The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Balducci’s Pizza Parlor Bet –With Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Balducci’s Pizza Parlor Bet –With Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula In Mind

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the girl in the red blue jeans
She's the queen of all the teens
She's the one that I know
She's the one that loves me so

Say be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the one that gots that beat
She's the one with the flyin' feet
She's the one that walks around the store
She's the one that gets more more more

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

You all know Frankie, right? Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, fierce Frankie when necessary, and usually kind Frankie by rough inclination. Yah, Frankie from the old North Adamsville neighborhood. Frankie to the tenement, the cold-water flat tenement, born. Frankie, no moola, no two coins to rub together except by wit or chicanery, poor as a church mouse if there ever was such a thing, a poor church mouse that is. Yes, that Frankie. And, as well, this writer, his faithful scribe chronicling his tales, his regal tales. Said scribe to the public housing flats, hot-water flats, but still flats, born. And poorer even than any old Frankie church mouse. More importantly though, more importantly for this story that I am about to tell you than our respective social class positions, is that Frankie is king, the 1960s king hell king of Balducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs,” if not then North Quincy’s finest pizza parlor still the place where we spent many a misbegotten hour, and truth to tell, just plain killed some time when we were down at our heels, or maybe down to our heels.

Sure you know about old Frankie’s royal heritage too. I clued you in before when I wrote about my lost in the struggle for power as I tried to overthrow the king when we entered North Quincy High in 1960. By wit, chicanery, guile, bribes, threats, physical and mental, and every other form of madness he clawed his way to power after I forgot the first rule of trying to overthrow a king- you have to make sure he is dead. But mainly it was his "style”, he mad-hatter “beat” style, wherefore he attempted to learn, and to impress the girls (and maybe a few guys too), with his arcane knowledge of every oddball fact that anyone would listen to for two minutes. After my defeat we went back and forth about it, he said, reflecting his peculiar twist on his Augustinian-formed Roman Catholicism, it was his god-given right to be king of this particular earthy kingdom but foolish me I tried to justify his reign based on that old power theory (and discredited as least since the 17th century) of the divine right of kings. But enough of theory. Here’s why, when the deal went down, Frankie was king, warts and all.

All this talk about Frankie royal lineage kind of had me remembering a story, a Frankie pizza parlor story. Remind me to tell you about it sometime, about how we used to bet on pizza dough flying. What the heck I have a few minutes I think I will tell you now because it will also be a prime example, maybe better than the one I was originally thinking about, of Frankie’s treacheries that I mentioned before. Now that I think about it again my own temperature is starting to rise. If I see that bastard again I’m going to... Well, let me just tell the story and maybe your sympathetic temperature will rise a bit too.

One summer night, yeah, it must have been a summer night because this was the time of year when we had plenty of time on our hands to get a little off-handedly off-hand. In any case it would have had to be between our junior and senior years at old North Quincy High because we were talking a lot in those days about what we were going to do, or not do, after high school. And it would have had to have been on a Monday or Tuesday summer night at that and we were deflated from a hard weekend of this and that, mainly, Frankie trying to keep the lid on his relationship with his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne. Although come to think of it that was a full-time occupation and it could have been any of a hundred nights, summer nights or not. I was also trying to keep a lid on my new sweetie, Lucinda, a sweetie who seemed to be drifting away, or at least in and out on me, mostly out, and mostly because of my legendary no dough status (that and no car, no sweet ride down the boulevard, the beach boulevard so she could impress HER friends, yah it was that kind of relationship). Anyway it's a summer night when we had time on our hands, idle time, devil’s time according to mothers’ wit, if you want to know the truth, because his lordship (although I never actually called him that), Frankie I, out of the blue made me the following proposition. Bet: how high will Tonio flip his pizza dough on his next pass through.

Now this Tonio, as you know already if you have read the story about how Frankie became king of the pizza parlor, and if you don’t you will hear more about him later, was nothing but an ace, numero uno, primo pizza flinger. Here’s a little outline of the contours of his art, although minus the tenderness, the care, the genetic dispositions, and who knows, the secret song or incantation that Tonio brought to the process. I don’t know much about the backroom work, the work of putting all the ingredients together to make the dough, letting the dough sit and rise and then cutting it up into pizza-size portions. I only really know the front of the store part- the part where he takes that cut dough portion in front of him in the preparation area and does his magic. That part started with a gentle sprinkling of flour to take out some of the stickiness of the dough, then a rough and tumble kneading of the dough to take any kinks out, and while taking the kinks out the dough gets flattened, flattened enough to start taking average citizen-recognizable shape as a pizza pie. Sometimes, especially if Frankie put in an order, old Tonio would knead that dough to kingdom come. Now I am no culinary expert, and I wasn’t then, no way, but part of the magic of a good pizza is to knead that dough to kingdom come so if you see some geek doing a perfunctory couple of wimpy knead chops then move on, unless you are desperate or just ravenously hungry.

Beyond the extra knead though the key to the pizza is the thinness of the crust and hence the pizza tosses. And this is where Tonio was a Leonardo-like artist, no, that’s not right, this is where he went into some world, some place we would never know. I can still see, and if you happened to be from old North Quincy, you probably can still see it too if you patronized the place or stood, waiting for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus, in front of the big, double-plate glass pizza parlor windows watching in amazement while Tonio tossed that dough about a million times in the air. Artistry, pure and simple.

So you can see now, if you didn’t quite get it before that Frankie’s proposition was nothing but an old gag kind of bet, a bet on where Tonio would throw, high or low. Hey, it’s just a variation on a sports bet, like in football, make the first down or not, pass or rush, and so on, except its pizza tosses, okay. Of course, unlike sports, at least known sports, there are no standards in place so we have to set some rules, naturally. Since it was Frankie’s proposition he got to give the rules a go, and I could veto.

Frankie, though, and sometimes he could do things simply, although that was not his natural inclination; his natural inclination was to be arcane in all things, and not just with girls. Simply Frankie said in his Solomonic manner that passed for wisdom, above or below the sign in back of Tonio’s preparation area, the sign that told the types of pizza sold, their sizes, their cost and what else was offered for those who didn’t want pizza that night.

You know such signs, every pizza palace has them, and other fast eat places too. You have to go to “uptown” eateries for a tabled menu in front of your eyes, and only your eyes, but here’s Tonio’s public offerings. On one side of the sign plain, ordinary, vanilla, no frills pizza, cheap, maybe four or five dollars for a large, small something less, although don’t hold me to the prices fifty years later for chrissakes, no fixings. Just right for “family night,” our family night later, growing up later, earlier in hot-water flats, public housing hot-water flats time, we had just enough money for Spam, not Internet spam, spam meat although that may be an oxymoron and had no father hard-worked cold cash for exotic things like pizza, not a whole one anyway, in our household. And from what Frankie told me his too.

Later , when we had a little more money and could “splurge” for an occasional take-out, no home delivery in those days, when Ma didn’t feel like cooking, or it was too hot, or something and to avoid civil wars, the bloody brother against brother kind, plain, ordinary vanilla pizza was like manna from heaven for mama, although nobody really wanted it and you just felt bloated after eating your share (and maybe the crust from someone who doesn’t like crust, or maybe you traded for it); or, plain, by the slice, out of the oven (or more likely oven-re-heated after open air sitting on some aluminum special pizza plate for who knows how long) the only way you could get it after school with a tonic (also known as soda for you old days non-New Englanders and progeny), usually a root beer, a Hires root beer to wash away the in-school blahs, especially the in-school cafeteria blahs.

Or how about plump Italian sausage, Tonio thickly-sliced, or spicy-side thinly-sliced pepperoni later when you had a couple of bucks handy to buy your own, and to share with your fellows (those fellows, hopefully, including girls, always hopefully, including girls) and finally got out from under family plain and, on those lucky occasions, and they were lucky like from heaven, when girl-dated you could show your stuff, your cool, manly stuff, and divide, divide, if you can believe that, the pizza half one, half the other fixings, glory be; onion or anchovies, oh no, the kiss of death, no way if you had the least hope for a decent night and worst, the nightmarish worst, when your date ordered her portion with either of these, although maybe, just maybe once or twice, it saved you from having to do more than a peck of a kiss when your date turned out not to be the dream vision you had hoped for; hams, green peppers, mushrooms, hamburg, and other oddball toppings I will not even discuss because such desecration of Tonio’s pizza, except, maybe extra cheese, such Americanized desecration , should have been declared illegal under some international law, no question; or, except, maybe again, if you had plenty of dough, had a had a few drinks, for your gourmet delight that one pig-pile hunger beyond hunger night when all the fixings went onto the thing. Whoa. Surely you would not find on Tonio’s blessed sign this modern thing, this Brussels sprouts, broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, wheat germ, whole wheat, soy, sea salt, himalaya salt, canola oil, whole food, pseudo-pizza not fit for manly (or womanly) consumption, no, not in those high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, eat today for tomorrow you may die days.

On the other side of the sign, although I will not rhapsodize about Tonio’s mastery of the submarine sandwich art (also known as heroes and about seventy-six other names depending on where you grew up, what neighborhood you grew up in, and who got there first, who, non-Puritan, got there first that is) are the descriptions of the various sandwich combinations (all come with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, the outlawed onions, various condiment spreads as desired along with a bag of potato chips so I won’t go into all that); cold cuts, basically bologna and cheese, maybe a little salami, no way, no way in hell am I putting dough up for what Ma prepared and I had for lunch whenever I couldn’t put two nickels together to get the school lunch, and the school lunch I already described as causing me to run to Tonio’s for a sweet reason portion of pizza by the slice just to kill the taste, no way is right; tuna fish, no way again for a different reason though, a Roman Catholic Friday holy, holy tuna fish reason besides grandma, high Roman Catholic saint Grandma, had that tuna fish salad with a splash of mayo on oatmeal bread thing down to a science, yah, Grandma no way I would betray you like that; roast beef, what are you kidding; meatballs (in that grand pizza sauce); sausage, with or without green peppers, steak and cheese and so on. The sign, in all its beatified Tonio misspelled glory. 

“Okay,” I said, that sign part seemed reasonable under the circumstances (that’s how Frankie put it, I’m just repeating his rationalization), except that never having made such a bet before I asked to witness a few Tonio flips first. “Deal,” said Frankie. Now my idea here, and I hope you follow me on this because it is not every day that you get to know how my mind works, or how it worked differently from star king Frankie, but it is not every day that you hear about a proposition based on high or low pizza tosses and there may be something of an art to it that I, or you, were not aware of. See, I was thinking, as many times as I had watched old saintly Tonio, just like everybody else, flip that dough to the heavens I never really thought about where it was heading, except those rare occasions when one hit the ceiling and stuck there. So maybe there was some kind of regular pattern to the thing. Like I say, I had seen Tonio flip dough more than my fair share of teenage life pizzas but, you know, never really noticed anything about it, kind of like the weather. As it turned out there was apparently no rhyme or reason to Tonio’s tosses just the quantity (that was the real secret to that good pizza crust, not the height of the throw), so after a few minutes I said "Bet." And bet is, high or low, my call, for a quarter a call (I had visions of filling that old jukebox of Tonio’s with my “winnings” because a new Dylan song had just come in that I was crazy to play about a zillion times, Mr. Tambourine Man). We are off.

I admit that I did pretty well for while that night and maybe was up a buck, and some change, at the end of the night. Frankie paid up, as Frankie always paid up, and such pay up without a squawk was a point of honor between us (and not just Frankie and me either, every righteous guy was the same way, or else), cash left on the table. I was feeling pretty good ‘cause I had just beaten the king of the hill at something, and that something was his own game. I rested comfortable on my laurels. Rested comfortably that is until a couple of nights later when we, as usual, were sitting in the Frankie-reserved seats (reserved that is unless there were real paying customers who wanted to eat their pizza in-house and then we, more or less, were given the bum’s rush) when Frankie said “Bet.” And the minute he said that I knew, I knew for certain, that we are once again betting on pizza tosses because when it came right down to it I knew, and I knew for certain, that Frankie’s defeat a few nights before did not sit well with him.

Now here is where things got tricky, though. Tonio, good old good luck charm Tonio, was nowhere in sight. He didn’t work every night and he was probably with his honey, and for an older dame she was a honey, dark hair, good shape, great, dark laughing eyes, and a melting smile. I could see, even then, where her charms beat out, even for ace pizza-flinger Tonio, tossing foolish old pizza dough in the air for some kids with time on their hands, no dough, teenage boys, Irish teenage boys to boot. However, Sammy, North Quincy High Class of ’62 (maybe, at least that is when he was supposed to graduate, according to Frankie, one of whose older brothers graduated that year), and Tonio’s pizza protégé was on duty. Since we already knew the ropes on this proposition I didn’t even bother to check and see if Sammy’s style was different from Tonio’s. Heck, it was all random, right?

This night we flipped for first call. Frankie won the coin toss. Not a good sign, maybe. I, however, like the previous time, started out quickly with a good run and began to believe that, like at Skeet ball (some call it Skee-ball but they are both the same–roll balls up a targeted area to win Kewpie dolls, feathery things, or a goof key chain for your sweetie) down at the amusement park, I had a knack for this form of betting. Anyway I was ahead about a buck or so. All of a sudden my “luck” went south. Without boring you with the epic pizza toss details I could not hit one right for the rest of the night. The long and short of it was that I was down about four dollars, cash on the table. Now Frankie’s cash on the table. No question. At that moment I was feeling about three-feet tall and about eight-feet under because nowadays cheap, no meaning four dollars, then was date money, Lucinda, fading Lucinda, date money. This was probably fatal, although strictly speaking the fate of that relationship was another story and I will not get into the Lucinda details, because when I think about it now that was just a passing thing, and you know about passing things- what about it.

What is part of the story though, and the now fifty years later still temperature-rising part of the story, is how Frankie, Frankie, king of the pizza parlor night, Frankie of a bunch of kindnesses, and of a bunch of treacheries, here treachery, zonked me on this betting scandal. What I didn’t know then was that I was set up, set up hard and fast, with no remorse by one Francis Xavier Riley, to the tenements, the cold-water flat tenements, born and his cohort Sammy. It seemed that Sammy owed Frankie for something, something never fully disclosed by either party, and the pay-off by Sammy to make him well was to “fix” the pizza tosses that night I just told you about, the night of the golden fleecing. Every time I said "high" Sammy, taking his coded signal from Frankie, went low and so forth. Can you believe a “king”, even a king of a backwater pizza parlor, would stoop so low?

Here is the really heinous part though, and keep my previous reference to fading Lucinda in mind when you read this. Frankie, sore-loser Frankie, not only didn’t like to lose but was also low on dough (a constant problem for both of us, and which consumed far more than enough of our time and energy than was necessary in a just, Frankie-friendly world) for his big Saturday night drive-in movie-car borrowed from his older brother, big-man-around-town date with one of his side sweeties (Joanne, his regular sweetie was out of town with her parents on vacation). That part, that unfaithful to Joanne part I didn’t care about because, once again truth to tell, old ever lovin’ sweetie Joanne and I did not get along for more reasons than you have to know. The part that burned me, and still burns me, is that I was naturally the fall-guy for some frail (girl in pizza parlor parlance time) caper he was off on.

Now I have mentioned that when we totaled up the score the Frankie kindnesses were way ahead of the Frankie treacheries, no question, which was why we were friends. Still, right this minute, right this 2014 minute, I am ready to go up to his swanky downtown Boston law office (where the men’s bathroom is larger than his whole youth time old cold- water flat tenement) and demand that four dollars back, plus interest. You know I am right on this one.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Bolshevik And Russian Left Oppositionist Kote Tsintsadze

Click on the title to link to an "American Left History" blog entry reviewing Leon Trotsky's "Portraits-Political and Personal", which contains an appreciation of his fellow Russian Left Oppositionist, the fallen Kote Tsintsadze.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Markin comment:

Below is the piece on Kote that is mentioned in the linked article.

Kote Tsintsadze- Leon Trotsky's Appreciation From His Book "Portraits-Political and Personal"

Alipi (Kote) M. Tsintsadze, born in Georgia in 1887, joined the Bolsheviks in 1903, doing party work in several Transcaucasian cities when he was not in tsarist prisons or exile. In the period of the 1905 revolution he organized, according to his own statement, "a fighting detachment of Bolsheviks for the purpose of robbing state treasuries." His closest co-worker in this activity was the legendary Kamo.
During the civil war he was chairman of first the Georgian and then the All-Caucasus Cheka, at a time when only the most incorruptible people were chosen for such posts. He was also a member of the Georgian Communist Party's Central Committee and the Georgian Soviet's Central Executive Committee, and one of the Communists in those committees who resisted Stalin's trampling on the national rights of the Georgian republic in 1922; in that dispute Lenin was on Tsintsadze's side and against Stalin's. Tsintsadze became a Left Oppositionist in 1923, was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, was sent into exile despite his bad health in 1928, and died in 1930 an unrepentant enemy of Stalinism. Tsintsadze's Memoirs were printed in a Georgian periodical in 1923-24 but have not been translated into English.

******

The translation of Trotsky's article, dated January 7, 1931, was first published, under the title "At the Fresh Grave of Kote Tsintsadze," in The Militant, February 15, 1931. It has been revised here by George Saunders.

******

It took quite exceptional conditions—tsarism, the underground, prison and Siberian exile, the long years of struggle against Menshevism, and especially, the experience of three revolutions—to produce fighters like Kote Tsintsadze. His life was entirely bound up with the history of the revolutionary move¬ment for more than a quarter of a century. He took part in all the stages of the proletarian insurgency—from the first propa¬ganda circles to the barricades and seizure of power. For many years he carried on the painstaking work of the underground organizer, in which the revolutionists constantly tied threads together and the police constantly untied them. Later he stood at the head of the Transcaucasian Cheka, that is, at the very center of power, during the most heroic period of the proletarian dictatorship.

When the reaction against October had changed the composition and the character of the party apparatus and its policies, Kote Tsintsadze was one of the first to begin a struggle against these new tendencies hostile to the spirit of Bolshevism. The first conflict occurred during Lenin's illness. Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, with the help of Dzerzhinsky, had carried out their coup in Georgia, replacing the core of Old Bolsheviks with careerist functionaries of the type of Eliava, Orakhelashvili, and the like. It was precisely on this issue that Lenin prepared to launch an implacable battle against the Stalin faction and the apparatus at the Twelfth Congress of the party. On March 6, 1923, Lenin wrote to the Georgian group of Old Bolsheviks, of which Kote Tsintsadze was one of the founders: "I am following your case with all my heart. I am indignant over Ordzhonikidze's rudeness and the connivance of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. I am preparing for you notes and a speech" [Collected Works, volume 45].

The subsequent course of events is sufficiently well known. The Stalin faction crushed the Lenin faction in the Caucasus. This was the initial victory for reaction in the party and opened up the second chapter of the revolution. Tsintsadze, suffering from tuberculosis, bearing the weight of decades of revolutionary work, persecuted by the apparatus at every step, did not desert his post of struggle for a moment. In 1928 he was deported to Bakhchisaray, where the wind and dust did their disastrous work on the remnants of his lungs. Later he was transferred to Alushta, where the chill and rainy winter completed the destruction.

Some friends tried to get Kote admitted to the Gulripshi Sanatorium at Sukhum, where Tsintsadze had succeeded in saving his life several times before during especially acute sieges of his illness. Of course, Ordzhonikidze "promised"; Ordzhonikidze "promises" a great deal to everyone. But the cowardliness of his character—rudeness does not exclude cowardice—always made him a blind instrument in the hands of Stalin. While Tsintsadze was literally struggling against death, Stalin fought all attempts to save the old militant. Send him to Gulripshi on the coast of the Black Sea? And if he recovers? Connections might be established between Batum and Constantinople. No, impossible!

With the death of Tsintsadze, one of the most attractive figures of early Bolshevism has disappeared. This fighter, who more than once risked his life and knew very well how to chastise the enemy, was a man of exceptional mildness in his personal relations. A good-natured sarcasm and a sly sense of humor were combined in this tempered terrorist with a gentleness one might almost call feminine.

The serious illness from which he was not free for a mo¬ment could neither break his moral resistance nor even succeed in overcoming his good spirits and gently attentive attitude toward people.

Kote was not a theoretician. But his clear thinking, his revolutionary passion, and his immense political experience—the living experience of three revolutions—armed him better, more seriously and firmly, than does the doctrine formally digested by those of less fortitude and perseverance. Just as Shakespeare's Lear was "every inch a king," Tsintsadze was every inch a revolutionary. His character revealed itself perhaps even more strik¬ingly during the last eight years—years of uninterrupted struggle against the advent and entrenchment of the unprincipled bureaucracy.

Tsintsadze instinctively fought against anything resembling treachery, capitulation, or disloyalty. He understood the significance of the bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev. But morally he could not tolerate this group. His letters testify to the full force of his revulsion—there is no other word for it—against those Oppositionists who, in their eagerness to insure their for¬mal membership in the party, betray it by renouncing their ideas.

Number 11 of the Biulleten Oppozitsii published a letter from Tsintsadze to Okudzhava. It is an excellent document— of tenacity, clarity of thought, and conviction. Tsintsadze, as we said, was not a theoretician, and he willingly let others formulate the tasks of the revolution, the party, and the Opposition. But any time he detected a false note, he took pen in hand, and no "authority" could prevent him from expressing his suspicions and from making his replies. His letter written on May 2 last year and published in number 12-13 of the Biulleten testifies best to this. This practical man and organizer safeguarded the purity of doctrine more reliably and attentively than do many theoreticians.

We often encounter the following phrases in Kote's letters: "a bad 'institution/ these waverings"; "woe to the people who can't wait"; or, "in solitude weak people easily become subject to all kinds of contagion." Tsintsadze's unshakable courage buoyed up his dwindling physical energy. He even viewed his illness as a revolutionary duel. In one of his letters several months before he died he wrote that in his battle against death he was pursuing the question: "Who will conquer?" "In the meantime, the advantage remains on my side," he added, with the optimism that never abandoned him.

In the summer of 1928, referring indirectly to himself and his illness, Kote wrote to me from Bakhchisaray:"... for many, many of our comrades and friends the thankless fate lies in store of ending their lives somewhere in prison or deportation. Yet in the final analysis this will be an enrichment of revolutionary history, from which a new generation will learn. The proletarian youth, when they come to know about the struggle of the Bolshevik Opposition against the opportunist wing of the party, will understand on whose side was the truth."

Tsintsadze could write these simple yet superb lines only in an intimate letter to a friend. Now that he is no longer alive, these lines may and must be published. They summarize the life and morality of a revolutionist of the highest caliber. They must be made public precisely so that the youth can learn not only from theoretical formulas but also from this personal example of revolutionary tenacity.

The Communist parties in the West have not yet brought up fighters of Tsintsadze's type. This is their besetting weakness, determined by historical reasons but nonetheless a weakness. The Left Opposition in the Western countries is not an exception in this respect and it must well take note of it.

Especially for the Opposition youth, the example of Tsintsadze can and should serve as a lesson. Tsintsadze was the living negation and condemnation of any kind of political careerism, that is, the inclination to sacrifice principles, ideas, and tasks of the cause for personal ends. This does not in the least rule out justified revolutionary ambition. No, political ambition plays a very important part in the struggle. But the revolutionary begins where personal ambition is fully and wholly subordinated to the service of a great idea, voluntarily submitting to and merging with it. Flirtation with ideas, dilettante dabbling with revolutionary formulations, changing one's views out of personal career considerations—these things Tsintsadze pitilessly condemned through his life and his death. His was the ambition of unshakable revolutionary loyalty. This is what the proletarian youth should learn from him.

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-HONOR LENIN, LUXEMBURG AND LIEBKNECHT- THE THREE L’S-Honor Russian Bolshevik Leader Vladimir Lenin! -Reformism in the Russian Social-Democratic Movement(1911)

Markin comment

EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. HERE’S WHY WE HONOR VLADIMIR LENIN
*******
V. I. Lenin
Reformism in the Russian Social-Democratic Movement

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Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 23, September 14(1), 1911. Published according to the Sotsial-Demokrat text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1974], Moscow, Volume 17, pages 229-241.
Translated: Dora Cox
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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The tremendous progress made by capitalism in recent decades and the rapid growth of the working-class movement in all the civilised countries have brought about a big change in the attitude of the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Instead of waging an open, principled and direct struggle against all the fundamental tenets of socialism in defence of the absolute inviolability of private property and freedom of competition, the bourgeoisie of Europe and America, as represented by their ideologists and political leaders, are coming out increasingly in defence of so-called social reforms as opposed to the idea of social revolution. Not liberalism versus socialism, but reformism versus socialist revolution—is the formula of the modern, “advanced”, educated bourgeoisie. And the higher the development of capitalism in a given country, the more unadulterated the rule of the bourgeoisie, and the greater the political liberty, the more extensive is the application of the “most up-to-date” bourgeois slogan: reform versus revolution, the partial patching up of the doomed regime with the object of dividing and weakening the working class, and of maintaining the rule of the bourgeoisie, versus the revolutionary over throw of that rule.

From the viewpoint of the universal development of socialism this change must be regarded as a big step forward. At first socialism fought for its existence, and was con fronted by a bourgeoisie confident of its strength and boldly and consistently defending liberalism as an integral system of economic and political views. Socialism has grown into a force and, throughout the civilised world, has already upheld its right to existence. It is now fighting for power and the bourgeoisie, disintegrating and realising the inevitability of its doom, is exerting every effort to defer that day and to maintain its rule under the new conditions as well, at the cost of partial and spurious concessions.

The intensification of the struggle of reformism against revolutionary Social-Democracy within the working-class movement is an absolutely inevitable result of the changes in the entire economic and political situation throughout the civilised world. The growth of the working-class movement necessarily attracts to its ranks a certain number of petty-bourgeois elements, people who are under the spell of bourgeois ideology, who find it difficult to rid themselves of that ideology and continually lapse back into it. We can not conceive of the social revolution being accomplished by the proletariat without this struggle, without clear demarcation on questions of principle between the socialist Mountain and the socialist Gironde[2] prior to this revolution, and without a complete break between the opportunist, petty-bourgeois elements and the proletarian, revolutionary elements of the new historic force during this revolution.

In Russia the position is fundamentally the same; only here matters are more complicated, obscured, and modified, because we are lagging behind Europe (and even behind the advanced part of Asia), and we are still passing through the era of bourgeois revolutions. Owing to this, Russian reformism is distinguished by its particular stubbornness; it represents, as it were, a more pernicious malady, and it is much more harmful to the cause of the proletariat and of the revolution. In our country reformism emanates from two sources simultaneously. In the first place, Russia is much more a petty-bourgeois country than the countries of Western Europe. Our country, therefore, more frequently produces individuals, groups and trends distinguished by their contradictory, unstable, vacillating attitude to socialism (an attitude veering between “ardent love” and base treachery) characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie in general. Secondly, the petty-bourgeois masses in our country are more prone to lose heart and to succumb to renegade moods at the failure of any one phase of our bourgeois revolution; they are more ready to renounce the aim of a complete democratic revolution which would entirely rid Russia of all survivals of medievalism and serfdom.

We shall not dwell at length on the first source. We need only mention that there is hardly a country in the world in which there has been such a rapid “swing” from sympathy for socialism to sympathy for counter-revolutionary liberalism as that performed by our Struves, Izgoyevs, Karaulovs, etc., etc. Yet these gentlemen are not exceptions, not isolated individuals, but representatives of wide spread trends! Sentimentalists, of whom there are many out side the ranks of the Social-Democratic movement, but also a goodly number within it, and who love to preach sermons against “excessive” polemics, against “the passion for drawing lines of demarcation”, etc., betray a complete lack of understanding of the historical conditions which, in Russia, give rise to the “excessive” “passion” for swinging over from socialism to liberalism,

Let us turn to the second source of reformism in Russia.

Our bourgeois revolution has not been completed. The autocracy is trying to find new ways of solving the problems bequeathed by that, revolution and imposed by the entire objective course of economic development; but it is unable to do so. Neither the latest step in the transformation of old tsarism into a renovated bourgeois monarchy, nor the organisation of the nobility and the upper crust of the bourgeoisie on a national scale (the Third Duma), nor yet the bourgeois agrarian policy being enforced by the rural superintendents[3]—none of these “extreme” measures, none of these “latest” efforts of tsarism in the last sphere remaining to it, the sphere of adaptation to bourgeois development, prove adequate, It just does not work! Not only is a Russia “renovated” by such means unable to catch up with Japan, it is perhaps, even beginning to fall behind China, Because the bourgeois-democratic tasks have been left unfulfilled, a revolutionary crisis is still inevitable. It is ripening again, and we are heading toward it once more, in a new way, not the same way as before, not at the same pace, and not only in the old forms—but that we are heading toward it, of that there is no doubt.

The tasks of the proletariat that arise from this situation are fully and unmistakably definite. As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary society, it must be the leader in the Struggle of the whole people for a fully democratic revolution, in the Struggle of all the working and exploited people against the oppressors and exploiters. The proletariat is revolutionary only insofar as it is conscious of and gives effect to this idea of the hegemony of the proletariat. The proletarian who is conscious of this task is a slave who has revolted against slavery. The proletarian who is not conscious of the idea that his class must be the leader, or who renounces this idea, is a slave who does not realise his position as a slave; at best he is a slave who fights to improve his condition as a slave, but not one who fights to overthrow slavery.

It is, therefore, obvious that the famous formula of one of the young leaders of our reformists, Mr. Levitsky of Nasha Zarya, who declared that the Russian Social-Democratic Party must represent “not hegemony, but a class party”, is a formula of the most consistent reformism. More than that, it is a formula of sheer renegacy. To say, “not hegemony, but a class party”, means to take the side of the bourgeoisie, the side of the liberal who says to the slave of our age, the wage-earner: “Fight to improve your condition as a slave, but regard the thought of overthrowing slavery as a harmful utopia”! Compare Bernstein’s famous formula—“The movement is everything, the final aim is nothing”—with Levitsky’s formula, and you will see that they are variations of the same idea. They both recognise only reforms, and renounce revolution. Bernstein’s formula is broader in scope, for it envisages a socialist revolution (==the final goal of Social-Democracy, as a party of bourgeois society). Levitsky’s formula is narrower; for while it renounces revolution in general, it is particularly meant to renounce what the liberals hated most in 1905-07—namely, the fact that the proletariat wrested from them the leadership of the masses of the people (particularly of the peasantry) in the struggle for a fully democratic revolution.

To preach to the workers that what they need is “not hegemony, but a class party” means to betray the cause of the proletariat to the liberals; it means preaching that Social-Democratic labour policy should be replaced by a liberal labour policy.

Renunciation of the idea of hegemony, however, is the crudest form of reformism in the Russian Social-Democratic movement, and that is why not all liquidators make bold to express their ideas in such definite terms. Some of them (Mr. Martov for instance) even try, mocking at the truth, to deny that there is a connection between the renunciation of hegemony and liquidationism.

A more “subtle” attempt to “substantiate” reformist. views is the following argument: The bourgeois revolution in Russia is at an end; after 1905 there can be no second bourgeois revolution, no second nation-wide struggle for a democratic revolution; Russia therefore is faced not with a revolutionary but with a “constitutional” crisis, and all that remains for the working class is to take care to defend its rights and interests on the basis of that “constitutional crisis”. That is how the liquidator Y. Larin argues in Dyelo Zhizni (and previously in Vozrozhdeniye).

“October 1905 is not on the order of the day,” wrote Mr. Larin. “If the Duma were abolished, it would be restored more rapidly than in post-revolutionary Austria, which abolished the Constitution in 1851 only to recognise it again in 1860, nine years later, without any revolution (note this!), simply because it was in the interests of the most influential section of the ruling classes, the section which had reconstructed its economy on capitalist lines.” “At the stage we are now in, a nation-wide revolutionary movement like that of 1905 is impossible.”

All Mr. Larin’s arguments are nothing more than an expanded rehash of what Mr. Dan said at the Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. in December 1908. Arguing against the resolution which stated that the “fundamental factors of economic and political life which gave rise to the Revolution of 1905, continue to operate”, that a new—revolutionary, and not “constitutional”—crisis was developing, the editor of the liquidators’ Golos exclaimed: “They [i.e., the R.S.D.L.P.] want to shove in where they have once been defeated”.

To shove again toward revolution, to work tirelessly, in the changed situation, to propagate the idea of revolution and to prepare the forces of the working class for it—that, from the standpoint of the reformists, is the chief crime of the R.S.D.L.P., that is what constitutes the guilt of the revolutionary proletariat. Why “shove in where they have once been defeated”—that is the wisdom of renegades and of persons who lose heart after any defeat.

But in countries older and more “experienced” than Russia the revolutionary proletariat showed its ability to “shove in where it has once been defeated” two, three, and four times; in France it accomplished four revolutions between 1789 and 1871, rising again and again after the most severe defeats and achieving a republic in which it now faces its last enemy—the advanced bourgeoisie; it has achieved a republic, which is the only form of state corresponding to the conditions necessary for the final struggle for the victory of socialism.

Such is the distinction between socialists and liberals, or champions of the bourgeoisie. The socialists teach that revolution is inevitable, and that the proletariat must take advantage of all the contradictions in society, of every weakness of its enemies or of the intermediate classes, to prepare for a new revolutionary struggle, to repeat the revolution in a broader arena, with a more developed population. The bourgeoisie and the liberals teach that revolutions are unnecessary and even harmful to the workers, that they must not “shove” toward revolution, but, like good little boys, work modestly for reforms.

That is why, in order to divert the Russian workers from socialism, the reformists, who are the captives of bourgeois ideas, constantly refer to the example of Austria (as well as Prussia) in the 1860s. Why are they so fond of these examples? Y. Larin let the cat out of the bag; because in these countries, after the “unsuccessful” revolution of 1848, the bourgeois transformation was completed “without any revolution”.

That is the whole secret! That is what gladdens their hearts, for it seems to indicate that bourgeois change is possible without revolution!! And if that is the case, why should we Russians bother our heads about a revolution? Why not leave it to the landlords and factory owners to effect the bourgeois transformation of Russia “without any revolution”!

It was because the proletariat in Austria and Prussia was weak that it was unable to prevent the landed proprietors and the bourgeoisie from effecting the, transformation regardless of the interests of the workers, in a form most prejudicial to the workers, retaining the monarchy, the privileges of the nobility, arbitrary rule in the countryside, and a host of other survivals of medievalism.

In 1905 our proletariat displayed strength unparalleled in any bourgeois revolution in the West, yet today the Russian reformists use examples of the weakness of the working class in other countries, forty or fifty years ago, in order to justify their own apostasy, to “substantiate” their own renegade propaganda!

The reference to Austria and Prussia of the 1860s, so beloved of our reformists, is the best proof of the theoretical fallacy of their arguments and of their desertion to the bourgeoisie in practical politics.

Indeed, if Austria restored the Constitution which was abolished after the defeat of the Revolution of 1848, and an “era of crisis” was ushered in in Prussia in the 1860s, what does this prove? It proves, primarily, that the bourgeois transformation of these countries had not been completed. To maintain that the system of government in Russia has already become bourgeois( as Larin says), and that government power in our country is no longer of a feudal nature (see Larin again), and at the same time to refer to Austria and Prussia as an example, is to refute oneself! Generally speaking it would be ridiculous to deny that the bourgeois transformation of Russia has not been completed: the very policy of the bourgeois parties, the Constitutional-Democrats and the Octobrists, proves this beyond all doubt, and Larin himself (as we shall see further on) surrenders his position. It cannot be denied that the monarchy is taking one more step towards adapting itself to bourgeois development—as we have said before, and as was pointed out in a resolution adopted by the Party (December 1908). But it is still more undeniable that even this adaptation, even bourgeois reaction, and the Third Duma, and the agrarian law of November 9, 1906 (and June 14, 1910) do not solve the problems of Russia’s bourgeois transformation.

Let us look a little further. Why were “crises” In Austria and in Prussia in the 1860s constitutional, and not revolutionary? Because there were a number of special circumstances which eased the position of the monarchy (the “revolution from above” in Germany, her unification by “blood and iron”); because the proletariat was at that time extremely weak and undeveloped in those countries, and the liberal bourgeoisie was distinguished by base cowardice and treachery, just as the Russian Cadets are in our day.

To show how the German Social-Democrats who themselves took part in the events of those years assess the situation, we quote some opinions expressed by Bebel in his memoirs (Pages from My Life), the first part of which was published last year. Bebel states that Bismarck, as has since become known, related that the king at the time of the “constitutional” crisis in Prussia in 1862 had given way to utter despair, lamented his fate, and blubbered in his, Bismarck’s, presence that they were both going to die on the scaffold. Bismarck put the coward to shame and persuaded him not to shrink from giving battle.

“These events show,” says Bebel, “what the liberals might have achieved had they taken advantage of the situation. But they were already afraid of the workers who backed them. Bismarck’s words that if he were driven to extremes he would set Acheron in motion [i.e., stir up a popular movement of the lower classes, the masses], struck fear into their heart.”

Half a century after the “constitutional” crisis which “without any revolution” completed the transformation of his country into a bourgeois-Junker monarchy, the leader of the German Social-Democrats refers to the revolutionary possibilities of the situation at that time, which the liberals did not take advantage of owing to their fear of the workers. The leaders of the Russian reformists say to the Russian workers: since the German bourgeoisie was so base as to cower before a cowering king, why shouldn’t we too try to copy those splendid tactics of the German bourgeoisie? Bebel accuses the bourgeoisie of not having “taken advantage of the “constitutional” crisis to effect a revolution because of their fear, as exploiters, of the popular movement. Larin and Co. accuse the Russian workers of having striven to secure hegemony (i.e., to draw the masses into the revolution in spite of the liberals), and advise them to organise “not for revolution”, but “for the defence of their interests in the forthcoming constitutional reform of Russia”. The liquidators offer the Russian workers the rotten views of rotten German liberalism as “Social-Democratic” views! After this, how can one help calling such Social-Democrats “Stolypin Social-Democrats”?

In estimating the “constitutional” crisis of the 1860s in Prussia, Bebel does not confine himself to saying that the bourgeoisie were afraid to fight the monarchy because they were afraid of the workers. He also tells us what was going on among the workers at that time. “The appalling state of political affairs,” he says, “of which the workers were becoming ever more keenly aware, naturally affected their mood. Everybody clamoured for change. But since there was no fully class-conscious leadership with a clear vision of the goal and enjoying the confidence of the workers, and since there existed no strong organisation that could rally the forces, the mood petered out [verpuffte]. Never did a movement, so splendid in its essence [in Kern vortreffliche], turn out to be so futile in the end. All the meetings were packed, and the most vehement speakers were hailed as the heroes of the day. This was the prevailing mood, particularly, in the Workers’ Educational Society at Leipzig.” A mass meeting in Leipzig on May 8, 1866, attended by 5,000 people, unanimously adopted a resolution proposed by Liebknecht and Bebel, which demanded, on the basis of universal, direct, and equal suffrage, with secret ballot, the convening of a Parliament supported by the armed people. The resolution also expressed the “hope that the German people will elect as deputies only persons who repudiate every hereditary central government power”. The resolution proposed by Liebknecht and Bebel was thus unmistakably revolutionary and republican in character.

Thus we see that at the time of the “constitutional” crisis the leader of the German Social-Democrats advocated resolutions of a republican and revolutionary nature at mass meetings. Half a century later, recalling his youth and telling the new generation of the events of days long gone by, he stresses most of all his regret that at that time there was no leadership sufficiently class-conscious and capable of understanding the revolutionary tasks (i.e., there was no revolutionary Social-Democratic Party understanding the task implied by the hegemony of the proletariat); that there was no strong organisation; that the revolutionary mood “petered out”. Yet the leaders of the Russian reformists, with the profundity of Simple Simons, refer to the example of Austria and Prussia in the 1860s as proving that we can manage “without any revolution”! And these paltry philistines who have succumbed to the intoxication of counter revolution, and are the ideological slaves of liberalism, still dare to dishonour the name of the R.S.D.L.P.!

To be sure, among the reformists who are abandoning socialism there are people who substitute for Larin’s straight forward opportunism the diplomatic tactics of beating about the bush in respect of the most important and fundamental questions of the working-class movement. They try to confuse the issue, to muddle the ideological controversies, to defile them, as did Mr. Martov, for instance, when he asserted in the legally published press (that is to say, where he is protected by Stolypin from a direct retort by members of the R.S.D.L.P.) that Larin and “the orthodox Bolsheviks in the resolutions of 1908” propose an identical “scheme”. This is a downright distortion of the facts worthy of this author of scurrilous effusions. The same Martov pretending to argue against Larin, declared in print that he, “of course” did “not suspect Larin of reformist tendencies”. Martov did not suspect Larin, who expounded purely reformist views, of being a reformist! This is an example of the tricks to which the diplomats of reformism resort.[1] The same Martov, whom some simpletons regard as being more “Left”, and a more reliable revolutionary than Larin, summed up his “difference” with the latter in the following words:

“To sum up: the fact that the present regime is an inherently contradictory combination of absolutism and constitutionalism, and that the Russian working class has sufficiently matured to follow the example of the workers of the progressive countries of the West in striking at this regime through the Achilles heel of its contradictions, is ample material for the theoretical substantiation and political justification of what the Mensheviks who remain true to Marxism are now doing.”

No matter how hard Martov tried to evade the issue, the result of his very first attempt at a summary was that all his evasions collapsed of themselves. The words quoted above represent a complete renunciation of socialism and its replacement by liberalism. What Martov proclaims as “ample” is ample only for the liberals, only for the bourgeoisie. A proletarian who considers it “ample” to recognise the contradictory nature of the combination of absolutism and constitutionalism accepts the standpoint of a liberal labour policy. He is no socialist, he has not understood the tasks of his class, which demand that the masses of the people, the masses of working and exploited people, be roused against absolutism in all its forms, that they be roused to intervene independently in the historic destinies of the country, the vacillations or resistance of the bourgeoisie notwithstanding. But the independent historical action of the masses who are throwing off the hegemony of the bourgeoisie turns a “constitutional” crisis into a revolution. The bourgeoisie (particularly since 1905) fears revolution and loathes it; the proletariat, on the other hands educates the masses of the people in the spirit of devotion to the idea of revolution, explains its tasks, and prepares the masses for new revolutionary battles. Whether, when, and under what circumstances the revolution materialises, does not depend on the will of a particular class; but revolutionary work carried on among the masses is never wasted. This is the only kind of activity which prepares the masses for the victory of socialism. The Larins and Martovs forget these elementary ABC truths of socialism.

Larin, who expresses the views of the group of Russian liquidators who have completely broken with the R.S.D.L.P., does not hesitate to go the whole hog in expounding his reformism. Here is what he writes in Dyelo Zhizni (1911, No. 2)—and these words should be remembered by everyone who holds dear the principles of Social-Democracy:

“A state of perplexity and uncertainty, when people simply do not know what to expect of the coming day, what tasks to set them selves—that is what results from indeterminate, temporising moods, from vague hopes of either a repetition of the revolution or of ‘we shall wait and see’. The immediate task is, not to wait fruitlessly for something to turn up, but to imbue broad circles with the guiding idea that, in the ensuing historical period of Russian life, the working class must organise itself not ‘for revolution’, not ‘in expectation of a revolution’, but simply [note the but simply] for the determined and systematic defence of its particular interests in all spheres of life; for the gathering and training of its forces for this many-sided and complex activity; for the training and building-up in this way of socialist consciousness in general; for acquiring the ability to orientate itself [to find its bearings]—and to assert itself—particularly in the complicated relations of the social classes of Russia during the coming constitutional reform of the country after the economically inevitable selfexhaustion of feudal reaction.”

This is consummate, frank, smug reformism of the purest water. War against the idea of revolution, against the “hopes” for revolution (in the eyes of the reformist such “hopes” seem vague, because he does not understand the depth of the contemporary economic and political contradictions); war against every activity designed to organise the forces and prepare the minds for revolution; war waged in the legal press that Stolypin protects from a direct retort by revolutionary Social-Democrats; war waged on behalf of a group of legalists who have completely broken with the R.S.D.L.P.—this is the programme and tactics of the Stolypin labour party which Potresov, Levitsky, Larin, and their friends are out to create. The real programme and the real tactics of these people are expressed in exact terms in the above quotation—as distinct from their hypocritical official assurances that they are “also Social-Democrats”, that they “also” belong to the “irreconcilable International”. These assurances are only window-dressing. Their deeds, their real social substance, are expressed in this programme, which substitutes a liberal labour policy for socialism.

Just note the ridiculous contradictions in which the reformists become entangled. If, as Larin says, the bourgeois revolution in Russia has been consummated, then the socialist revolution is the next stage of historical development. This is self-evident; it is clear to anyone who does not profess to be a socialist merely for the sake of deceiving the workers by the use of a popular name. This is all the more reason why we must organise “for revolution” (for socialist revolution), “in expectation” of revolution, for the sake of the “hopes” (not vague “hopes”, but the certainty based on exact and growing scientific data) of a socialist revolution.

But that’s the whole point—-to the reformist the twaddle about the consummated bourgeois revolution (like Martov’s twaddle about the Achilles heel, etc.) is simply a verbal screen to cover up his renunciation of all revolution. He renounces the bourgeois-democratic revolution on the pretext that it is complete, or that it is “ample” to recognise the contradiction between absolutism and constitutionalism; and he renounces the socialist revolution on the pretext that “for the time being” we must “simply” organise to take part in the “coming constitutional reform” of Russia!

But if you, esteemed Cadet parading in socialist feathers, recognise the inevitability of Russia’s “coming constitutional reform”, then you speak against yourself, for thereby you admit that the bourgeois-democratic revolution has not been completed in our country. You are betraying your bourgeois nature again and again when you talk about an inevitable “self-exhaustion of feudal reaction”, and when you sneer at the proletarian idea of destroying, not only feudal reaction, but all survivals of feudalism, by means of a popular revolutionary movement.

Despite the liberal sermons of our heroes of the Stolypin labour party, the Russian proletariat will always and invariably put the spirit of devotion to the democratic revolution and to the socialist revolution into all that difficult, arduous, everyday, routine and inconspicuous work, to which the era of counter-revolution has condemned it; it will organise and gather its forces for revolution; it will ruthlessly repulse the traitors and renegades; and it will be guided, not by “vague hopes”, but by the scientifically grounded conviction that the revolution will come again.


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Notes
[1] Compare the just remarks made by the pro-Party Menshevik Dnevnitsky in No. 3 of Diskussionny Listok (supplement to the Central Organ of our Party) on Larin’s reformism and Martov’s evasions. —Lenin

[2] Mountain and Gironde—the two political groups of the bourgeoisie during the French bourgeois revolution at the close of the eighteenth century. Montagnards (representatives of the Mountain), or Jacobins, was the name given to the more resolute representatives of the bourgeoisie, the revolutionary class of the time; they stood for the abolition of the autocracy and the feudal system. The Girondists, as distinct from Jacobins, vacillated between revolution and counter-revolution, and their policy was one of compromise with the monarchy.

Lenin called the opportunist trend in Social-Democracy the “socialist Gironde” and the revolutionary Social-Democrats “proletarian Jacobins”. After the R.S.D.L.P. split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin frequently stressed that the Mensheviks represented the Girondist trend in the working-class movement.

[3] Rural superintendent—the administrative post introduced in 1889 by the tsarist government in order to increase the power of the landlords over the peasants. The rural superintendents were selected from among the local landed nobility, and were given enormous administrative and judicial powers over the peasantry including the right to have the peasants arrested and flogged.

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Honor 1920s German Left Communist Leader Karl Korsch-Revolutionary Commune (1929)

Markin comment:

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
*******
Karl Korsch 1929

Revolutionary Commune (1929)

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First Published: in Die Aktion #19, 1929
Translated by Andrew Giles-Peters and Karl-Heinz Otto
Source: Class Against Class;
Transcribed: by Zdravko Saveski, for marxists.org 2009;


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I
What should every class-conscious worker know about the revolutionary commune in the present historical epoch which has on its agenda the revolutionary self-liberation of the working class from the capitalist yoke? And what is known about it today by even the politically enlightened and therefore self-conscious segment of the proletariat?

There are a few historical facts, together with a few appropriate remarks by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, which now after half a century of Social Democratic propaganda prior to the Great War and after the powerful new experiences of the last fifteen years, have already become part and parcel of proletarian consciousness. However, this piece of world history is today mostly dealt with as little in the schools of the "democratic" (Weimar) republic as it was earlier in the schools of the Kaiser's imperial monarchy. I am referring to the history and significance of the glorious Paris Commune, which hoisted the red flag of proletarian revolution on March 18, 1871, and kept it flying for seventy-two days in fierce battles against an onslaught of a well-armed hostile world. This is the revolutionary commune of the Paris workers in 1871 of which Karl Marx said in his address to the General Council of the International Workers Association on May 30, 1871, on the civil war in France, that its "true secret" lay in the fact that it was essentially a government of the working classes, "the result of the struggle by the producing class against the propertied class, the finally discovered political form under which the economic liberation of labor could develop." And it was in this sense that twenty years later, when on the occasion of the founding of the Second International and the creation of proletarian May Day celebrations as the first form of direct international mass action, the propertied classes once again were overcome with holy terror whenever the alarming words "dictatorship of the proletariat" were sounded. Friedrich Engels flung the proud sentences into the faces of the startled philistines: "Well then, gentlemen, would you like to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat." And then again, more than two decades later, the greatest revolutionary politician of our time, Lenin, analyzed in exact detail the experiences of the Paris Commune and the struggle against the opportunist decline and confusion in regard to the theories of Marx and Engels in the main part of his most important political work State and Revolution. And when a few weeks later the Russian Revolution of 1917, which had begun in February as a national and bourgeois revolution, broke through its national and bourgeois barriers and expanded and deepened into the first proletarian world revolution, the masses of West European workers (and the progressive sections of the working class of the whole world), together with Lenin and Trotsky, welcomed this new form of government of the revolutionary "council system" as the direct continuation of the "revolutionary commune" created half a century earlier by the Paris workers.

So far, so good. As unclear as the ideas may have been that bound together the revolutionary workers under the formula "all power to the councils," following that revolutionary period of storm and stress which spread far and wide over Europe after the economic and political upheavals of the four war years; however deep already then the rift may have been between these ideas and that reality which in the new Russia had come to the fore under the name of "Socialist Councils Republic" nonetheless, in that period the call for councils war a positive form of development of a revolutionary proletarian class will surging toward realization. Only morose philistines could bewail the vagueness of the councils concept at that time, like every incompletely realized idea, and only lifeless pedants could attempt to alleviate this defect by artificially contrived "systems" like the infamous "little boxes-system" of Daumig and Richard Muller. Wherever in those days the proletariat established its revolutionary class-dictatorship, as happened in Hungary and Bavaria temporarily in 1919, it named and formed its "government of the working class"-which was a result of the struggle by the producing class against the propertied class and whose determined purpose was to accomplish the "economic liberation of labor" - as a revolutionary council government. And if in those days the proletariat had been victorious in anyone of the bigger industrial countries, perhaps in Germany during the big commercial strikes of spring, 1919, or in the counteraction of the Kapp putsch in 1920, or in the course of the so-called Cunow strike during the Ruhr-occupation and the inflation year of 1923, or in Italy at the time of the occupation of factories in October, 1920-then it would have established its power in the form of a Council Republic and it would have united together with the already existing "Federation of Russian Socialist Soviet Republics" within a world-federation of revolutionary council republics.

Under today's conditions, however, the council concept has quite another significance, as does the existence of a so-called socialist and "revolutionary" council government. Now after the overcoming of the world economic crisis of 1921 and the related defeat of the German, Polish, and Italian workers-and the following chain of further proletarian defeats including the British general strike and miners' strike of 1926 - European capitalism has commenced a new cycle of its dictatorship on the backs of the defeated working class. Under these changed objective conditions we, the revolutionary proletarian class-fighters of the whole world, cannot any more hold subjectively onto our old belief, quite unchanged and unexamined, in the revolutionary significance of the council concept and the revolutionary character of council government as a direct development of that political form of the proletarian dictatorship "discovered" half a century ago by the Paris communardes.

It would be superficial and false, when looking at the flagrant contradictions existing today between the name and the real condition of the Russian "Union of Socialist Soviet Republics," to satisfy ourselves with the statement that the men in power in present-day Russia "betrayed" that original "revolutionary" council principle, just as in Germany Scheidemann, Muller, and Leipart have "betrayed" their "revolutionary" socialist principles of the dap before the war. Both claims are true without doubt. The Scheidemanns, Mullers, and Leiparts were traitors to their socialist principles. And in Russia the "dictatorship" exercised today from the highest pinnacle of an extremely exclusive government-party apparatus by means of a million-headed bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole of Soviet Russia-that only in name is still reminiscent of the "Communist" and "Bolshevik" party-has as little in common with the revolutionary council concept of 1917 and 1918 as the Fascist party dictatorship of the former revolutionary Social Democrat Mussolini in Italy. However, so little is explained in both cases in regard to "betrayal" that rather the fact of betrayal itself requires explanation.

The real task that the contradictory development from the once revolutionary slogan "All Power to the Councils" to the now capitalist-fascist regime in the so-called socialist soviet-state has put on the agenda for us class-conscious revolutionary proletarians is rather a task of revolutionary self-critique. We must recognize that not only does that revolutionary dialectic apply to the ideas and institutions of the feudal and bourgeois past, but likewise to all thoughts and organizational forms which the working class itself has already brought forward during the hitherto prevailing stages of its historical struggle for liberation. It is this dialectic which causes the good deed of yesterday to become the misery of today as Goethe said in his Faust - as it is more clearly and definitely expressed by Karl Marx: every historical form turns at a certain point of its development from a developing form of revolutionary forces of production, revolutionary action, and developing consciousness into the shackles of that developing form. And as this dialectical antithesis of revolutionary development applies to all other historical ideas and formations, it equally applies also to those philosophical and organizational results of a certain historical phase of revolutionary class struggle, which is exemplified by the Paris communards of almost 60 years ago in the "finally discovered" political form of government of the working class in the shape of a revolutionary commune. The same is applicable to the following new historical phase of struggle in the revolutionary movement of the Russian workers and peasants, and the international working class, which brought forth the new form of the "revolutionary councils power."

Instead of bewailing the "betrayal" of the council concept and the "degeneration" of the council power we must gather by illusion-free, sober, and historically objective observation the beginning, middle, and end of this whole development within a total historical panorama and we must pose this critical question: What is - after this total historical experience -the real historical and class-oriented significance of this new political form of government, which brought about in the first place the revolutionary Commune of 1871, although its development was forcefully interrupted after 72 days duration, and then the Russian Revolution of 1917 in concrete, more final, shape?

It is all the more necessary to once again basically orient ourselves concerning the historical and class-oriented character of the revolutionary commune and its further development, the revolutionary councils system, for even the barest of historical critique shows how completely unfounded the widely spread conception is today among revolutionaries who theoretically reject and want to "destroy" in practice the parliament, conceived as a bourgeois institution with regard to its origin and purpose, and yet at the same. time see the so-called council system, and also its predecessor the revolutionary commune;" as the essential form of proletarian government which stands with its whole essence in irreconcilable opposition to the essence of the bourgeois state, in reality it is the "commune," in its almost thousand years of historical development, which represents an older, bourgeois form of government than parliament. The commune forms from the beginnings in the eleventh century up to that highest culmination which the revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie found in the French Revolution of 1789/93 the almost pure class-oriented manifestation of that struggle which in this whole historical epoch the then revolutionary bourgeois class has waged in various forms for the revolutionary change of the whole hitherto existing feudal order of society and the founding of the new bourgeois social order.

When Marx - as we saw in the previously quoted sentence of his "Civil War in France" - celebrated the revolutionary Commune of the Paris workers of 1871 as the "finally discovered political form under which the economic liberation of labor could be consummated," he was aware at the same time that the "commune" could only take on this new character - its traditional form having been passed on over hundreds of years of bourgeois struggle for freedom - if it radically changed its entire previous nature. He expressly concerns himself with the misinterpretations of those who at that time wanted to regard this "new commune which shatters the modem state power" as a "revival of the medieval communes which preceded that state power and thence formed their foundation." And he was far removed from expecting any wondrous effects for the proletarian class struggle from the political form of the communal constitution per se- detached from the definite proletarian class-oriented content, with which the Paris workers, according to his concept, had for one historical moment filled this political form, achieved through struggle and put into the service of their economic self-liberation. To him the decisive reason enabling the Paris workers to make the traditional form of the "commune" the instrument of a purpose which was so completely opposed to their original historically determined goal lies, rather, on the contrary, in its being relatively undeveloped and indeterminate. In the fully formed bourgeois state, as it developed in its classical shape especially in France (i.e., in the centralized modern representative-state), the supreme power of the state is, according to the well known words of the "Communist Manifesto," nothing more than “an executive committee which administers the common affairs of the bourgeois class as a whole"; thus its bourgeois class character is readily apparent. However, in those underdeveloped early historical forms of bourgeois state constitutions, that also include the medieval "free commune," this bourgeois class character, which essentially adheres to every state, comes to light in a quite different form. As opposed to the later ever more clearly appearing and ever more purely developed character of the bourgeois state power as a "supreme public power for the suppression of the working class, a machine of class rule" (Marx), we see that in this earlier phase of development the originally determined goal of the bourgeois class organization still prevails as an organ of the revolutionary struggle of liberation of the suppressed bourgeois class against the medieval feudal rule. However little this struggle of the medieval bourgeoisie has in common with the proletarian struggle for emancipation of the present historical epoch it yet remains as a historical class struggle. And those instruments created then by the bourgeoisie for the requirements of their revolutionary struggle contain to a certain extent-but only to a certain extent--certain formal connecting links with the formation of today's revolutionary struggle of emancipation which is being continued by the proletarian class on another basis, under other conditions, and for other purposes.

Karl Marx had already at an earlier date pointed out the special significance which these earlier experiences and achievements of the bourgeois class struggle-which found their most important expression in the various phases of development of the revolutionary bourgeois commune of the middle ages - had in regard to the forming of modern proletarian class consciousness and class struggle; in fact, he pointed this out very much earlier than the great historical event of the Paris Commune insurrection of 1871 permitted him to praise this new revolutionary commune of the Parisian workers as the finally discovered political form of economic liberation of labor. He had demonstrated the historical analogy existing between the political development of the bourgeoisie as the suppressed class struggling for liberation within the medieval feudal state and the development of the proletariat in modern capitalist society. It is from this perspective that he was able to win his main theoretical support for his special dialectical revolutionary theory of the significance of trade unions and the trade union struggle - a theory which until this day is still not completely and correctly understood by many Marxists from both the left and right wing. And he arrived at it by comparing the modern coalitions of workers with the communes of the medieval bourgeoisie, stressing the historical fact that the bourgeois class likewise began their struggle against the feudal social order by forming coalitions. Already in the polemical treatise against Proudhon we find in regard to this point the following illustration, classical to this day:

In the bourgeoisie we have two phases to distinguish: that in which it constituted itself as a class under the regime of feudalism and absolute monarchy, and that in which, already constituted as a class, it overthrew feudalism and monarchy to make society into a bourgeois society. The first of these phases was the longer and necessitated the greater efforts. This too began by partial combinations against the feudal lords.

Much research has been carried out to trace the different historical phases that the bourgeoisie has passed through, from the commune up to its constitution as a class.

But when it is a question of making a precise study of strikes, combinations and other forms in which the proletarians carry out before our eyes their organization as a class, some are seized with real fear and others display a transcendental disdain. (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, chapter 2, # 5)

What is theoretically articulated here, by the young Marx in the 1840's, who only recently crossed over to proletarian socialism, and what he repeats in a similar form a few years later in the Communist Manifesto by illustrating the diverse phases of development of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, he also articulates once again 20 years later in the well known resolution of the Geneva Congress of the International Association of Workers with regard to trade unions, He argues that the trade unions have already during their hitherto prevailing development become "the focal points of organization of the working class ... Just as the medieval municipalities and villages had become focal points of the bourgeoisie." This is so although the trade unions are not aware of their focal significance beyond the immediate daily tasks of defending the wages and working hours of the workers against the continuous excessive demands of capital. Hence in the future the trade unions must act consciously as such focal points of the organization of the whole working class.

II
If one wants to understand Marx's later position regarding the revolutionary commune of the Parisian workers in its real significance, one must take his original concept on the historical relationship between the organizational forms of the modern proletarian and the earlier bourgeois class struggle as a starting point. The commune arose from the struggle of the producing class against the exploiting class and broke up in a revolutionary act the prevailing bourgeois state machinery. When Marx celebrates this new commune as the finally discovered form for the liberation of labor, it was not at all his desire - as some of his followers later claimed and still do so to this day - to designate or brand a definite form of political organization, whether it is called a revolutionary commune or a revolutionary council system, as a singularly appropriate and potential form of the revolutionary proletarian class dictatorship. In the immediately preceding sentence, he expressly points to "the multifariousness of interpretations which supported the commune and the multiplicity of interests expressed in the commune," and he explained the already established character of this new form of government as a "political form thoroughly capable of development." It is just this unlimited capability of development of new forms of political power, created by the Paris communardes in the fire of battle, which distinguished it from the "classic development of bourgeois government," the centralized state power of the modern parliamentary republic. Marx's essential presupposition is that in the energetic pursuit of the real interests of the working class this form can in the end even be used as that lever which will overthrow the economic bases forming the existence of classes, class rule, and the state. The revolutionary communal constitution thus becomes under certain historical conditions the political form of a process of development, or to put it more clearly, of a revolutionary action where the basic essential goal is no longer to preserve any one form of state rule, or even to create a newer "higher state-type," but rather to create at last the material conditions for the "withering away of every state altogether." Without this last condition, the communal constitution was all impossibility and all illusion," Marx says in this context with all desired distinctness.

Nonetheless, there remains still an unbalanced contradiction between on one hand Marx's characterization of the Paris Commune as the finally discovered "political form" for accomplishing the economic and social self-liberation of the working class and, on the other hand, his emphasis at the same time that the suitability of the commune for this purpose rests mainly on its formlessness; that is, on its indeterminateness and openness to multiple interpretations. It appears there is only one point at which Marx's position is perfectly clear and to which he professed at this time under the influence of certain political theories he had in the meantime come up against and which were incorporated in this original political concept-and not least under the practical impression of the enormous experience of the Paris Commune itself. While in the Communist Manifesto of 1847-48 and likewise in the Inaugural Address to the International Workers' Association in 1864, he still had only spoken of the necessity “for the proletariat to conquer political power” now the experiences of the Paris Commune provided him with the proof that "the working class can not simply appropriate the ready-made state machinery and put it into motion for its own purposes, but it must smash the existing bourgeois state machinery in a revolutionary way." This sentence has since been regarded as an essential main proposition and core of the whole political theory of Marxism, especially since in 1917 Lenin at once theoretically restored the unadulterated Marxian theory of the state in his work "State and Revolution" and practically realized it through carrying through the October Revolution as its executor.

But obviously nothing positive is at all yet said about the formal character of the new revolutionary supreme state power of the proletariat with the merely negative determination that the state power cannot simply "appropriate the state machinery" of the previous bourgeois state "for the working class and set it in motion for their own purposes." So we must ask: for which reasons does the "Commune" in its particular, determinate form represent the finally discovered political form of government for the working class, as Marx puts it in his Civil War, and as Engels characterizes it once more at great length in his introduction to the third edition of the Civil War twenty years later? Whatever gave Marx and Engels, those fiery admirers of the centralized system of revolutionary bourgeois dictatorship realized by the great French Revolution, the idea to regard precisely the "Commune" as the "political form" of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, when it appeared to be the complete opposite to that system?

In fact, if we analyze more exactly the political program and goals to be attained as proposed by the two founders of scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, not only in the time before the Paris Commune insurrection, but also afterwards, the assertion cannot be maintained that the form of proletarian dictatorship realized by the Paris Commune of 1871 would in any particular sense be in unison with those political theories. Indeed, Marx's great opponent in the First International, Michael Bakunin, had on this point the historical truth on his side when he sarcastically commented on Marx's having annexed the Paris Commune retrospectively:

"The impact of the Communist insurrection was so powerful that even the Marxists, who had all their ideas thrown to the wind by it, were forced to doff their hats to it. They did more than that: in contradiction to all logic and their innermost feelings, they adopted the program of the Commune and its aim as their own. It was a comic, but enforced travesty. They had to do it, otherwise they would have been rejected and abandoned by all- so mighty was the passion which this revolution had brought about in the whole world." (Cf. [Fritz] Brupbacher: Marx and Bakunin, pp. 114-115.)

The revolutionary ideas of the Paris communardes of 1871 are partly derived from the federalistic program of Bakunin and Proudhon, partly from the circle of ideas of the revolutionary Jacobins surviving in Blanquism, and only to a very small degree in Marxism. Twenty years later, Friedrich Engels claimed that the Blanquists who formed the majority of the Paris Commune had been forced by the sheer weight of the facts to proclaim instead of their own program of a "strict dictatorial centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government" the exact opposite, namely the free federation of all French communes with the Paris Commune. On this issue the same contradiction arises between Marx and Engels' political theory upheld so far and their now prevailing unconditional acknowledgment of the commune as the "finally discovered political form" of the government of the working class. It is erroneous when Lenin in his 1917 work "State and Revolution" describes the evolution of the Marxian theory of state, as if Marx had in the transition period up to 1852 already concertized the abstract formulation of the political task of the revolutionary proletariat (as proposed in his "Communist Manifesto" of 1847-48) to the effect that the victorious proletariat must "destroy" and "smash", the existing bourgeois supreme state power. Against this thesis of Lenin speaks Marx and Engels' own testimony, who both declared repeatedly that just the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 provided for the first time the effective proof that "the working class cannot simply appropriate the ready made state machinery and set it in motion for its own purposes." It was Lenin himself who provided the logical gap appearing in his presentation of the development of revolutionary Marxist state theory at this point by simply jumping over a time span of 20 years in his otherwise so historically correct and philologically exact reproduction of Marx and Engels' remarks on the state, He proceeds from the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) straight on to the Civil War in France (1871) and in so doing overlooks among other things the fact that Marx summarized the whole "political program" of the working class in this one lapidary sentence of his Inaugural Address of the First International: "It is therefore the great task of the working class now to seize political power."

Yet even in the time after 1871, when Marx, on account of the experience of the Paris Commune, advocated in a far more certain and unequivocal way that ever before the indispensable necessity of crushing the bourgeois state machinery and building the proletarian class dictatorship, he was far removed from propagating a form of government modelled on the revolutionary Paris Commune as the political form of proletarian dictatorship, Just for that one historical moment-in which he unconditionally and without reservations came forward on behalf of the heroic fighters and victims of the commune vis-à-vis the triumphant reaction did he, or so it appears, uphold this standpoint-and I am referring to the Address to the General Council of the International Workers' Association on the "Civil War in France," written in blood and fire on behalf of this first international organization of the revolutionary proletariat. For the sake of the revolutionary essence of the Paris Commune, he repressed the critique which from his standpoint he should have exercised on the special form of its historical manifestation. If beyond that he even went a step further and celebrated the political form of the revolutionary communal-constitution directly as the "finally discovered form" of the proletarian dictatorship, then the explanation does not lie any more merely with his natural solidarity with the revolutionary workers of Paris, but also in a special, subsidiary purpose. Having written the Address to the General Council of the I.W.A, directly after the glorious battle and defeat of the Paris communardes, Marx not only wanted to annex the Marxism of the Commune but also at the same time the Commune to Marxism. It is in this sense that one must understand this remarkable document, if one wishes to correctly grasp its meaning and range of significance not only as a classic historical document looked at as a hero's epic or as a death lament. Rather beyond all that, it should be seen as a fractional polemical treatise of Marx against his most intimate opponents in the bitter struggles which had already broken out and would soon thereafter lead to the collapse of the First International. This fractional subsidiary purpose hindered Marx from appraising in a historically correct and complete way that interconnecting revolutionary movement of the French proletariat which began with the insurrections of the Commune in Lyon and Marseilles in 1870 and had its climax in the Paris Commune insurrection of 1871. It also forced him to explain the revolutionary communal constitution, welcomed as the "finally discovered political form" of proletarian class dictatorship, as a centralist government as well - although this was in contrast to its actual essential being.

Already Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves, and more so Lenin, deny the charge that the Paris Commune had an essentially federalist character. If Marx cannot help but explain in his short account of the sketch of the All-French Communal Constitution produced by the Paris Commune the unambiguous federalist aspects of this constitution, then in so doing he still emphasizes purposively the fact (naturally not denied by such federalists as Proudhon and Bakunin) that "the unity of the nation was not to be broken but on the contrary was to be organized" through this communal constitution. He underlines "the few but important functions" which are still remaining to be dealt with by a "central government" within this communal constitution. He remarks that according to the plan of the Commune these functions "were not - as some intentionally falsified-to be abolished, but were to be transferred to communal (and strictly responsible) civil servants." On this basis, Lenin later declared that "not a trace of federalism is to be found" in Marx's writings on the example of the Commune. "Marx is a centralist and in his explanations cited here there is no deviation from centralism" ("State and Revolution"). Quite correctly so, but Lenin omits to mention at this point that Marx's exposition of the Paris Commune is also everything else but a historically correct characterization of the revolutionary commune constitution aspired to by the Paris communardes and realized in the first beginnings.

In order to deflect from the federative and anti-centralist character of the Paris Commune as much as possible, Marx and Engels; and likewise Lenin, have emphasized above all else the negative aspect, that it represents as such the destruction of the prevailing bourgeois state power. On this point there is no quarrel among revolutionaries. Marx, Engels, and Lenin have justly emphasized that the decisive foundation for the proletarian revolutionary character of the form of political supreme power as stated by the Commune is to be sought in its societal being as a realization of proletarian class dictatorship. They pointed out to their "federalist" adversaries with great severity that the decentralized, federative sidle form as such is quite as bourgeois as the centralist form of government of the modem bourgeois state. They nevertheless committed the same error which they so strongly opposed in their opponents, not by concentrating on the "federalist" character of the communal constitution, but rather by emphasizing too much the other formal differences which distinguished the Paris Commune from parliamentarism and other surpassed forms of the bourgeois state constitution (for example, on the replacement of the standing army through the militia, on the unification of executive and legislative power, and on the responsibility and right of dismissal of "communal" functionaries). They thereby created a considerable confusion of concepts out of which emerged not only harmful effects with regard to the position of Marxism vis-à-vis the Paris commune, but also likewise for the later positing of the revolutionary Marxist direction vis-à-vis the new historical phenomenon of the revolutionary council system.

As incorrect as it may be to see with Proudhon and Bakunin an overcoming of the bourgeois state in the "federative" form, it is just as incorrect when today some Marxist followers of the revolutionary commune on the revolutionary council system believe on the basis of such misunderstood explanations by Marx, Engels, and Lenin that a parliamentary representative with a short-term, binding mandate revocable at any time, or a government functionary employed by private treaty for ordinary "wages," would be a less bourgeois arrangement than an elected parliamentarian. It is completely erroneous when they believe that there are any "communal" or "council-like" forms of constitution whose introduction may cause the state governed by the revolutionary proletarian party in the end to relinquish completely that character of an instrument of class suppression which adheres to every state. The whole theory of the final "withering away of the state in Communist society," taken over by Marx and Engels out of the tradition of utopian socialism and further developed on the basis of practical experiences of the proletarian class struggle in their time, loses its revolutionary meaning when one declares with Lenin that there is a state where the minority does not suppress anymore the majority, but rather "the majority of the people themselves suppress their own suppressors"; and such a state of proletarian dictatorship then in its capacity as “fulfiller” of true or proletarian democracy "is already a withering away of the state" ("State and Revolution").

It is high time again to posit with full clarity the two basic theories of the real revolutionary proletarian theory which by temporary adapting to practical requirements of such certain phases of struggle as the Paris Commune insurrection of 1871 and the Russian October Revolution of 1917 in the end ran into danger of being abrogated. The essential final goal of proletarian class struggle is not anyone state, however "democratic," "communal," or even "council-like," but is rather the classless and stateless Communist society whose comprehensive form is not any longer some kind of political power but is "that association in which the free development of every person is the condition for the free development of all" ("Communist Manifesto").

Irrespective of whether the proletarian class can "conquer" more or less unchanged the surpassed state apparatus following the illusion of the Marxist reformists, or whether it can only really appropriate it according to revolutionary Marxist theory by radically "smashing" its surpassed form and "replacing" it through a new voluntary created form - until then, in either case this state will differ from the bourgeois state in the period of revolutionary transformation of capitalist into Communist society only through its class nature and its social function, but not through its political form. "The true secret of the revolutionary commune, the revolutionary council system, and every other historical manifestation of government of the working class exists in this social content and not in anyone artificially devised political form or in such special institutions as may once have been realized under some particular historical circumstances.