as distinct fromadministrationof things) ngeneral and sees itas coterminouswith class society [34].Marx'susage here (though not everywhere in hiswritings) isnotablymore historicallyprecise.States inthesenseMarx uses thetermherearemodern inventions. The modern State as suchis specificallya form of organization of theclass power of thebourgeoisie, a formforgedin struggles first against feudalism and thenagainst theworking class. This is not to saythat there was no coercive governance beforethebourgeoisie,merely that thisdid not takethe specificformof a State inMarx's presentsense.The converse of this is equally important.EverythingMarx says inThe CivilWar makesit evident that for him State formationwasinseparable from, and indispensible to, themaking of thecapitalistmode of production.The State is an essential relation [35] ofbourgeois society, not a "superstructure" inany normal sense of that unfortunate term.The State is not the political icing on theeconomic cake but one of itsmost importantingredients. his recuperates major theme f

Marx's writings of the 1840s: that "civilsociety" - here meaning bourgeois society[b?rgerliche esellschaft] - "must assert itselfin its external relations as nationality andinternallymust organise itself s State [36]."In France this occurred through thedevelopment of a quasi-independent centralState bureaucracy, in England through thegradual transformation, over a much longerperiod, of existingforms nd resources,givingmore apparent continuity (and leavingMarxist historianswith thepseudo-problemoffindingan English "equivalent" for 1789).But inboth cases national stateorganizationof thoseMax Weber called thenational citizenclass [37]was essential to the formationofmodern capitalism.What gives the State this historicalspecificity, ndeed constitutes itas a State, isitsveryseparation from"civil society". Thenovelty of the bourgeois organization of itscollectiveclass power lies in theexerciseof thispower througha distinctpolicy or arena ofgeneral interests, whose counterpart is adepoliticized civil society, the realm of theindividual,particular and private.Marx drewattention to thisas early as 1843:

The establishment of the political state and the dissolutionof civil society into individuals - whose relations with oneanother depend on law, just as the relations of men in thesystem of estates and guilds depended on privilege ... isaccomplished by one and the same act [38].

This separationof the State fromcivil society- and it is instructive thatMarx continues toemploy the latterterm inhis latewritings- iscentral toboth theanalysis of theState inTheCivil War andMarx's insistenceon theneedfor socialism to smash it. The growingseparationof theState, up to a pointwhere itbecomes "elaborated into seemingindependence from society" (p. 151), is amajor theme of the historical sketchsummarizedabove. Marx repeatedlylinksthisseparation to the wider social divisions oflabor characteristic of bourgeois society. It is"the state insofar as it forms through the



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74division of labor a special organism separatefrom society" (to quote another "late" text)[39] that forms the specific target of hiscritique.What is new in thewritings of the1870s as against the 1840s is the greatermaterialism ofMarx's grasp of thisdivision oflabor.As is clear fromMarx's analysis of theSecond Empire, this independenceof theStateis in one very material sense real. Thespecialization of themachinery of State didallow its capture by an "adventurer". Moregenerally this specialization provides the keyto the disjunctureMarx recognizes betweenthe general character of the State as abourgeois organization, and theparticularsofwho commands its apparatuses at any givenpoint in time.The institutional ndependenceof theState allows thepossiblityof itscontrol,at differenttimes,by competing fractionsofthe bourgeoisie or even by non-bourgeoisforces (as inMarx's - dubious - analysis ofthe British Constitution in which the"aristocracy" wield State power) [40]. Thisrecognition is fundamental to the empiricalrichness of Marx's political sociology, inwhich the State is clearly not just a pliantbourgeois tool. It also allows due room for thespecific interestsof State servants. But thisshould not be confusedwith independenceofthe State from bourgeois relations in anywider sense. Marx is equally adamant that nomatter who momentarily controls it, themodern State as such remains bourgeois. Itremains bourgeois by virtue precisely of itsform, that is, by virtueof its relationship tocivil society.The modern State form as such isintrinsicallyourgeois because theboundariesof political and private,general and personal,collective and individualwhich itpresupposesand articulatesare those corresponding to theconditions of commodity production. Mostdecisions regarding the allocation ofresources, for instance, are outside thepolitical sphere (at best theState "intervenes"in "The Economy"). These boundaries

circumscribewhat counts and can be practicedas politics, not just conceptually butmaterially through themeans of action theymake available or deny.The divisionsof laborthrough which the State is constructedconstitute nd limitboth thepermittedsphereof political debate and action and themodesof political participation available todifferentially ocated groups and individuals.We are of course talkingabout theattemptedrather han theachieved: thissocial geographyis a landscape of struggle.But thepoint wewant to emphasize here is that in thiswidercontext any "independence" of the State ispurely illusory. ar frombeing independent fsociety, the State is an essential form oforganization of b?rgerlicheGesellschaft itself.That iswhy itcannot be used by labor for itsown emancipation.

3. Socialist Construction as RevolutionAgainst the State

Which bringsus to theCommune, forMarxprecisely "the political form of the socialemancipation, of the liberationof labor" (p.154).What then is this sphynxso tantalizingto thebourgeoismind?One way of readingThe Civil War is simplyas amanifesto of extreme political democracy.This would focus on Marx's enthusiasm forthe Commune's achievement of real represen?tation "Never were elections more sifted, ne?ver delegates fuller representingthemassesfromwhich theyhad sprung" - p. 147) andgenuine public accountability, ensured byopenness of sittings, publication of procee?dings and revocability of delegates. Somemight perhaps pause tonote thatadministrati?ve and judicial personnelwere also tobe elec?tive and revocable (pp. 140, 153, 200). Andthosewith amaterialist bentmight remindusthat thisdemocratization of thepolitywas tobe protected by disbanding thearmy, armingthepeople, and payingCommunal functiona?ries workmen's wages. If we add the caveat



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76force opposed to and organised against them) of societywielded for their ppressionby their nemies p. 152).

This is perhaps rather abstract, but it iassimportant to grasp the overall thrust ofMarx's analysis (and note itscontinuitieswith1843). The way he develops his argument,however, ishighlymaterialist.Against theAnarchist absurdity that theState can be decreed away,Marx argued thenecessity of transforming those materialconditions of civil societywhich sustain it.The Commune "had no ready-madeUtopiasto introducepar deeret du peuple" (p. 77).Time, and long class struggles,would beneeded for labor to free itselffrom themuckof ages [50].The Commune was nomore thana "rational medium" for those struggles:

As the State machinery and parliamentarism are not the reallife of the ruling classes, but only the organised generalorgans of their dominion, the political guarantees and formsand expressions of the old order of things, so the Communeis not the social movement of the working class and of ageneral regeneration of mankind, but the organised meansof action. The Commune does not do away with the classstruggles, through which the working class strives to theabolition of all classes ... (p. 154).

Marx goes on to draw an explicit parallel(which the lateMao Tsetung would haveappreciated [51]) between the class strugglesof socialist construction and the centurieslong struggles through which slavery wastransformed into feudalism and feudalismintocapitalism (pp. 154-55).This emphasisonthe complexity and protractedness of classstruggleafter anything thatmight be called"the" socialist revolution is a general featureof Marx's latewritings [52].But thisdoes not legitimatewhat we mightcall theBolshevik absurditythat "proletarianState" can be used and will then either"wi?theraway" or be "thrown away" [53]. Sixtyyears after theOctober revolution, is itnot ti?me socialists abandoned this miable butmur?derous fantasy?There is not a whiff of it inThe Civil War inFrance. The Commune canbe an appropriate form for labor's self

emancipation because, and to theextentthat,it is amaterial and present challenge to thoserelations which perpetuate labor's sub?ordination.Central to the latter s the separa?tion between a specialized State and a civil so?cietywithout social control. Breaking downthis separation is thereforenot forMarx oneof communism's remote objectives, but an indispensible part of any conceivablemeans forits ttainment.What needs tobe understood isthatMarx isbeing everybit asmaterialist hereas inhis critiqueof theAnarchists. If theob?jective is labor's self-emancipationthemeanshave to be "prefigurative", because they aretheonly ones which will work.Extending the principles of election andrevocability to administrative and juridicalfunctionaries, for instance, is significant inthiscontext as an extension of thesphere ofsocial control beyond the realm of thepolityas traditionallyunderstood. So too are theCommune's infractionsupon the erstwhile"private jurisdiction" of employers in"their" factories and mills, one of the veryfewmeasures Marx hails as being for theworking class (p. 138). The Critique of theGotha Programme extends thisawareness ofthe needs for certain despotic inroads uponbourgeois right [54].More generally,Marxcelebrated the fact that "the initiativein allmatters of social life [was] to be reserved tothe Commune" (p. 200). What saves thisfrom being a blueprint for totalitarianaggrandizement of a strengthened centralState is that the forms throughwhich this"social control" was exercisedwere not intheleast statelike,but part of a wider revolutionwithin civil society gainst any suchalienationof social powers. This concept of "socialcontrol" is keyone inMarx [55].His meaningisexactlytheopposite of thatsense ithas sinceacquired inorthodox and radical sociologiesalike. Marx isnot referring o theattemptedcontrol of society by the State, but toconscious, collective and egalitarian control ofsocietyby itsmembers - a situationwhich inhis view would render States both impossible



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77and unnecessary.The measures on which Lenin focuses, forfull political democracy, are of course animportantpart of this, but not in and ofthemselves (nor yet, we might add, whenmerely supplemented by expropriation ofcapitalists if the program for socialistconstruction henpursuedmakes use of Statistformsof economic and other regulation,as intheBolshevik case [56]).What Lenin neglects,andMarx attends to indetail - above all in thedrafts is thewider contextof revolutionizingcircumstancesand selveswhich alone makessuch measures meaningful elements ofsocialist transformation. Marx is clear that theCommune stood for a once and for allreduction in the scale, power and cost of anycentral societal authority.Abolition of thestanding army has a multiple significancehere. Yet, it does disarm the counter?revolution.But equally importanttoMarx, itwas "the firsteconomical conditio sine quafor all social improvements,discarding atonce thissourceof taxes and statedebts" (p.152).Marx saw theCommune as arguring allFrance organised into self-working nd selfgoverning communes ... with the army ofstateparasites removed ... [and] the statefunctions reduced to a few functions forgeneralnational purposes (p. 154).What wassought was "the political unity of Frenchsociety itself through the Communalorganisation" instead of "that centralisationwhich has done its service against feodality,but has become themere unityof an artificialbody, resting on gendarmes, red and blackarmies, repressing the life of real society" (pp.167-68). This is a far cry fromthemodel of"democratic centralism" Lenin somewhatcasuisticallyextractsfromthefinal text fTheCivil War [57]. It isabundantlyclear fromthedrafts thatMarx's approval was fora highlydecentralized form of society, with localCommunes being sovereign in all except theveryfewfunctionsgenuinely"necessitated bythe general and common wants of thecountry" (p. 100).

We have left hemore importantfeature fMarx's account until the end. The means forall thiswas a sustainedattack on thedivisionsof labor that constitute administration andgovernment as "mysteries, transcendentfunctionsonly tobe trustedto thehands of atrained caste" (p. 153). It is of the utmostimportance, first, thatMarx brands this,unequivocally, as "a delusion" (p. 153), andsecond, that it isa delusion he insists oth canandmust bematerially challengednow, not inthe communisthereafter.Breaking down thiscentral and constitutivefacet of capitalism'swider division of laborwas not somethingtoawait development of "the productive forces"and requisite levels of popular education ontheone hand and the technical sophisticationof themachineryof centralgovernment n theother, as The State andRevolution more thanhints [58]. The Commune was such achallenge, and thatwas whyMarx hailed it sa social discoveryofmonumental significancefor the emancipation of labor.He is clear:

The delusion as if administration and political governingwere mysteries, transcendent functions only to be trusted tothe hands of a trained caste - stateparasites, richly paidsycophants and sinecurists, in the higher posts, absorbingthe intelligence of the masses and turning them againstthemselves in the lower places in the hierarchy. Doing away

with the state hierarchy altogether and replacing thehaughteous masters of the people into always removableservants, amock responsiblity by a real responsiblity, as theyact continuously under public supervision. Paid like skilledworkmen ... The whole sham of state-mysteries and statepretentions was done away [with] by a Commune, mostlyconsisting of simple working men ... doing their workpublicly, simply, under themost difficult and complicatedcircumstances, and doing it ... for a few pounds, acting inbroad daylight with no pretentions to infallibility, not hidingitself behind circumlocution offices, not ashamed to confessblunders by correcting them. Making in one order the publicfunctions - military, administrative, political - realworkmen's functions, instead of the hidden attributes of atrained caste ...Whatever themerits of the single measuresof the Commune, its greatest measure was its ownorganisation ... proving its life by its vitality, confirming itsthesis by its action ... giving body to the aspirations of the

working class of all countries (p. 153).



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784. Marx's Materialism - Continuities andContradictions

The full significance of Marx's laterwritingsonRussia only emergeswhen they reseen in context - the immediate context ofMarx's otherwritingsof the 1870s and 1880s(and thepolitical experiencewhich gave rise tothem), and the broader context of thedevelopmentof his thought s a whole.Wadaeffectively gnores the first,while Shanin inour view at least greatly oversimplifies thesecond. Wada's and Shanin's articles are inmany ways path-breaking. They documentreal and importantdevelopments inMarx'sthinking on peasants, the obshchina, andperipheral capitalism, and draw out relevantand timely implications for traditionalevolutionist, progressivist readings of Marx.But theirneglect or simplicationsof contextalso means, paradoxically, that in otherrespectsWada and Shanin undervalue theimportance of "late Marx".When read against the background ofMarx's writings on the Paris Commune, forinstance,what ismost striking n the drafts ofthe letter to Vera Zasulich (and virtuallyignored by both Wada and Shanin) is anexactly parallel concern with the centrality oftheState to capitalistdevelopment on theonehand, and the appropriateness of theobshchina as a formthroughwhich labor canemancipate itself on the other. Marx'sscenario is once again a communal revolutionagainst the State. Marx detects a "deep-seateddualism" [59] within the Russian villagecommunity, of private and collectivetendencies. This permits "an alternativedevelopment" [60] towards thedisintegrationof the community or towards socialism,depending entirely on the historicalenvironment. One alternative is hopeful:

The communal ownership of the soil offers it [the villagecommunity] a natural basis for collective appropriation, anditshistorical environment, the contemporaneous existence ofcapitalist production, lends it all thematerial conditions ofco-operative labour, organised on a vast scale. The

community can thus adopt the positive achievementselaborated by the capitalist system without having toundergo its hardships ... it can become the direct point oforigin of the economic system towards which modern societydevelops and it can cast off its old skin without firstcommittinguicide [61].

"It would, of course, be only a gradualchange,whichwould beginby establishingthenormal stateof the community in its resentform [62]." There exists already a basis forsocialist transformation in "the collectivemode of production" in jointly-ownedmeadowlands, whilst thepeasants' familiaritywith the artel would "greatly facilitate thetransitionfromagricultureby individualplotto collective agriculture [63]."But thispossibility, indeed theobshchina'svery existence, is threatenedby a conspiracyof powerful interests:What menaces the life of the Russian community is neitherhistorical necessity, nor a social theory: it is the oppressionby the tateand the xploitation ycapitalist ntrudershohave been made powerful at the expense and cost of thepeasants by the very same State [64].

The State has acted as a "hothouse" [65] forcapitalistdevelopment. Since the 1861Eman?cipation "the Russian community was put bythe State into an abnormal economic situati?on", and this "oppression from the outside"unleashed conflicts within the community it?self [66].This isnot "historic necessity", it isclass struggle. Marx similarly holds "govern?mental fetters" rather than any inherent primitivism responsible for perpetuating theisolation of communities [67].What is there?foreneeded is first nd foremosta revolutionagainst "this coincidence of destructive in?fluences":

If such a revolution takes place in time, if it concentrates allits forces to assure the free development of the ruralcommunity, this later will soon become the regeneratingelement of Russian society, and the factor giving itsuperiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalistsystem 68].

Marx's later writings as a whole can



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79

fruitfullye seen as a sustained reflection orbetter, a highly focussed and productivemoment in lifetime'sreflection, nformed yMarx's deep involvement in the politicalstruggles f the time

- on appropriateformsfor socialist transformation. A search, on theone hand, for social formswithin presentmodes of life and strugglewhich are capableof advancing the emancipation of labor, asearch for what we nowadays callprefigurativeforms,not inanyUtopian sensebut as material and effectivemeans forfurthering socialist transformation. And asober identification, n theotherhand, of themyriad social forms nd relations goingwellbeyond manifest property relations [69]:State, division of labor, forms of socialclassification and identity"encouraged" bycomplexmodes ofmoral and legal regulation- which block that emancipation and fetterthat transformation.This concern is not of course a feature ofMarx's post-Capitalwritingsonly, thoughit ismost developed there. His praise for theemancipatorypotentialof theParis Commune(despitewhat he considered itsmany errors[70]) or the obshchina (notwithstanding its"private side") has antecedents inhis eulogiesto thesuccessof theTen Hours Bill and to theco-operative movement in his 1864 InauguralAddress to the First International [71] -thoughhe well knew the extreme limitationsof co-operatives in a capitalist world, and wasno loverof the law. Going further ack wefind this salient comment on trade unionactivities:

In order to rightly appreciate the value of strikes andcombinations, we must not allow ourselves to be blinded bythe apparent insignificance of their economical results, buthold above all things in view their moral and politicalconsequences [72].

These are all what Marx calls "great facts"for socialism, prefigurative victories -however contradictory or compromised - forthe political economy of labor ("socialproduction controlled by social foresight")

over the political economy of capital [73].Such egalitarianand collectiveformsof sociallife, forms which permit its conscious anddemocratic controlbyall inthe interestsf all,are socialism's starting-point in the here andnow.The other, equally important ide of this isMarx's critique inhis later textsof forms ofbourgeois civilizationwhich will not furtherthe self-emancipationof labor, and thereforecannot be treated instrument ally. Pre-eminentamongst these is the State, and thewiderdivisions of labor in bourgeois society ofwhich its separability is one expression. Butthe point applies more generally. RaymondWilliams has put itwell:There is the one level at which we can say that a specific formwas historically productive and therefore historicallyvaluable - in that sense it was a major contribution tohuman culture. But we must also be able to say, ina distinctbut connected way, that it was a disastrously powerfulcontribution. In the same way one can acknowledge theproductive capacity of bourgeois society, or its politicalinstitutions, and yet distance oneself from them as creations

which not only later become, but in the very mode of theirconstitution always were, blocks on human freedom or evenhuman progress. If you cannot make the first judgement,then all history becomes a current morality, and there ceasesto be any history. If you cannot make the second, I do notknow what an affiliation to the working class would be forme [74].

Wada's and Shanin's demonstration ofMarx's growing (though as we have shown,not unheralded) reservations in his late textsabout the actual forms which capitalistdevelopment takes is germane here. It oughtto make us re-think our too linear, tooprogressivist, too economistic reading ofCapital itself, ust asMarx's treatment f theState and thedivision of labor inhis late textsshould lead us to read anew his stillmarginalized writingsof the 1840s.It would be a pity if Shanin's claims for"late Marx" (coupled perhaps withThompson's labellingGrundrisse and Capitalan "anti-Political Economy") had the samesort of effecton perceptions of Capital asAlthusser's periodization ofMarx had for a



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80timeon evaluations of the "early writings".We do not argue a continuity nMarx's workin the sense of denying genuine discovery inthewritingsof the 1870s and 1880s.There wasnovelty aplenty, leading at times as we haveshown toexplicitor implicit elf-criticism.utthere is a continuityof concern and the realimportance of Marx's late writings for hisoverall legacy lies inhelpingus seewhere thislies. For us the latewritingsput beyond anydoubt the centralityof what are too readilydismissed as Utopian elementswithinMarx'sthought, to the end of his days. Marx wasnever a Utopian socialist, still lesswas he anAnarchist. He foughtbitterstruggleswith theAnarchists inthe 1870s, in thecourseof whichhe denounced "political indifferentism" ithSwiftian irony [75]. But nor was he aninstrumentalist, despised "Realpolitiker"[76].He was as passionate a critic fLassalle's"state socialism" as he was of Bakunin orProudhon. Political indifferentism oes notengagewith the facts of bourgeois power. ButRealpolitik only appears todo so, because themeans it employs are themselves forms ofbourgeois domination. In our times, the latterseems themore pertinent lesson. We can learna lot from Marx's close attention toforms.

NOTES1. T. Shanin, "Marx and the Peasant Commune", and H.Wada "Marx and Revolutionary Russia", History

Workshop (12) 1981. Reprinted in T. Shanin (ed.), LateMarx and the Russian Road (London: Routledge, 983). Amuch reduced version of the present paper is also availablein the latter source, together with a biographical note on"late Marx" by Derek Sayer.

2. K. Marx, "The British Rule in India" and "Future Resultsof the British Rule in India", inMarx/Engels, CollectedWorks (hereafterited sMECW) vol. 12;MECWU, pp.187-8.

3. Represented in different areas by e.g. G. Cohen, Marx'sTheory of History: a Defense (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1978); B. Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer ofCapitalism (London: Macmillian, 1980).

4. On Engels and Darwinism, see Benton, "Natural Scienceand Cultural Struggle", J.Mepham and D. Ruben (eds),Issues inMarxist Philosophy (Brighton 1979) vol. 2.

5. Marx to Engels, January 16, 1861. In Marx/Engels,Selected Correspondence (Moscow, 1975; hereafter cited asSC). Edward Thompson makes the same point in his ThePoverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin,1978) pp. 255-6.

6. Margaret Fay, "Did Marx Offer to Dedicate Capital toDarwin? A Reassessment of the Evidence", Journal of theHistory of Ideas, vol. XXXIX, no. 1 (1978).

7. The German Ideology, MECW 5, p. 50. CompareGrundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 106.

8. The Poverty of Phiosophy, MECW 6, pp. 173-4.9. For typically "empiricist" injunctions inMarx see, InterAlia,MECW 5,pp. 31, 35, 43;MECW 6, p. 170;Capital,

vol. 3 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981) pp. 927-8;Afterword to Capital, vol. 1 (London: Lawrence andWishart, 1970), p. 19; Marginal notes on A. Wagner'sTextbook in Value: Studies byMarx (London: NewPark, 1976) p. 214 and passim. Althusser was amongstthose who found such "empiricism" disturbing; see hisremarks on Marx's "Works of the Break", in For Marx(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) pp. 31-8.

10. MECW 5, p. 37.11. In The First International and After (ed. D. Fernbach,

Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974; hereafter cited as FI);firstnglishpublicationinCahiers de riSEA, 91 serie ,no. 2, Paris (1959).

12. See D. Sayer. "Karl Marx 1867-1883: A BiographicalNote". In T. Shanin (ed), Late Marx, op. cit

13. Grundrisse, p. 102.14. Capital I, pp. 8, 10.15. Letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski, (?) November 1877 (see

Wada). SC, pp. 291-4.16.MECW, 6, p. 167.17. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Civil War in theUnited States

(New York: International Publishers, 1974) p. 84.18. Ibid. p. 19. The text goes on to repeat The Poverty of

Philosophy's analysis of the indispensability of blackslavery to the English cotton industry.

19. "Outline of a Report on the Irish Question", inK. Marxand F. Engels Ireland and the Irish Question (Moscow,1978)pp. 139, 142, 143.

20. See for example "Notes for An Undelivered Speech onIreland" (Ireland and the Irish Question pp. 130-5) and theletters on Ireland collected inFI, pp. 158-171.

21. Capital I, p. 236.22. Ibid., p. 451. See further, K. Mohri, "Marx and

Underdevelopment", Monthly Review,, vol. 31, no. 11,1979. We might recall here Marx's formulation of what he(untypically) referred to as "The absolute general law ofcapitalist accumulation", Capital I, pp. 643-4.

23. On the 2nd International see Lucio Colletti's brilliant essay"Bernstein and theMarxism of the 2nd International" inhis From Rousseau to Lenin (London: New Left Books,1972); on Bolshevism, Phillip Corrigan, Harvie Ramsay,

Derek Sayer, Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory(London: Macmillian, and New York, Monthly Review



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81Press, 1978) and "Bolshevism and the USSR", New LeftReviewNo. 125, 1981).24. Thompson suggests his inPoverty of Theory,pp. 247f.Even in Grundrisse there are extensive passages on forinstance law, individuality, ubjectivity n bourgeoiscivilization going well beyond an "anti-PoliticalEconomy", notwithstanding the Hegelian form of thework. But there were important shifts between Grundrisseand Capital, on which we have commented elsewhere. SeeDerek Sayer, Marx'sMethod (Harvester, 2nd ed., 1983) ch.4.

25. Op. cit., note 3 above.26. H. Draper (ed), Writings on the Paris Commune (New

York: Monthly Review Press, 1971). All subsequent in-textpage references to this source.27. 1859 refacetoA Contribution othe ritiqueofPoliticalEconomy (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971) p. 20.28. TheManifesto of theCommunist arty (Moscow, 1973)pp. 7-9.

29. Ibid., pp. 74-5.30. MECW 10, pp. 285-6n.31. See note 23 above. A towering exception isMao Tsetung.

See Philip Corrigan, Harvie Ramsay, Derek Sayer, ForMao (London: Macmillan, 1980).

32. Writing of his plans for Capital to Kugelmann onDecember 28, 1862, Marx said that the volume on "capitalingeneral" was "the quintessence", and "the developmentof therest with heexception erhapsof therelationsfdifferent state forms to different economic structures ofsociety) ouldbe easily ccomplished yothers n the asisthus provided" (Letters to Dr. Kugelmann, London:

Martin Lawrence, n.d.). Marx had always intended hisopus to discuss the State: the drafts of The Civil War arethe nearest, after 1867, he came to it, and provide the

means for evaluating the continuity or otherwise in histhought of themajor themes of the analysis of the State hehad developed in the 1840s.

33. See E. P. Thompson's brilliant "Peculiarities of theEnglish", reprinted in The Poverty of Theory.

34. F. Engels, Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science(Anti-Duhring) (New York: International Publishers, 1972)pp. 306-8.

35. See furtherMECW 5, p. 52; Corrigan, Ramsay, Sayer,"The State as a Relation of Production", in PhilipCorrigan (ed), Capitalism, State Formation and MarxistTheory London:Quartet, 1980).

36. MECW 5, p. 89.37. See his General Economic History (New York: Collier,

1966) p. 249 and Part 4 passim.38. On the Jewish question, MECW 3, p. 167. Cf. pp. 32,

197-9. We have discussed Marx's work on law - a closelyrelated topic - in detail inCorrigan and Sayer, "How theLaw Rules" inB. Fryer, et al (eds), Law, State and Society(London: Croom Helm, 1981).

39. Critique of theGotha Programme, inFI, p. 356.40. "The British Constitution", MECW 14, pp. 53-6.

41. In his Selected Works in 3 volumes (Moscow, 1970) vol. 2,pp. 312-327.

42. Ibid., p. 318.43. Ibid., pp. 292, 317, 313.44. Ibid., p. 317.45. Ibid., pp. 316-7.46. Ibid., p. 317.47. Anti-Duhring, p. 307. The government of

persons/administration of things antithesis is from SaintSimon. The danger with it is when persons becomeadministered like things in the name of States witheringaway.

48. MECW I, p. 168.49. MECW 5, p. 83.50. The image is from The German Ideology: MECW 5, p. 53.51. See above all his 4415Theses", inOn Khrushchev's Phoney

Communism ... (Peking: FLP, 1964).52. Compare e.g. Critique of theGotha Programme, FI, pp.346-7, and passim.53. See for instance Lenin's 1919 Lecture on the State, in his

Collected Works vol. 19, p. 488.54. FI, pp. 346-7. See Corrigan and Sayer, "How the Law

Rules", op. cit.55. See for instance its use in Capital I (Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1976 translated) p. 412. The Moore and Avelingedition otherwise used in this paper is "Control on the Partof Society" (p. 298).

56. See Corrigan et al, Socialist Construction and MarxistTheory, chs. 2, 3, and passim, and the remarkablecollection Lenin on the Soviet Apparatus (Moscow, 1969).57. The State and Revolution, pp. 323-5.

58. Ibid., pp. 322-3. This should be read with the passage fromthe lecture on the State cited in note 53 above.

59. Letter to Zasulich, 2nd draft, in P. Blackstock and B.Hoselitz (eds), The Russian Menace to Europe (London,Allen & Unwin, 1953) p. 223. Cf. 3rd draft pp. 220, 221.Translations from this source amended throughout.

60. Ibid., 3rd draft, p. 221.61. Ibid., pp. 221-2.62. Ibid., 2nd draft, p. 224.63. Ibid.64. Ibid.65. Ibid., 1stdraft, p. 225. Marx also used the hothouse image

in a famous passage in Capital I (Moore and Avelingtranslation) p. 751, which concludes that (State) force "isitself an economic power".

66. Letter to Zasulich, 1st draft, p. 225.67. Ibid., 2nd draft, p. 225.68. Ibid., 1st draft, p. 226. It is perhaps apposite to point out

that peasants in the USSR were eventually collectivizedforcibly, from above, with predictably disastrous politicaland productive consequences.

Collectivization has only ever been at all successful whenit proceeds from an assessment of existing co-operativeelements in the peasant community, as Marx suggests here,and as was the case inChina. See Jack Gray, "The Two



19/19

82Roads", inS. R. Schram (ed), Authority, Participation andCulturalChange inChina (Cambridge,1973) rForMao,Part 2, Essay 2.

69. On property relations as understood by Marx see Povertyof Philosophy, ECW 6, p. 197; MoralisingCriticism",Ibid., p. 336; German Ideology, MECW 5, p. 46, whichsees property as "the power of disposing of the labourpower of others" and asserts that "division of labour andprivate property are, after all, identical expressions."

70. See Marx's letters to Liebknecht of April 6, 1871, toKugelmann of April 12, 1871, to Frankel and Varlin ofMay 13, 1871, to Beesly of June 12, 1871, and toDomelaNieuwenhuis of February22, 1881,all inDraper (ed),Writings On the Paris Commune.

71. In FI, pp. 73-81.72. "Russian policy against Turkey -Chartism". MECW 12,

p. 169.

73. Inaugural Address to first International, FI, pp. 78-9. Marxtwice uses these same formulations in the drafts of TheCivil War. Writings on the Paris Commune, pp. 138, 155.

74. Raymond Williams, Politics and Letters (London: NewLeftBooks, 1979)p. 307.75. The relevant article is inFI, pp. 327-332.

76. See Marx(s letter to Kugelmann of February 23, 1865 (inFI, pp. 148-153) "Lassalle only imitated the gentleman oftheNational Association. But while they invoked Prussian'reaction' in the interests of the middle class, he shookhands with Bismarck in the interests of the proletariat.Those gentlemen were more justified than Lassalle, in sofar as the bourgeois is accustomed to regard the interestslying immediately before his nose as 'reality' ... while the

working class, in the very nature of things, must behonestly 'revolutionary' (p. 150).

sayer and corrigan on marx and state 22012014

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