Monday, September 16, 2013

From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International-

Workers Vanguard No. 950
15 January 2010
TROTSKY
LENIN
In Defense of Science
(Quote of the Week)

The reactionary climate of the post-Soviet world has provided a breeding ground for mysticism, superstition, political and social backwardness and all manner of anti-scientific quackery. In a 1925 speech before the Mendeleyev Congress, which took place amid celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky underlined the significance of scientific knowledge for mastering nature, differentiating between natural and social science in bourgeois society. Against those who claimed that the “essence” of reality cannot be learned, Trotsky reasserted the basic materialist concept that the objective world is knowable.
Socialist society, in its relation to scientific and cultural inheritance in general, holds to a far lesser degree an attitude of indifference, or passive acceptance. It can be said that the greater the trust of socialism in sciences devoted to direct study of nature, the greater is its critical distrust in approaching those sciences and pseudo-sciences which are linked closely to the structure of human society, its economic institutions, its state, laws, ethics, etc. Of course, these two spheres are not separated by an impenetrable wall. But at the same time, it is an indisputable fact that the heritage embodied in those sciences which deal not with human society but with “matter”—in natural sciences in the broad sense of the term, and consequently of course in chemistry—is of incomparably greater weight.
The need to know nature is imposed upon men by their need to subordinate nature to themselves. Any digressions in this sphere from objective relationships, which are determined by the properties of matter itself, are corrected by practical experience. This alone seriously guarantees natural sciences, chemical research in particular, from intentional, unintentional, or semideliberate distortions, misinterpretations, and falsifications. Social research primarily devoted its efforts toward justifying historically arisen society, so as to preserve it against the attacks of “destructive theories,” etc. Herein is rooted the apologetic role of the official social sciences of bourgeois society; and this is the reason why their accomplishments are of little value.
So long as science as a whole remained a “handmaiden of theology,” it could produce valuable results only surreptitiously. This was the case in the Middle Ages. It was during the bourgeois regime, as already pointed out, that the natural sciences gained the possibility of wide development. But social science remained the servant of capitalism….
It is self-evident that if there are no limits to knowledge and mastery of matter, then there is no unknowable “essence.”
Knowledge that arms us with the ability to forecast all possible changes in matter, and endows us with the necessary power of producing these changes—such knowledge does in fact exhaust the essence of matter. The so-called unknowable “essence” is only a generalization of our inadequate knowledge about matter. It is a pseudonym for our ignorance. Dualistic demarcation of unknown matter from its known properties reminds me of the jocular definition of a gold ring as a hole surrounded by precious metal. It is obvious that if we gain knowledge of the precious metal of phenomena and are able to shape it, then we can remain completely indifferent to the “hole” of the substance; and we gladly make a present of it to the archaic philosophers and theologians.
—Leon Trotsky, “Dialectical Materialism and Science” (1925)
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Leon Trotsky

Dialectical Materialism and Science

(17 September 1925)


Source: New International, Vol.6 No.1, February 1940, pp.24-31.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Copyleft: Creative Commons (Attribute & Share-alike) Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2006.

A Necessary Explanation: In 1925 Trotsky, as chairman Of the technical and scientific board of industry, was head of all scientific institutions, and in that capacity delivered the speech, published below, before the Mendeleyev Congress on September 17, 1925. On April 18, 1938, Trotsky wrote the following foreword to the English translation of his speech:
“This speech was delivered in 1925, at a time when the author still firmly hoped that Soviet democracy would overcome the tendencies towards bureaucratism, and create exceptionally favorable conditions for the development of scientific thought. Because of a combination of historical causes this hope has not yet materialized. On the contrary, the Soviet state in the intervening thirteen years has fallen victim to complete bureaucratic ossification and has assumed a totalitarian character equally baneful to the development of science and art. Through the cruel irony of history, genuine Marxism has now become the most proscribed of all doctrines in the Soviet Union. In the field of social science, shackled Soviet thought has not only failed to utter a single new word but, on the contrary, has sunk to the depths of pathetic scholasticism. The totalitarian regime likewise exercises a disastrous influence upon the development of the natural sciences. Nevertheless the views developed in this speech retain their validity, in the section too, which deals with the inter-relations between the social regime and scientific thought. However, they should be placed not against the background of the present Soviet state, a product of degeneration and disintegration, but rather taken in the light of that socialist state which will arise from the future victorious struggle of the international working class.”

The Continuity of Cultural Heritage

YOUR CONGRESS convenes amid the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Sciences. The connection between your Congress and the Academy is made all the firmer by the fact that Russian chemistry occupies by no means the last place in the achievements that have brought fame to the Academy. Here it is perhaps proper to pose the question: What is the inner historical significance of the elaborate academic celebrations? They have a significance far beyond mere visits to museums, theatres and banquets. How can we estimate this significance? Not merely by the fact that foreign scientists, kind enough to come here as our guests, have had the opportunity of ascertaining that the revolution far from destroying scientific institutions has on the contrary developed them. This evidence acquired by the foreign scientists possesses a meaning of its own. But the significance of the academic celebrations is far greater and deeper. I would formulate it as follows: The new state, a new society based on the laws of the October Revolution takes possession triumphantly – before the eyes of the whole world – of the cultural heritage of the past.
Since I have inadvertently referred to heritage, I must make clear the sense in which I use this term so as to avoid any possible misunderstandings. We would be guilty of disrespect to the future, dearer to all of us than the past, and we would be disrespectful of the past, which in many of its aspects merits profound respect – if we were to talk loosely about heritage. Not everything in the past is of value for the future. Furthermore, the development of human culture is not determined by simple concretion. There have been periods of organic growth as well as periods of rigorous criticism, sifting and selection. It would be difficult to say which of these periods has proved more fruitful for the general development of culture. At all events, we are living in an epoch of sifting and selection.
Roman jurisprudence had, from the time of Justinian, established the law of inventorial inheritance. In contrast to pre-Justinian legislation which established the right of an heir to accept inheritance provided only he likewise assumed responsibility for all obligations and debts, inventorial inheritance gave the inheritor a certain degree of choice. The revolutionary state, representing a new class, is a kind of inventorial inheritor in relation to the accumulated store of culture. Let me state frankly that not all of the 15,000 volumes published by the Academy during its two centuries of existence will enter into the inventory of Socialism! There are two aspects of by no means equal merit to the scientific contributions of the past which are now ours and upon which we pride ourselves. Science as a whole has been directed toward acquiring knowledge of reality, research into the laws of evolution, and discovery of the properties and qualities of matter, in order to gain greater mastery over it. But knowledge did not develop within the four walls of a laboratory or a lecture hall. No, it remained a function of human society and reflected the structure of human society. For its needs, society requires knowledge of nature. But at the same time, society demands an affirmation of its right to be what it is; a justification of its particular institutions; first and foremost, the institutions of class domination, just as in the past it demanded the justification of serfdom, class privileges, monarchical prerogatives, national exceptionalism, etc. Socialist society accepts with utmost gratitude the heritage of the positive sciences, discarding, as is the right of inventorial choice, everything which is useless in acquiring knowledge of nature but only useful in justifying class inequality and all other kinds of historical untruth.
Every new social order appropriates the cultural heritage of the past not in its totality but only in accordance with its own structure. Thus, medieval society embodied in Christianity many elements of ancient philosophy, subordinating them, however, to the needs of the feudal regime and transforming them into scholasticism, the “handmaiden of theology.” Similarly, bourgeois society inherited among other things from the Middle Ages, Christianity, but subjected it either to the Reformation, that is, revolt in the shape of Protestantism, or pacification in the shape of adaptation of Catholicism to the new regime. In any case, Christianity of the bourgeois epoch was brushed aside to the degree that the road had to be cleared for scientific research, at least, within those limits which were required for the development of the productive forces.
Socialist society in its relation to scientific and cultural inheritance in general holds to a far lesser degree an attitude of indifference, or passive acceptance. It can be said: The greater the trust of socialism in sciences devoted to direct study of nature, all the greater is its critical distrust in approaching those sciences and pseudo-sciences which are linked closely to the structure of human society, its economic institutions, its state, laws, ethics, etc. Of course these two spheres are not separated by an impenetrable wall. But at the same time, it is an indisputable fact that the heritage embodied in those sciences which deal not with human society but with “matter” – in natural sciences in the broad sense of the term, and consequently of course in chemistry – is of incomparably greater weight.
The need to know nature is imposed upon men by their need to subordinate nature to themselves. Any digressions in this sphere from objective relationships, which are determined by the properties of matter itself, are corrected by practical experience. This alone seriously guarantees natural sciences, chemical research, in particular, from intentional, unintentional, semi-deliberate distortions, misinterpretations and falsifications. Social research primarily devoted its efforts toward justifying historically-arisen society, so as to preserve it against the attacks of “destructive theories,” etc. Herein is rooted the apologetic role of the official social sciences of bourgeois society; and this is the reason why their accomplishments are of little value.
So long as science as a whole remained a “handmaiden of theology,” it could produce valuable results only surreptitiously. This was the case in the Middle Ages. It was during the bourgeois regime, as already pointed out, that the natural sciences gained the possibility of wide development. But social science remained the servant of capitalism. This is also true, to a large extent, of psychology which links the social and natural sciences; and philosophy which systematizes the generalized conclusions of all sciences.
I said that official social science has produced little of value. This is best revealed by the inability of bourgeois science to foresee tomorrow. We have observed this in relation to the first imperialist World War and its consequences. We have seen it again in relation to the October revolution. We now see it in the complete helplessness of official social science in the evaluation of the European situation, the inter-relations with America and with the Soviet Union; in its inability to draw any conclusions regarding tomorrow. Yet the significance of science lies precisely in this: To know in order to foresee.
Natural science – and chemistry occupies a most important place in that field – indisputably constitutes the most valuable portion of our inheritance. Your Congress stands under the banner of Mendeleyev who was and remains the pride of Russian science.

To Know So That We May Foresee and Act

There is a difference in the degree of foresight and precision achieved in the various sciences. But it is through foresight – passive, in some instances as in astronomy, active as in chemistry and chemical engineering – that science is able to verify itself and justify its social purpose. An individual scientist may not at all be concerned with the practical application of his research. The wider his scope, the bolder his flight, the greater his freedom from practical daily necessity in his mental operations, all the better. But science is not a function of individual scientists; it is a public function. The social evaluation of science, its historical evaluation is determined by its capacity to increase man’s power and arm him with the power to foresee and master nature. Science is knowledge that endows us with power. When Leverrier on the basis of the “eccentricities” in the orbit of Uranus concluded that there must exist an unknown celestial body “disturbing” the movement of Uranus; when Leverrier on the basis of his purely mathematical calculations requested the German astronomer Galle to locate a body wandering without a passport in the skies at such and such an address; when Galle focussed his telescope in that direction and discovered the planet called Neptune – at that moment the celestial mechanics of Newton celebrated a great victory.
This occurred in the autumn of 1846. In the year 1848 revolution swept like a whirlwind through Europe, demonstrating its “disturbing” influence on the movement of peoples and states. In the intervening period, between the discovery of Neptune and the revolution of 1848, two young scholars, Marx and Engels, wrote The Communist Manifesto, in which they not only predicted the inevitability of revolutionary events in the near future, but also analyzed in advance their component forces, the logic of their movement – up to the inevitable victory of the proletariat and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It would not at all be superfluous to juxtapose this prognosis with the prophecies of the official social science of the Hohenzollerns, the Romanovs, Louis Philippe and others in 1848.
In 1869, Mendeleyev on the basis of his researches and reflection upon atomic weight established his Periodic Law of the Elements. To the atomic weight, as a more stable criterion, Mendeleyev linked a series of other properties and traits, arranged the elements in a definite order and then through this order revealed the existence of a certain disorder, namely, the absence of certain elements. These unknown elements or chemical units, as Menedeleyev once called them, should in accordance with the logic of this “Law” occupy specific vacant places in that order. Here, with the authoritative gesture of a research worker confident in himself, Mendeleyev knocked at one of nature’s hitherto closed doors, and from within a voice answered: “Present!” Actually, three voices responded simultaneously, for in the places indicated by Mendeleyev there were discovered three new elements, later called gallium, scandium, and germanium.
A marvellous triumph for thought, analytical and synthesizing! In his Principles of Chemistry Mendeleyev vividly characterizes scientific creative effort, comparing it with the projection of a bridge across a ravine: For this it is unnecessary to descend into the ravine and to fix supports at the bottom; it is only necessary to erect a foundation on one side and then project an accurately designed arc which will then find support on the opposite side. Similarly with scientific thought. It can base itself only on the granite foundation of experience but its generalizations like the arc of a bridge can rise above the world of facts in order later, at another point calculated in advance, to meet the latter. At that moment of scientific thought when a generalization turns into prediction – and prediction is triumphantly verified through experience – at that moment, human thought is invariably supplied with its proudest and most justified satisfaction! Thus it was in chemistry with the discovery of new elements on the basis of the Periodic Law.
Mendeleyev’s prediction, which later produced a profound impression upon Frederick Engels, was made in the year 1871, the year, that is, of the great tragedy of the Paris Commune in France. The attitude of our great chemist to this event can be gathered from his general hostility towards “Latinism,” its violence and revolutions. Like all official thinkers of the ruling classes not only in Russia and in Europe but throughout the world, Mendeleyev did not ask himself: What is the real driving force behind the Paris Commune? He did not see that the new class growing from the womb of old society was here exercising in its movement as “disturbing” an influence upon the orbit of old society as the unknown planet did upon the orbit of Uranus. But a German exile, Karl Marx, did at that time analyze the causes and inner mechanics of the Paris Commune and the rays of his scientific torch penetrated to the events of our own October and shed light upon them.
We have long found it unnecessary to resort to a more mysterious substance, called phlogiston, to explain chemical reactions. As a matter of fact, phlogiston served merely as a generalization for the ignorance of alchemists. In the sphere of physiology, the time has long since passed when a need was felt for a special mystical substance, called the vital force and which was the phlogiston of living matter. In principle we now possess sufficient knowledge of physics and chemistry to explain physiological phenomena. In the sphere of the phenomena of consciousness we are no longer in need of a substance labelled the soul which in reactionary philosophy performs the role of the phlogiston of psycho-physical phenomena. Psychology is for us in the final analysis reducible to physiology, and the latter – to chemistry, mechanics and physics. This is far more viable than the theory of phlogiston in the sphere of social science where this phlogiston appears in different costumes; now disguised as “historical mission,” now disguised as changeless “national character,” now as the disembodied idea of “progress,” now as the so-called “critical thought,” and so on ad infinitum. In all these cases, an attempt has been made to discover some super-social substance to explain social phenomena. It is hardly necessary to repeat that these ideal substances are only ingenious disguises for sociological ignorance. Marxism rejected super-historical essences, just as physiology has renounced the vital force, or chemistry – phlogiston.
The essence of Marxism consists in this, that it approaches society concretely, as a subject for objective research, and analyzes human history as one would a colossal laboratory record. Marxism appraises ideology as a subordinate integral element of the material social structure. Marxism examines the class structure of society as a historically conditioned form of the development of the productive forces; Marxism deduces from the productive forces of society the inter-relations between human society and surrounding nature, and these, in turn are determined at each historical stage by man’s technology, his instruments and weapons, his capacities and methods for struggle with nature. Precisely this objective approach arms Marxism with the insuperable power of historical foresight.
Consider the history of Marxism even if only on the national scale of Russia, and follow it not from the standpoint of your own political sympathies or antipathies but from the standpoint of Mendeleyev’s definition of science:
To know so that we may foresee and act. The initial period of the history of Marxism on Russian soil is the history of a struggle for correct socio-historical prognosis (foresight) as against the official governmental, and official opposi-tional viewpoints. In the early Eighties, that is, at a time when official ideology existed as the trinity of absolutism, orthodoxy and nationalism; liberalism day-dreamed about a Zemstvo Assembly, i. e., a semi-constitutional monarchy, while the Narodniki combined feeble socialistic fantasies with economic reaction. At that time Marxist thought predicted not only the inevitable and progressive work of capitalism but also the appearance of the proletariat in an independent historical role – the proletariat taking hegemony in the struggle of the popular masses; the proletarian dictatorship leading the peasantry behind it.
There is no less a difference between the Marxist method of social analysis and the theories against which it fought than there is between Mendeleyev’s Periodic Law with all its latest modifications on the one side and the mumbo-jumbo of the alchemists on the other.

Natural Science and Marxism

“The cause of chemical reaction lies in the physical and mechanical properties of compounds.” This formula of Mendeleyev is completely materialist in character. Chemistry instead of resorting to some new super-mechanical and super-physical force to explain its phenomena, reduces chemical processes to the mechanical and physical properties of its compounds.
Biology and physiology stand in a similar relationship to chemistry. Scientific, that is, materialist physiology does not require a special super-chemical vital force (as is the claim of Vitalists and neo-Vitalists) to explain phenomena in its field. Physiological processes are reducible in the last analysis to chemical ones, just as the latter – to mechanics and physics.
Psychology is similarly related to physiology. It is not for nothing that physiology is called the applied chemistry of living organisms. Just as there exists no special physiological force, so it is equally true that scientific, i.e., materialist psychology has no need of a mystic force – soul – to explain phenomena in its field, but finds them reducible in the final analysis to physiological phenomena. This is the school of the academician Pavlov; it views the so-called soul as a complex system of conditioned reflexes, completely rooted in the elementary physiological reflexes which in their turn find, through the potent stratum of chemistry, their root in the subsoil of mechanics and physics.
The same can be said of sociology also. To explain social phenomena it is not necessary to adduce some kind of eternal source, or to search for origin in another world. Society is a product of the development of primary matter, like the earth’s crust or the amoeba. In this manner, scientific thought with its methods cuts like a diamond drill through the complex phenomena of social ideology to the bed-rock of matter, its component elements, its atoms with their physical and mechanical properties.
Naturally, this does not mean to say that every phenomenon of chemistry can be reduced directly to mechanics; and even less so, that every social phenomenon is directly reducible to physiology and then – to laws of chemistry and mechanics. It may be said that this is the uppermost aim of science. But the method of gradual and continuous approach toward this aim is entirely different. Chemistry has its special approach to matter; its own methods of research, its own laws. If without the knowledge that chemical reactions are reducible in the final analysis to mechanical properties of elementary particles of matter, there is not and cannot be a finished philosophy linking all phenomena into a single system, so, on the other hand, the mere knowledge that chemical phenomena are themselves rooted in mechanics and physics does not provide in itself the key to even one chemical reaction. Chemistry has its own keys. One can choose among them only from experience and generalization, through the chemical laboratory, chemical hypothesis and chemical theory.
This applies to all sciences. Chemistry is a powerful pillar of physiology with which it is directly connected through the channels of organic and physiological chemistry. But chemistry is no substitute for physiology. Each science rests on the laws of other sciences only in the so-called final instance. But at the same time, the separation of the sciences from one another is determined precisely by the fact that each science covers a particular field of phenomena, i.e. a field of such complex combinations of elementary phenomena and laws as require a special approach, special research technique, special hypotheses and methods.
This idea seems so indisputable in relation to the sciences of mathematics and natural history that to harp on it would be like forcing an open door. It is otherwise with social science. Outstanding trained naturalists who in the field, say, of physiology would not proceed a step without taking into account rigidly tested experiments, verification, hypothetical generalization, latest verification and so forth; approach social phenomena far more boldly, with the boldness of ignorance, as if tacitly acknowledging that in this extremely complex sphere of phenomena it is sufficient merely to have vague propensities, day-to-day observations, family traditions, and even a stock of current social prejudices.
Human society has not developed in accordance with a pre-arranged plan or system, but empirically, in the course of a long, complicated and contradictory struggle of the human species for existence, and, later, for greater and greater mastery over nature itself. The ideology of human society took shape as a reflection of and an instrument in this process – belated, desultory, piecemeal, in the form, so to speak, of conditioned social reflexes which are in the final analysis reducible to the necessities of the struggle of collective man against nature. To arrive at judgments upon laws governing the development of human society on the basis of their ideological reflection, on the basis of so-called public opinion etc. is almost equivalent to forming a judgment upon the anatomical and physiological structure of a lizard on the basis of its sensations as it lies basking in the sun or crawls out of a damp crevice. True enough, there is a very direct bond between the sensations of a lizard and the latter’s organic structure. But this bond is a subject for research by means of objective methods. There is, however, a tendency to become most subjective in judging the structure and laws that govern the development of human society in terms of the so-called consciousness of society, that is, its contradictory, disjointed, conservative, unverified ideology. Of course, one can became insulted and raise the objection that social ideology is, after all, at a higher elevation than the sensation of a lizard. It all depends on one’s approach to the question. In my opinion there is nothing paradoxical in the statement that from the sensations of a lizard one could, if it were possible to bring them into proper focus, draw much more direct conclusions concerning the structure and function of its organs than concerning the structure of society and its dynamics from such ideological reflections as, for example, religious creeds which once occupied and still continue to occupy so prominent a place in the life of human society; or from the contradictory and hypocritical codexes of official morality; or, finally, the idealistic philosophic conceptions which in order to explain complex organic processes occurring in man, seek to place responsibility upon a nebulous, subtle essence called the soul and endowed with the qualities of impenetrability and eternity.
Mendeleyev’s reaction to problems of social reorganization was one of hostility and even scorn. He maintained that from time immemorial nothing had yet come from the attempt. Mendeleyev instead expected a happier future to arise through the positive sciences and above all chemistry which would reveal all of nature’s secrets.
It is of interest to juxtapose this point of view to that of our remarkable physiologist Pavlov who is of the opinion that wars and revolutions are something accidental, arising from people’s ignorance; and who conjectures that only a profound knowledge of “human nature” will eliminate both wars and revolutions.
Darwin can be placed in the same category. This highly gifted biologist demonstrated how an accumulation of small quantitative variations produces an entirely new biologic “quality” and by that token he explained the origin of species. Without being aware of it, he thus applied the method of dialectic materialism to the sphere of organic life. Darwin although unenlightened in philosophy, brilliantly applied Hegel’s law of transition from quantity into quality. At the same time we very often discover in this same Darwin, not to mention the Darwinians, utterly naive and unscientific attempts at applying the conclusions of biology to society. To interpret competition as a “variety” of the biological struggle for existence is like seeing only mechanics in the physiology of mating.
In each of these cases we observe one and the same fundamental mistake: the methods and achievements of chemistry or physiology, in violation of all scientific boundaries, are transplanted into human society. A naturalist would hardly carry over without modification the laws governing the movement of atoms into the movement of molecules which are governed by other laws. But many naturalists have an entirely different attitude upon the question of sociology. The historically conditioned structure of society is very often disregarded by them in favor of the anatomical structure of things, the physiological structure of reflexes, the biological struggle for existence. Of course, the life of human society, interlaced with material conditions, surrounded on all sides by chemical processes, itself represents in the final analysis a combination of chemical processes. On the other hand, society is constituted of human beings whose psychological mechanism is resolvable into a system of reflexes. But public life is neither a chemical nor a physiological process but a social process which is shaped according to its own laws, and these in turn are subject to an objective sociological analysis whose aims should be: To acquire the ability to foresee and to master the fate of society.

Mendeleyev’s Philosophy

In his commentaries to the Principles of Chemistry, Mendeleyev states:
“There are two basic or positive aims to the scientific study of objects: that of forecast and that of utility ... The triumph of scientific forecasts would be of very little significance, if they did not in the end lead to direct and general usefulness. Scientific foresight, based on knowledge, endows human mastery with concepts by means of which it is possible to direct the substance of things into a desired channel.”
And further Mendeleyev adds cautiously:
“Religious and philosophical ideas have thrived and developed for many thousands of years, but those ideas which govern the exact sciences capable of forecasting have been regenerated for only a few centuries and have thus far encompassed only a limited sphere. Scarcely two hundred years have passed since chemistry became part of these sciences. Truly, there lies ahead of us a great deal both in respect to prediction and usefulness to be derived from these sciences.”
These cautions, “insinuating” words are very noteworthy on the lips of Mendeleyev. Their half-concealed meaning is clearly directed against religion and speculative philosophy. Mendeleyev contrasts them to science. Religious ideas – he says in effect – have ruled for thousands of years and the benefits derived from these ideas are not very many; but you can see for yourselves what science has contributed in a short period of time and from this you can judge what its future benefits will be. This is the unquestionable meaning of the foregoing passage included by Mendeleyev in one of his commentaries and printed in the finest type on page 405 of his Principles of Chemistry. Dimitry Ivanovich was a very cautious man and did not intend to quarrel with official public opinion!
Chemistry is a school of revolutionary thought not because of the existence of a chemistry of explosives. Explosives are far from always being revolutionary. But because chemistry is, above all, the science of the transmutation of elements; it is hostile to every kind of absolute or conservative thinking cast in immobile categories.
It is very instructive that Mendeleyev, obviously under the pressure of conservative public opinion, defended the principle of stability and immutability in the great processes of chemical transformation. This great scientist insisted with remarkable stubborness on the immutability of chemical elements and their non-transmutation into one another. He felt the need for firm pillars of support. He said:
“I am Dimitry Ivanovich, and you are Ivan Petrovich. Each of us possesses his own individuality even as the elements.”
Mendeleyev more than once scornfully denounced dialectics. By this he understood not the dialectic of Hegel or Marx but the superficial art of toying with ideas, half sophistry, half scholasticism. Scientific dialectic embraces general methods of thought which reflect the laws of development. One of these laws is the change of quantity into quality. Chemistry is thoroughly permeated with this law. Mendeleyev’s whole Periodic Law is built entirely on it, deducing qualitative difference in the elements from quantitative differences in atomic weights. Engels evaluated the discovery of new elements by Mendeleyev precisely from this viewpoint. In his sketch, The General Character of Dialectics as a Science, Engels wrote:
“Mendeleyev showed that in a series of related elements arranged according to their atomic weights there are several gaps which indicated the existence of other hitherto undiscovered elements. He described in advance the general chemical properties of each of these unknown elements and foretold approximately their relative and atomic weights, and their atomic place. Mendeleyev, unconsciously applying Hegel’s law of change of quantity into quality, accomplished a scientific feat which in its audaciousness can be placed alongside Leverrier’s discovery of the yet unknown planet Neptune by computing its orbit.”
The logic of the Periodic Law, although later modified, proved stronger than the conservative limits which its creator tried to place upon it. The kinship of elements and their mutual metamorphoses can be considered as proved empirically from the hour when with the help of radioactive elements it became possible to resolve the atom into its components. In Mendeleyev’s Periodic Law, in the chemistry of radioactive elements, the dialectic celebrates its own most outstanding victory!
Mendeleyev did not have a finished philosophical system. Perhaps he lacked even a desire for one, because it would have brought him into inevitable conflict with his own conservative habits and sympathies.
A dualism upon basic questions of knowledge is to be observed in Mendeleyev. Thus it would seem that he tended toward agnosticism, declaring that the “essence” of matter must forever remain beyond our cognition because it is “alien to our knowledge and spirit” (!). But almost immediately he offers us a remarkable formula for knowledge which at a single stroke brushes agnosticism aside. In the very same note, Mendeleyev says:
“By accumulating gradually their knowledge of matter, men gain mastery over it, and to the degree in which they do so they make ever more precise predictions, verifiable factually and there is no way of seeing how there can be a limit to man’s knowledge and mastery of matter.”
It is self-evident that if there are no limits to knowledge and mastery of matter, then there is no unknowable “essence.” Knowledge which arms us with the ability to forecast all possible changes in matter, and endows us with the necessary power of producing these changes – such knowledge does in fact exhaust the essence of matter. The so-called unknowable “essence” is only a generalization of our inadequate knowledge about matter. It is a pseudonym for our ignorance. Dualistic demarcation of unknown matter from its known properties reminds me of the jocular definition of a gold ring as a hole surrounded by precious metal. It is obvious that if we gain knowledge of the precious metal of phenomena and are able to shape it, then we can remain completely indifferent to the “hole” of the substance; and we gladly make a present of it to the archaic philosophers and theologians.

Major Miscalculations

Despite his verbal concessions to agnosticism (“unknowable essence”) Mendeleyev is unconsciously a dialectic materialist in his methods and his higher achievements in the sphere of natural science, especially, chemistry. But his materialism appears as though encased in a conservative shell, shielding its scientific thought from too sharp conflicts with official ideology. This does not imply that Mendeleyev artificially created a conservative covering for his methods; he was himself sufficiently bound to the official ideology, and therefore undoubtedly felt an inner compulsion to blunt the razor edge of dialectical materialism.
It is otherwise in the sphere of sociological relationships: The warp of Mendeleyev’s social philosophy was conservative, but from time to time remarkable surmises, materialist in their essence and revolutionary in their tendency, are woven into this warp. But alongside of these surmises there are miscalculations and what miscalculations!
I shall confine myself to only two. Rejecting all plans for social reorganization as Utopian and “Latinist,” Mendeleyev envisaged a better future only in connection with the development of scientific technology. But he had his own Utopia. According to Mendeleyev, better days would come when the governments of the major powers of the world realized the need of being strong and arrived at sufficient unanimity among themselves about the need of eliminating all wars, revolutions, and the Utopian principles of all Anarchists, Communists, and other “mailed fists,” incapable of understanding the progressive evolution occurring in all mankind. The dawn of this universal concord was already to be perceived in the Hague, Portsmouth, and Morocco Conferences. These instances represent major miscalculations on the part of a great man. History subjected Mendeleyev’s social Utopia to a rigorous test. From the Hague and Portsmouth Conferences blossomed the Russo-Japanese war, the war in the Balkans, the great imperialist slaughter of nations, and a sharp decline in European economy; while from the Moroccan Conference, in particular, there arose the revolting carnage in Morocco which is now being completed under the flag of defense of European civilization. Mendeleyev did not see the inner logic of social phenomena, or, more precisely, the inner dialectic of social processes and was therefore unable to foresee the consequences of the Hague Conference. But, as we know, the significance of science lies, first and foremost, in foresight. If you turn to what the Marxists wrote about the Hague Conference in the days when it was arranged and convoked, then you will easily convince yourselves that the Marxists correctly foresaw the consequences. That is why in the most critical moment of history they proved to be armed with the “mailed fist.” And there is really nothing lamentable in the fact that the historically-rising class, armed with a correct theory of social knowledge and foresight, finally proved to be likewise armed with a fist sufficientily mailed to open a new epoch of human development.
Permit me to cite another miscalculation. Not long before his death, Mendeleyev wrote:
“I especially fear for the quality of science and of all enlightenment, and general ethics under ‘State Socialism’.”
Were his fears well-founded? Even today, the more far-sighted students of Mendeleyev have begun to see clearly the vast possibilities for the development of scientific and technico-scientific thought thanks to the fact that this thought is, so to speak, nationalized, emancipated from the internecine wars of private property, no longer required to lend itself to bribery of individual proprietors but intended to serve the economic development of the nation as a whole. The network of technico-scientific institutes now being established by the State is only a tiny and so-to-speak material symptom of the limitless possibilities that have been disclosed.
I do not cite these miscalculations in order to cast a slur on the great renown of Dimitry Ivanovich. History has passed its verdict on the main controversial issues, and there is no basis for resuming the dispute. But permit me to state that the major miscalculations of this great man contain an important lesson for students. From the field of chemistry itself there are no direct and immediate outlets to social perspectives. The objective method of social science is necessary. Marxism is such a method.
Whenever any Marxist attempted to transmute the theory of Marx into a universal master-key and ignore all other spheres of learning, Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) would rebuke him with the expressive phrase: “Komchvanstvo” (“Communist swagger”). This would mean in this particular case – Communism is not a substitute for chemistry. But the converse theorem is also true. An attempt to dismiss Marxism with the supposition that chemistry (or the natural sciences in general) is able to decide all questions is a peculiar “Chemist swagger” (Khimchvanstvo) which in point of theory is no less erroneous and in point of fact no less pretentious than Communist swagger.

Great Surmises

Mendeleyev did not apply a scientific method to the study of society and its development. A very careful investigator who repeatedly checked himself before permitting his creative imagination to make a great leap forward in the sphere of generalization, Mendeleyev remained an empiricist in socio-political problems, combining conjectures with an outlook inherited from the past. I need only say that the surmise was truly Mendeleyevian especially where it touched directly upon the scientific industrial interests of the great scientist.
The very gist of Mendeleyev’s philosophy might be defined as technico-scientific optimism. This optimism, coinciding with the line of development of capitalism, Mendeleyev directed against the Narodniks, liberals and radicals, against the followers of Tolstoy and, in general, against every kind of economic retrogression. Mendeleyev believed in the victory of man over all of nature’s forces. From this arises his hatred of Malthusianism. This is a remarkable trait in Mendeleyev. It passes through all his writings, purely scientific, socio-publicistic, as well as his writings on questions of applied chemistry. Mendeleyev greeted with pleasure the fact that the annual increase in Russia’s population (1½%) was higher than the average growth in the whole world. Computing that the population of the world would in 150-200 years reach 10 billion, Mendeleyev saw no cause for any alarm. He wrote:
“Not only 10 billion but a population many times that size will find nourishment in this world not only through the application of labor but also through the persistent inventiveness which governs knowledge. It is in my opinion sheer nonsense to fear lack of nourishment, provided the peaceful and active communion of the masses of the people is guaranteed.”
Our great chemist and industrial optimist would have hardly listened with sympathy to the recent advice of Professor Keynes of England who told us during the academic celebrations that we must busy ourselves with limiting the increase in population. Dimitry Ivanovich would have only repeated his old remark: “Or do the new Malthuses wish to arrest this growth? In my opinion, the more, the merrier.” Mendeleyev’s sententious shrewdness very often expressed itself in such deliberately over-simplified formulas.
From the same viewpoint – industrial optimism – Mendeleyev approached the great fetish of conservative idealism, the so-called national character. He wrote:
“Where-ever agriculture in its primitive forms predominates, a nation is incapable of permanent regular and continuous labor but is able to work only fitfully and in a harvest-time manner. This reflects itself clearly in the customs in the sense that there is a lack of equanimity, calmness and thriftiness; fidgetiness is to be observed in everything, a happy-go-lucky attitude prevails, along with it extravagance – there is either miserliness or squandering ... Wherever side by side with agriculture, factory industry has developed on a large scale, where one can see before one’s eyes, in addition to sporadic agriculture, the regulated, continuous, uninterrupted labor in the factories, there obtains a correct appraisal of labor, and so on.”
Of especial value in these lines is the outlook on national character not as some primordial fixed element created for all time, but as a product of historical conditions and, more precisely, social forms of production. This is an indubitable, even if only a partial approach to the historical philosophy of Marxism.
In the development of industry Mendeleyev sees the instrumentalities of national re-education, the elaboration of a new, more balanced, more disciplined and self-controlled national character. If we actually contrast the character of the peasant revolutionary movements with the movement of the proletariat and especially the role of the proletariat in October and today, then the materialist prediction of Mendeleyev will be illumined with sufficient clarity.
Our industrial optimist expressed himself with remarkable lucidity on the elimination of the contradictions between city and country, and every Communist will accept his formulation on this subject. Mendeleyev wrote:
“Russian people have begun to migrate to cities in large numbers ... My view is that it is sheer nonsense to fight against this development; this process will terminate only when the city, on the one side, will spread out to include more parks, gardens, etc., i.e. the aim in the cities will be not only to render life as healthy as possible for all but also to provide sufficient open spaces not only for childrens’ playgrounds and for sport but for every form of recreation; and, on the other hand, in the villages and farms, etc., the non-urban population will so multiply as to require the building of many-storied houses; and there will arise the need for water-works, street lighting and other city comforts. In the course of time all this will lead to the whole countryside (sufficiently densely populated), becoming inhabited, with dwellings being separated by the so-to-speak kitchen gardens and orchards necessary for the production of foodstuffs and with factories and plants for manufacturing and altering these products.” (D.I. Mendeleyev, Towards an Understanding of Russia, 1906).
Here Mendeleyev testifies convincingly in favor of the old thesis of Socialism: the elimination of the contradiction between city and country, Mendeleyev, however, does not here pose the question of changes in social forms of economy. He believes that capitalism will automatically lead to the levelling out of urban and rural conditions through the introduction of higher, more hygienic and cultural forms of human habitation. Herein lies Mendeleyev’s mistake. It appears most clearly in the case of England to which Mendeleyev referred with such hope. Long before England could eliminate the contradictions between city and country, her economic development had already landed in a blind alley. Unemployment corrodes her economy. The leaders of English industry see the salvation of society in emigration, in forcing out the surplus population. Even the more “progressive” economist, Mr. Keynes told us only the other day that the salvaging of English economy lies in Malthusianism! ... For England, too, the road of overcoming the contradictions between city and country leads through Socialism.
There is another surmise made by our industrial optimist. In his last book, Mendeleyev wrote:
“After the industrial epoch, there will probably follow in the future a most complex epoch, which, according to my view, would denote a facilitation, or an extreme simplification of the methods of obtaining food, clothing and shelter. Established science should am at this extreme simplification towards which it has already been partly directed in recent decades.” (idem).
These are remarkable words. Although Dimitry Ivanovich elsewhere makes reservations – against the realization, god forbid, of the Utopia of Socialists and Communists – in these words he nevertheless outlines the technico-scientific perspectives of Communism. A development of the productive forces that would lead us to attain extreme simplification of the methods of obtaining food, clothing and shelter would also clearly lead us to reduce to a minimum the element of coercion in the social structure. With the elimination of the completely useless greediness from social relations, the forms of labor and distribution will assume a Communist character. In the transition from Socialism to Communism no revolution will be necessary since the transition wholly depends upon the technical progress of society.

Utilitarian and “Pure” Science

Mendeleyev’s industrial optimism constantly directed his thought towards practical industrial questions and problems. In his purely theoretical works, we find his thought directed through the same channels to the problems of economy. There is a dissertation by Mendeleyev devoted to the question of diluting alcohol with water, a question. which is of economic significance even today. (An ironic reference to the resumption of the State-sale of vodka. – Ed.) Mendeleyev invented a smokeless powder for the needs of state defense. He occupied himself with a careful study of petroleum, and that in two directions – one, purely theoretical, the origin of petroleum; and the. other, technico-industrial uses. Here we should always bear in mind Mendeleyev’s protest against using petroleum simply as a fuel: “Heating can be done with banknotes!” exclaimed our chemist. A confirmed protectionist, Mendeleyev took leading part in elaborating tariff policies and wrote his Sensible Tariff Policy from which not a few valuable directives can be quoted even from the standpoint of socialist protectionism.
Problems of northern sea routes stirred his interest shortly before his death. He recommended to young investigators and navigators that they solve the problem of opening up the North Pole. He held that commercial routes must necessarily follow.
“Near that ice there is not a little gold and other minerals, our own America. I should be happy to die at the Pole, for there at least no one ‘putrefies’.”
These words have a very modern ring. When the old chemist reflected upon death, he thought about it from the standpoint of putrefaction and dreamt incidentally of dying in an atmosphere of eternal cold.
Mendeleyev never tired of repeating that the goal of knowledge was “usefulness.” In other words, he approached science from the standpoint of utilitarianism. At the same time, as we know, he insisted on the creative role of disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Why should anyone in particular seek for commercial routes by round-about ways to reach the North Pole? Because reaching the Pole is a problem of disinterested research capable of arousing scientific research-sport passions. Is there not a contradiction between this and the affirmation that science’s goal is usefulness? Not at all. Science is a function of society and not of an individual. From the socio-historic standpoint, science is utilitarian. But this does not at all mean that each scientist approaches problems of research from a utilitarian point of view. No! Most often scholars are motivated by their passion for knowledge and the more significant a man’s discovery the less is he able as a general rule to foresee in advance its possible practical applications. Thus the disinterested passion of a research worker does not contradict the utilitarian meaning of each science any more than the personal self-sacrifice of a revolutionary fighter contradicts the utilitarian aim of those class needs which he serves.
Mendeleyev was able to combine perfectly his passion for knowledge for its own sake with incessant preoccupation about raising the technical power of mankind. That is why the two wings of this Congress – the representatives of theoretical and of applied branches of chemistry – stand with equal right under the banner of Mendeleyev. We must educate the new generation of scientists in the spirit of this harmonious coordination of pure scientific research with industrial tasks. Mendeleyev’s faith in the unlimited possibilities for knowledge, prediction and mastery of matter must become the scientific credo for the chemists of the socialist fatherland. The German physiologist, Du Bois Reymond once envisaged philosophic thought as departing from the scene of the class struggle and crying out: “Ignorabimus!” That is, we shall never know, we shall never understand! And scientific thought, linking its fate with the fate of the rising class, replies,
“You lie! The impenetrable does not exist for conscious thought! We will reach everything! We will master everything! We will rebuild everything!”

Sunday, September 15, 2013

***Rumblings From The 1960's Heartland- S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders"- A Film Review



A YouTube film clip of Francis Ford Coppola's screen adaption of S.E. Hinton's classic tale of teenage alienation, "The Outsiders".

DVD Review

The Outsiders, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise and every other rising young male star of the 1980s worth his salt, Dian Lane, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Paramount Pictures, 1983


Recently I reviewed another film adaptation by the director Francis Ford of one of S.E. Hinton’s classic tales of American teenage working class alienation during the 1950s-1960s, “Rumblefish”. There the plot centered on the seemingly inescapable nihilism following the footsteps of a leader, and his ex-leader brother, of a by then passé white teenage gang. That film presented the anguish of youthful working class alienation in a very different and much less glamorous light than the teenage angst films of my youth, like Marlon Brando’s “The Wild Ones” and James Dean’s “Rebel Without A Cause”. I also mentioned in that review that I had been momentarily attracted, very attracted, to that ‘lifestyle’, coming as I did from that stratum of the working class that lived with few hopes and fewer dreams. It was a very near thing that shifted me away from that life, mainly the allure of books and less dangerous exploits.

I did not feel that same kind of identification here in this otherwise outstanding tale of youthful working class alienation out in the heartland in the hills of Oklahoma, “The Outsiders”. That, notwithstanding the fact that the main character and narrator, “Pony Boy”, is also very attracted to books (although “Gone With The Wind” and the poetry of Robert Frost seem odd choices to go ga-ga over). The difference. In “Rumblefish”, seemingly a much more experimental film on Coppola’s part and a more searing look at working class youth on Hinton’s part, the plot is is filled with examples of that unspoken danger, that unspoken destructive pathology and dead end nihilism that meant doom for at least some of the characters, and not just the easy to foresee one of early and untimely death that stalks those down at the edges of society.

Superficially, the plot of “The Outsiders” would have assumed that same fate for its characters. A small town out in the hill of Oklahoma where the class divisions are obvious has the working class “Greasers” lined up in combat against the middle class “Socs” with every cliché of the class struggle, except the political, thrown in for good measure. (Obviously portrayed, as well, note the sideburns long hair on the Greaser side and the chino pants on the frat guys side. You don’t need a scorecard on this one.) In summary: the two sides clash over nothing in particular except “turf”: hold grudges; seek revenge taking causalities, one fatally; and ending with a rumble where the Greasers have their momentary Pyrrhic victory.

Along the way there is plenty of time for youthful reflection by the narrator and his fellows about the ways of the class-ridden world, a few bouts of heroism and a little off-hand (very off-hand) romance. As much as we know about the nature of modern class society this thing rings false. The moral here-even the most alienated Greaser, played to a tee by Matt Dillon, is really only searching for meaning to his life and a little society, only to get waylaid by that life in the end. Thus, this thing turns into something more like a cautionary tale than a slice of live down at the bottom edges of society. The more circumspect and existential “Rumblefish” gets my vote any day.

Note: Part of the problem with this film cinematically is that the leading male actors here, the likes of Rob Lowe, the late Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise and Matt Dillon are all too ‘pretty’ to be Greasers. Although one can appreciate the talent pool that came out of this film I know from real life that, while the "greasers" of this world may have some raw sexually attractions they would hardly grace the pages of “Gentleman’s Quarterly”, or some such magazine. These guys could. That is what rings false here, as well as the assurances, hammered home to us throughout the story, that in democratic America even the down-trodden can lift themselves up and succeed. If they wash up a little.
***Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Other (Non-"Beat") New York Writers’ World Of The 1950s- "New York In The 1950s"



DVD Review

New York In The 1950s, Dan Wakefield, Gay and Nan Talese, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, and many other authors who came of age in the 1950s, 1999


I have prattled on endlessly about the role of the beat writers and poets and their hangers-on, led by the trio of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, in leading the breakout from mainstream American society, literary society at least, in forming my own cultural tastes and that of many of my generation, the Generation of ’68. That "beat" cultural movement, in my mind rightly or wrongly, is forever associated with New York City, and particularly Greenwich Village. And that is where the question of taste comes in for, except for short periods, the beat movement was as much a part of the San Francisco scene of the 1950s as that of New York. Moreover, there is another group of writers, as portrayed in this interesting, short film documentary that can claim, and do claim, for themselves the role of avant guarde anti-establishment New York writers. The names James Baldwin, Dan Wakefield, Norman Mailer, come quickly to mind, as do the “Village Voice” and Irving Howe's social democratic journal “Dissent”.

I have detailed elsewhere my own feeling of suffocation with the cultural morass of the 1950’s, although I was too young to articulate that angst even in a caricature James Dean-like “Rebel Without A Cause” way. That period was exemplified by the stolidity of the Eisenhower administration. Nevertheless other little clots of people, who had come of age in the 1940s and who were molded by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the sacrifices of World War II, were interested in breaking out of the cultural straight jacket but also interested in making a name for themselves in the serious literary world. Those who succeeded are the writers who for the most part make up this film, led by those named authors above. I might add as this is a somewhat older film that since its production a number of those writers, and they were mainly writers here, the poets tended to go with the beats, have passed on, including recently, J.D Salinger, who I was surprised to note influenced and was a model for many of those who spoke in the film.

I mentioned the “Village Voice” and “Dissent” above, and it was those small relatively small publications that sustained these writers who came from all over America, even from the wilds of Indiana (Wakefield), to make their mark in the American cultural capital. Their reasons were as varied as any other group but to parody an answer that bank robber, Willie Sutton, gave when asked why he did robberies- that’s where the publishing houses are (or were). Surprisingly many of these writers, unlike the beats, went to work writing copy, or what not, in the medium somewhere in order to make the connections. So that is one thing that separates this group from the beats.

More than one writer interviewed here did, as Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne did, make there mark in New York and then moved on. For, as all interviewees seemingly agreed upon, the cultural oasis of New York of the 1950’s had a defining, and finite, moment. Later other cultural movements, movements that I am more familiar with, and not necessarily driven by writers took center stage. Still this film, and the archival footage that made up most of the backdrop, did its job in evoking a certain ‘feel’ for the period. Moreover, some of the negative issues involved with a movement based in the “corrupt” city in the 1950s: the excessive alcohol consumption and partying that formed part of the writerly ethos; the definite second- class citizenship of women; and the high burn-out rate, are addressed here. All in all this is a good presentation centered on the writers themselves. Still, I always think of that famous photograph of a cigarette-smoking Jack Kerouac, a heaven-bent, dream-like Allen Ginsberg and a blasé-posing William Burroughs when I think of New York. The “beat” habit is hard to break.

Note: Much of this film is driven by the anecdotes and storytelling of author Dan Wakefield, who is the central speaker here, and who helps to fill in the “back office” details of this period. I never would have known about his personal and professional (as a writer) connection to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement, a movement in my own youth that kick-started my own social and political concerns in the early 1960s, as one that formed the backdrop for one of his early book without his mentioning it as well as a host of other little arcane facts like that. Good job.
From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International-

Workers Vanguard No. 949
1 January 2010

TROTSKY

LENIN

For the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

(Quote of the Week)



V.I. Lenin’s classic 1917 work, The State and Revolution, is a seminal analysis of the nature of the state and its historical development as a centralized instrument of force in the hands of the dominant social class. Polemicizing against proponents of the bourgeois model of parliamentary democracy, Lenin, writing on the eve of the October Revolution, drew the line between revolutionary Marxism and opportunist betrayal. Invoking the revolutionary boldness of the 1871 Paris Commune—when the Parisian proletariat briefly held power before being drowned in blood—Lenin underlined the necessity of proletarian revolution overthrowing the bourgeois order and smashing the machinery of the capitalist state, replacing it with a workers state.

Marx’s critico-analytical genius saw in the practical measures of the Commune the turning-point which the opportunists fear and do not want to recognise because of their cowardice, because they do not want to break irrevocably with the bourgeoisie, and which the anarchists do not want to see, either because they are in a hurry or because they do not understand at all the conditions of great social changes. “We must not even think of destroying the old state machine; how can we do without ministries and officials?” argues the opportunist, who is completely saturated with philistinism and who, at bottom, not only does not believe in revolution, in the creative power of revolution, but lives in mortal dread of it (like our Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries)....

We, however, shall break with the opportunists; and the entire class-conscious proletariat will be with us in the fight—not to “shift the balance of forces,” but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to destroy bourgeois parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

—V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

***********

1. What Made the Communards' Attempt Heroic?
It is well known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers that any attempt to overthrow the government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx greeted the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries. Marx did not persist in the pedantic attitude of condemning an “untimely” movement as did the ill-famed Russian renegade from marxism, Plekhanov, who in November 1905 wrote encouragingly about the workers' and peasants' struggle, but after December 1905 cried, liberal fashion: "They should not have taken up arms."
Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards, who, as he expressed it, "stormed heaven". Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. Marx endeavored to analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it and re-examine his theory in the light of it.
The only “correction” Marx thought it necessary to make to the Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Commune.
The last preface to the new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24, 1872. In this preface the authors, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, say that the programme of the Communist Manifesto "has in some details become out-of-date", and the go on to say:
"... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'...."[1]
The authors took the words that are in single quotation marks in this passage from Marx's book, The Civil War in France.
Thus, Marx and Engels regarded one principal and fundamental lesson of the Paris Commune as being of such enormous importance that they introduced it as an important correction into the Communist Manifesto.
Most characteristically, it is this important correction that has been distorted by the opportunists, and its meaning probably is not known to nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine-hundredths, of the readers of the Communist Manifesto. We shall deal with this distortion more fully farther on, in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. Here it will be sufficient to note that the current, vulgar “interpretation” of Marx's famous statement just quoted is that Marx here allegedly emphasizes the idea of slow development in contradistinction to the seizure of power, and so on.
As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is the case. Marx's idea is that the working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery", and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.
On April 12, 1871, i.e., just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann:
"If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it [Marx's italics--the original is zerbrechen], and this is the precondition for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting." (Neue Zeit, Vol.XX, 1, 1901-02, p. 709.)[2]
(The letters of Marx to Kugelmann have appeared in Russian in no less than two editions, one of which I edited and supplied with a preface.)
The words, "to smash the bureaucratic-military machine", briefly express the principal lesson of Marxism regarding the tasks of the proletariat during a revolution in relation to the state. And this is the lesson that has been not only completely ignored, but positively distorted by the prevailing, Kautskyite, “interpretation” of Marxism!
As for Marx's reference to The Eighteenth Brumaire, we have quoted the relevant passage in full above.
It is interesting to note, in particular, two points in the above-quoted argument of Marx. First, he restricts his conclusion to the Continent. This was understandable in 1871, when Britain was still the model of a purely capitalist country, but without a militarist clique and, to a considerable degree, without a bureaucracy. Marx therefore excluded Britain, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, then seemed possible, and indeed was possible, without the precondition of destroying "ready-made state machinery".
Today, in 1917, at the time of the first great imperialist war, this restriction made by Marx is no longer valid. Both Britain and America, the biggest and the last representatives — in the whole world — of Anglo-Saxon “liberty”, in the sense that they had no militarist cliques and bureaucracy, have completely sunk into the all-European filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic-military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves, and suppress everything. Today, in Britain and America, too, "the precondition for every real people's revolution" is the smashing, the destruction of the "ready-made state machinery" (made and brought up to the “European”, general imperialist, perfection in those countries in the years 1914-17).
Secondly, particular attention should be paid to Marx's extremely profound remark that the destruction of the bureaucratic-military state machine is "the precondition for every real people's revolution". This idea of a "people's revolution seems strange coming from Marx, so that the Russian Plekhanovites and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who wish to be regarded as Marxists, might possibly declare such an expression to be a "slip of the pen" on Marx's part. They have reduced Marxism to such a state of wretchedly liberal distortion that nothing exists for them beyond the antithesis between bourgeois revolution and proletarian revolution, and even this antithesis they interpret in an utterly lifeless way.
If we take the revolutions of the 20th century as examples we shall, of course, have to admit that the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions are both bourgeois revolutions. Neither of them, however, is a "people's" revolution, since in neither does the mass of the people, their vast majority, come out actively, independently, with their own economic and political demands to any noticeable degree. By contrast, although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905-07 displayed no such “brilliant” successes as at time fell to the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, it was undoubtedly a "real people's" revolution, since the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands, their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed.
In Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not constitute the majority of the people in any country on the Continent. A "people's" revolution, one actually sweeping the majority into its stream, could be such only if it embraced both the proletariat and the peasants. These two classes then constituted the “people”. These two classes are united by the fact that the "bureaucratic-military state machine" oppresses, crushes, exploits them. To smash this machine, to break it up, is truly in the interest of the “people”, of their majority, of the workers and most of the peasants, is "the precondition" for a free alliance of the poor peasant and the proletarians, whereas without such an alliance democracy is unstable and socialist transformation is impossible.
As is well known, the Paris Commune was actually working its way toward such an alliance, although it did not reach its goal owing to a number of circumstances, internal and external.
Consequently, in speaking of a "real people's revolution", Marx, without in the least discounting the special features of the petty bourgeois (he spoke a great deal about them and often), took strict account of the actual balance of class forces in most of the continental countries of Europe in 1871. On the other hand, he stated that the “smashing” of the state machine was required by the interests of both the workers and the peasants, that it united them, that it placed before them the common task of removing the “parasite” and of replacing it by something new.
By what exactly?

2. What is to Replace the Smashed State Machine?

In 1847, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx's answer to this question was as yet a purely abstract one; to be exact, it was an answer that indicated he tasks, but not the ways of accomplishing them. The answer given in the Communist Manifesto was that this machine was to be replaced by "the proletariat organized as the ruling class", by the "winning of the battle of democracy".
Marx did not indulge in utopias; he expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question as to the specific forms this organisation of the proletariat as the ruling class would assume and as to the exact manner in which this organisation would be combined with the most complete, most consistent "winning of the battle of democracy."
Marx subjected the experience of the Commune, meagre as it was, to the most careful analysis in The Civil War in France. Let us quote the most important passages of this work. [All the following quotes in this Chapter, with one exception, are so citied - Ed.]
Originating from the Middle Ages, there developed in the 19th century "the centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature." With the development of class antagonisms between capital and labor, "state power assumed more and more the character of a public force organized for the suppression of the working class, of a machine of class rule. After every revolution, which marks an advance in the class struggle, the purely coercive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief." After the revolution of 1848-49, state power became "the national war instruments of capital against labor". The Second Empire consolidated this.
"The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune." It was the "specific form" of "a republic that was not only to remove the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself."
What was this “specific” form of the proletarian, socialist republic? What was the state it began to create?
"The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people."
This demand now figures in the programme of every party calling itself socialist. The real worth of their programme, however, is best shown by the behavior of our Social-Revolutionists and mensheviks, who, right after the revolution of February 27, refused to carry out this demand!
"The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable."[3]
The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine “only” by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this “only” signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of "quantity being transformed into quality": democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper.
It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfil all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power.
In this connection, the following measures of the Commune, emphasized by Marx, are particularly noteworthy: the abolition of all representation allowances, and of all monetary privileges to officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of "workmen's wages". This shows more clearly than anything else the turn from bourgeois to proletarian democracy, from the democracy of the oppressors to that of the oppressed classes, from the state as a "special force" for the suppression of a particular class to the suppression of the oppressors by the general force of the majority of the people--the workers and the peasants. And it is on this particularly striking point, perhaps the most important as far as the problem of the state is concerned, that the ideas of Marx have been most completely ignored! In popular commentaries, the number of which is legion, this is not mentioned. The thing done is to keep silent about it as if it were a piece of old-fashioned “naivete”, just as Christians, after their religion had been given the status of state religion, “forgot” the “naivete” of primitive Christianity with its democratic revolutionary spirit.
The reduction of the remuneration of high state officials seem “simply” a demand of naive, primitive democracy. One of the “founders” of modern opportunism, the ex-Social-Democrat Eduard Bernstein, has more than once repeated the vulgar bourgeois jeers at “primitive” democracy. Like all opportunists, and like the present Kautskyites, he did not understand at all that, first of all, the transition from capitalism to socialism is impossible without a certain “reversion” to “primitive” democracy (for how else can the majority, and then the whole population without exception, proceed to discharge state functions?); and that, secondly, "primitive democracy" based on capitalism and capitalist culture is not the same as primitive democracy in prehistoric or precapitalist times. Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis the great majority of the functions of the old "state power" have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing, and checking that they can be easily performed by every literate person, can quite easily be performed for ordinary "workmen's wages", and that these functions can (and must) be stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of "official grandeur".
All officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time, their salaries reduced to the level of ordinary "workmen's wages" — these simple and "self-evident" democratic measures, while completely uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism to socialism. These measures concern the reorganization of the state, the purely political reorganization of society; but, of course, they acquire their full meaning and significance only in connection with the "expropriation of the expropriators" either bring accomplished or in preparation, i.e., with the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into social ownership.
"The Commune," Marx wrote, "made the catchword of all bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a reality, by abolishing the two greatest sources of expenditure--the army and the officialdom."
From the peasants, as from other sections of the petty bourgeoisie, only an insignificant few "rise to the top", "get on in the world" in the bourgeois sense, i.e., become either well-to-do, bourgeois, or officials in secure and privileged positions. In every capitalist country where there are peasants (as there are in most capitalist countries), the vast majority of them are oppressed by the government and long for its overthrow, long for “cheap” government. This can be achieved only by the proletariat; and by achieving it, the proletariat at the same time takes a step towards the socialist reorganization of the state.

3. Abolition of Parliamentarism

"The Commune," Marx wrote, "was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time....
"Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress [ver- and zertreten] the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people constituted in communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for workers, foremen and accountants for his business."
Owing to the prevalence of social-chauvinism and opportunism, this remarkable criticism of parliamentarism, made in 1871, also belongs now to the "forgotten words" of Marxism. The professional Cabinet Ministers and parliamentarians, the traitors to the proletariat and the “practical” socialists of our day, have left all criticism of parliamentarism to the anarchists, and, on this wonderfully reasonable ground, they denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as “anarchism”!! It is not surprising that the proletariat of the “advanced” parliamentary countries, disgusted with such “socialists” as the Scheidemanns, Davids, Legiens, Sembats, Renaudels, Hendersons, Vanderveldes, Staunings, Brantings, Bissolatis, and Co., has been with increasing frequency giving its sympathies to anarcho-syndicalism, in spite of the fact that the latter is merely the twin brother of opportunism.
For Marx, however, revolutionary dialectics was never the empty fashionable phrase, the toy rattle, which Plekhanov, Kautsky and others have made of it. Marx knew how to break with anarchism ruthlessly for its inability to make use even of the “pigsty” of bourgeois parliamentarism, especially when the situation was obviously not revolutionary; but at the same time he knew how to subject parliamentarism to genuinely revolutionary proletarian criticism.
To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament--this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.
But if we deal with the question of the state, and if we consider parliamentarism as one of the institutions of the state, from the point of view of the tasks of the proletariat in this field, what is the way out of parliamentarism? How can it be dispensed with?
Once again, we must say: the lessons of Marx, based on the study of the Commune, have been so completely forgotten that the present-day "Social-Democrat" (i.e., present-day traitor to socialism) really cannot understand any criticism of parliamentarism other than anarchist or reactionary criticism.
The way out of parliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from talking shops into “working” bodies. "The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time."
"A working, not a parliamentary body"--this is a blow straight from the shoulder at the present-day parliamentarian country, from America to Switzerland, from France to Britain, Norway and so forth--in these countries the real business of “state” is performed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries, and General Staffs. parliament is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the "common people". This is so true that even in the Russian republic, a bourgeois-democratic republic, all these sins of parliamentarism came out at once, even before it managed to set up a real parliament. The heroes of rotten philistinism, such as the skobelevs and tseretelis, the Chernovs and Avksentyevs, have even succeeded in polluting the Soviets after the fashion of the most disgusting bourgeois parliamentarism, in converting them into mere talking shops. In the Soviets, the “socialist” Ministers are fooling the credulous rustics with phrase-mongering and resolutions. In the government itself a sort of permanent shuffle is going on in order that, on the one hand, as many Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks as possible may in turn get near the “pie”, the lucrative and honorable posts, and that, on the other hand, the “attention” of the people may be “engaged”. meanwhile the chancelleries and army staffs “do” the business of “state”.
Dyelo Naroda, the organ of the ruling Socialist-Revolutionary Party, recently admitted in a leading article--with the matchless frankness of people of "good society", in which “all” are engaged in political prostitution - that even in the ministeries headed by the “socialists” (save the mark!), the whole bureaucratic apparatus is in fact unchanged, is working in the old way and quite “freely” sabotaging revolutionary measures! Even without this admission, does not the actual history of the participation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the government prove this? It is noteworthy, however, that in the ministerial company of the Cadets, the Chernovs, Rusanovs, Zenzinovs, and other editors of Dyelo Naroda have so completely lost all sense of shame as to brazenly assert, as if it were a mere bagetelle, that in “their” ministeries everything is unchanged!! Revolutionary-democratic phrases to gull the rural Simple Simons, and bureaucracy and red tape to "gladden the hearts" of the capitalists--that is the essence of the “honest” coalition.
The Commune substitutes for the venal and rotten parliamentarism of bourgeois society institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion does not degenerate into deception, for the parliamentarians themselves have to work, have to execute their own laws, have themselves to test the results achieved in reality, and to account directly to their constituents. Representative institutions remain, but there is no parliamentarism here as a special system, as the division of labor between the legislative and the executive, as a privileged position for the deputies. We cannot imagine democracy, even proletarian democracy, without representative institutions, but we can and must imagine democracy without parliamentarism, if criticism of bourgeois society is not mere words for us, if the desire to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie is our earnest and sincere desire, and not a mere “election” cry for catching workers' votes, as it is with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and also the Scheidemanns and Legiens, the Smblats and Vanderveldes.
It is extremely instructive to note that, in speaking of the function of those officials who are necessary for the Commune and for proletarian democracy, Marx compares them to the workers of "every other employer", that is, of the ordinary capitalist enterprise, with its "workers, foremen, and accountants".
There is no trace of utopianism in Marx, in the sense that he made up or invented a “new” society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old, and the forms of transition from the latter to the former, as a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it. He “Learned” from the Commune, just as all the great revolutionary thinkers learned unhesitatingly from the experience of great movements of the oppressed classes, and never addressed them with pedantic “homilies” (such as Plekhanov's: "They should not have taken up arms" or Tsereteli's: "A class must limit itself").
Abolishing the bureaucracy at once, everywhere and completely, is out of the question. It is a utopia. But to smash the old bureaucratic machine at once and to begin immediately to construct a new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy--this is not a utopia, it is the experience of the Commune, the direct and immediate task of the revolutionary proletariat.
Capitalism simplifies the functions of “state” administration; it makes it possible to cast “bossing” aside and to confine the whole matter to the organization of the proletarians (as the ruling class), which will hire "workers, foremen and accountants" in the name of the whole of society.
We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants".
The subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working people, i.e., to the proletariat. A beginning can and must be made at once, overnight, to replace the specific “bossing” of state officials by the simple functions of "foremen and accountants", functions which are already fully within the ability of the average town dweller and can well be performed for "workmen's wages".
We, the workers, shall organize large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created, relying on our own experience as workers, establishing strict, iron discipline backed up by the state power of the armed workers. We shall reduce the role of state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, modestly paid "foremen and accountants" (of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian task, this is what we can and must start with in accomplishing the proletarian revolution. Such a beginning, on the basis of large-scale production, will of itself lead to the gradual "withering away" of all bureaucracy, to the gradual creation of an order--an order without inverted commas, an order bearing no similarity to wage slavery--an order under which the functions of control and accounting, becoming more and more simple, will be performed by each in turn, will then become a habit and will finally die out as the special functions of a special section of the population.
A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business organized on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type, in which, standing over the “common” people, who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the “parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all “state” officials in general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfilment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which takes account of what the Commune had already begun to practice (particularly in building up the state).
To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service so that the technicians, foremen and accountants, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than "a workman's wage", all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat--that is our immediate aim. This is what will bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid the laboring classes of the bourgeoisie's prostitution of these institutions.

4. Organisation of National Unity

"In a brief sketch of national organization which the Commune had no time to develop, it states explicitly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest village...." The communes were to elect the "National Delegation" in Paris.
"... The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to to be suppressed, as had been deliberately mis-stated, but were to be transferred to communal, i.e., strictly responsible, officials.
"... National unity was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, organized by the communal constitution; it was to become a reality by the destruction of state power which posed as the embodiment of that unity yet wanted to be independent of, and superior to, the nation, on whose body it was but a parasitic excrescence. While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority claiming the right to stand above society, and restored to the responsible servants of society."
The extent to which the opportunists of present-day Social-Democracy have failed--perhaps it would be more true to say, have refused--to understand these observations of Marx is best shown by that book of Herostratean fame of the renegade Bernstein, The Premises of Socialism and the Tasks of the Social-Democrats. It is in connection with the above passage from Marx that Bernstein wrote that "as far as its political content", this programme "displays, in all its essential features, the greatest similarity to the federalism of Proudhon.... In spite of all the other points of difference between Marx and the 'petty-bourgeois' Proudhon [Bernstein places the word "petty-bourgeois" in inverted commas, to make it sound ironical] on these points, their lines of reasoning run as close as could be." Of course, Bernstein continues, the importance of the municipalities is growing, but "it seems doubtful to me whether the first job of democracy would be such a dissolution [Auflosung] of the modern states and such a complete transformation [Umwandlung] of their organization as is visualized by Marx and Proudhon (the formation of a National Assembly from delegates of the provincial of district assemblies, which, in their turn, would consist of delegates from the communes), so that consequently the previous mode of national representation would disappear." (Bernstein, Premises, German edition, 1899, pp.134 and 136)
To confuse Marx's view on the "destruction of state power, a parasitic excrescence", with Proudhon's federalism is positively monstrous! But it is no accident, for it never occurs to the opportunist that Marx does not speak here at all about federalism as opposed to centralism, but about smashing the old, bourgeois state machine which exists in all bourgeois countries.
The only thing that does occur to the opportunist is what he sees around him, in an environment of petty-bourgeois philistinism and “reformists” stagnation, namely, only “municipalities”! The opportunist has even grown out of the habit of thinking about proletarian revolution.
It is ridiculous. But the remarkable thing is that nobody argued with Bernstein on this point. Bernstein has been refuted by many, especially by Plekhanov in Russian literature and by Kautsky in European literature, but neither of them has said anything about this distortion of Marx by Bernstein.
The opportunist has so much forgotten how to think in a revolutionary way and to dwell on revolution that he attributes “federalism” to Marx, whom he confuses with the founder of anarchism, Proudhon. As for Kautsky and Plekhanov, who claim to be orthodox Marxists and defenders of the theory of revolutionary Marxism, they are silent on this point! Here is one of the roots of the extreme vulgarization of the views on the difference between Marxism and anarchism, which is characteristic of both the Kautskyites and the opportunists, and which we shall discuss again later.
There is not a trace of federalism in Marx's above-quoted observation on the experience of the Commune. Marx agreed with Proudhon on the very point that the opportunist Bernstein did not see. Marx disagreed with Proudhon on the very point on which Bernstein found a similarity between them.
Marx agreed with Proudhon in that they both stood for the “smashing” of the modern state machine. Neither the opportunists nor the Kautskyites wish to see the similarity of views on this point between Marxism and anarchism (both Proudhon and Bakunin) because this is where they have departed from Marxism.
Marx disagreed both with Proudhon and Bakunin precisely on the question of federalism (not to mention the dictatorship of the proletariat). Federalism as a principle follows logically from the petty-bourgeois views of anarchism. Marx was a centralist. There is no departure whatever from centralism in his observations just quoted. Only those who are imbued with the philistine "superstitious belief" in the state can mistake the destruction of the bourgeois state machine for the destruction of centralism!
Now if the proletariat and the poor peasants take state power into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely in communes, and unite the action of all the communes in striking at capital, in crushing the resistance of the capitalists, and in transferring the privately-owned railways, factories, land and so on to the entire nation, to the whole of society, won't that be centralism? Won't that be the most consistent democratic centralism and, moreover, proletarian centralism?
Bernstein simply cannot conceive of the possibility of voluntary centralism, of the voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes, for the sole purpose of destroying bourgeois rule and the bourgeois state machine. Like all philistines, Bernstein pictures centralism as something which can be imposed and maintained solely from above, and solely by the bureaucracy and military clique.
As though foreseeing that his views might be distorted, Marx expressly emphasized that the charge that the Commune had wanted to destroy national unity, to abolish the central authority, was a deliberate fraud. Marx purposely used the words: "National unity was... to be organized", so as to oppose conscious, democratic, proletarian centralism to bourgeois, military, bureaucratic centralism.
But there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. And the very thing the opportunists of present-day Social-Democracy do not want to hear about it the destruction of state power, the amputation of the parasitic excrescence.

5. Abolition of the Parasite State

We have already quoted Marx's words on the subject, and we must now supplement them.
"It is generally the fate of new historical creations," he wrote, "to be mistaken for the counterpart of older and even defunct forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness. Thus, this new Commune, which breaks [bricht, smashes] the modern state power, has been regarded as a revival of the medieval communes... as a federation of small states (as Montesquieu and the Girondins[4] visualized it)... as an exaggerated form of the old struggle against overcentralization....
"... The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by that parasitic excrescence, the 'state', feeding upon and hampering the free movement of society. By this one act it would have initiated the regeneration of France....
"... The Communal Constitution would have brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their districts, and there secured to them, in the town working men, the natural trustees of their interests. The very existence of the Commune involved, as a matter of course, local self-government, but no longer as a counterpoise to state power, now become superfluous."
"Breaking state power", which as a "parasitic excrescence"; its “amputation”, its “smashing”; "state power, now become superfluous"--these are the expressions Marx used in regard to the state when appraising and analyzing the experience of the Commune.
All this was written a little less than half a century ago; and now one has to engage in excavations, as it were, in order to bring undistorted Marxism to the knowledge of the mass of the people. The conclusions drawn from the observation of the last great revolution which Marx lived through were forgotten just when the time for the next great proletarian revolution has arrived.
"... The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which expressed themselves in it show that it was a thoroughly flexible political form, while all previous forms of government had been essentially repressive. Its true secret was this: it was essentially a working-class government, the result of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which the economic emancipation of labor could be accomplished....
"Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion...."
The utopians busied themselves with “discovering” political forms under which the socialist transformation of society was to take place. The anarchists dismissed the question of political forms altogether. The opportunists of present-day Social-Democracy accepted the bourgeois political forms of the parliamentary democratic state as the limit which should not be overstepped; they battered their foreheads praying before this “model”, and denounced as anarchism every desire to break these forms.
Marx deduced from the whole history of socialism and the political struggle that the state was bound to disappear, and that the transitional form of its disappearance (the transition from state to non-state) would be the "proletariat organized as the ruling class". Marx, however, did not set out to discover the political forms of this future stage. He limited himself to carefully observing French history, to analyzing it, and to drawing the conclusion to which the year 1851 had led, namely, that matters were moving towards destruction of the bourgeois state machine.
And when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat burst forth, Marx, in spite of its failure, in spite of its short life and patent weakness, began to study the forms it had discovered.
The Commune is the form "at last discovered" by the proletarian revolution, under which the economic emancipation of labor can take place.
The Commune is the first attempt by a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state machine; and it is the political form "at last discovered", by which the smashed state machine can and must be replaced.
We shall see further on that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in different circumstances and under different conditions, continue the work of the Commune and confirm Marx's brilliant historical analysis.

Endnotes

[1] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1962, p. 22.
[2] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence. Moscow, 1965, pp. 262-63.
[3] See Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1973, pp. 217-21).
Further below, on pp. 426, 427, 432-436 of this volume, Lenin is quoting from the same work by Marx (op. cit., pp. 222, 220-23).
[4] The Girondists--a political grouping during the French bourgeois revolution of the late eighteenth century, expressed the interests of the moderate bourgeoisie. They wavered between revolution and counter-revolution, and made deals with the monarchy.
***Coming Of Age, Period-An Encore- The Rock Music Of The 1950s



A "YouTube" film clip of Mark Dinning performing his class teen tragedy song, "Teen Angel".

CD Review

Oldies But Goodies, Volume Seven, Original Sound Record Co., 1986


I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.

So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer and some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such 1950s compilations “speak” to. Of course, the sordid tale of teenage treachery, “Wake Up Little Susie” by The Everly Brothers. Nobody can tell me, or you either, in the year 2010 that old Susie and the narrator just innocently fell asleep, right? And how about the died too young Ritchie Valens on “Donna”. Or one of the very first songs that I memorized and sang around the house until I almost was thrown out by my mother, in her tender mercies, “Handy Man”, by Jimmy Jones. But if you want to get a real sense of teen angst, teen alienation, teen romantic longing in the 1950s, then Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” is the ticket. In ten thousand years when they unearth this CD and want to try and understand us primitives, and our coming of age traumas this will be the key that unlocks the door.

MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)


Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please
Out In The1940s Screw-ball Comedy Night- Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell's His Girl Friday



From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

His Girl Friday,starring Rosalind Russell,Cary Grant, MGM, 1940

I suppose the world could use a laugh, could use getting away from the bummer daily headlines anytime and anyplace and hide for a couple of hours in the cinematic world, a world where the funny can be therapy for the ailments of the day. Probably in the time of the film under review, His Girl Friday a female-centered newspaper story variation on the original story, The Front Page, a time when the world was stirring out of the Great Depression and the flames of war were enveloping Europe and the Far East the need for such relief was as important as any other time. And the flamboyant newspaper publisher played by Cary Grant and the feisty newspaper reporter played by Rosalind Russell delivered using all the comedic skills at their command.

Now the story line, the hot-cold love between Grant and Russell who have divorced, well, divorced over the differences in perspective about what married life was about for two working professionals, overlaid by the big news story of the day, the upcoming execution of a harmless Walter Mitty-type for murdering a police officer, is not what drives this one. Nor is it the witty take on governmental corruption and incompetent, the sensationalism of the media, or the current events of the day. It is the strangely inviting repartee between Grant and Russell as the debonair Grant tries to persuade the reluctant Russell to do one last story, the career-making big one on the execution, before setting off into the sunset to that white house with picket fence, a couple of kids and a dog in,ah, Albany. The patter between the pair as Grant works his charm and Russell comes to realize that she is a hell of newspaperman (today news reporter) is what provides the laughs as they, at times, seem to be working their lines overreach other. Grant, known later more for his suave romantic leads with the likes of Grace Kelly, is right at home in this screw-ball comedy milieu, as is Russell, and so will you.



Out In The1940s Screw-ball Comedy Night- Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell's His Girl Friday



From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

His Girl Friday,starring Rosalind Russell,Cary Grant, MGM, 1940

I suppose the world could use a laugh, could use getting away from the bummer daily headlines anytime and anyplace and hide for a couple of hours in the cinematic world, a world where the funny can be therapy for the ailments of the day. Probably in the time of the film under review, His Girl Friday a female-centered newspaper story variation on the original story, The Front Page, a time when the world was stirring out of the Great Depression and the flames of war were enveloping Europe and the Far East the need for such relief was as important as any other time. And the flamboyant newspaper publisher played by Cary Grant and the feisty newspaper reporter played by Rosalind Russell delivered using all the comedic skills at their command.

Now the story line, the hot-cold love between Grant and Russell who have divorced, well, divorced over the differences in perspective about what married life was about for two working professionals, overlaid by the big news story of the day, the upcoming execution of a harmless Walter Mitty-type for murdering a police officer, is not what drives this one. Nor is it the witty take on governmental corruption and incompetent, the sensationalism of the media, or the current events of the day. It is the strangely inviting repartee between Grant and Russell as the debonair Grant tries to persuade the reluctant Russell to do one last story, the career-making big one on the execution, before setting off into the sunset to that white house with picket fence, a couple of kids and a dog in,ah, Albany. The patter between the pair as Grant works his charm and Russell comes to realize that she is a hell of newspaperman (today news reporter) is what provides the laughs as they, at times, seem to be working their lines overreach other. Grant, known later more for his suave romantic leads with the likes of Grace Kelly, is right at home in this screw-ball comedy milieu, as is Russell, and so will you.