The Question of the State – Vercesi

We publish here our translation of an article by Ottorino Perrone (alias Vercesi), a leader of the Italian left in exile, from issue no. 2 of Octobre, dated to March 1938. Though we disagree with some of the authors’ positions, particularly on the unions and the role of the revolutionary party within the proletarian dictatorship (see our Points of Unity), we nevertheless publish this article for its discussion of the dynamic of the counter-revolution and how a revolutionary party must orient itself within such a situation, which we find valuable.

League of Internationalist Communists

10 March 2024

The Question of the State

The State means constraint. Socialism means freedom. The opposition is flagrant, and no subterfuge can mitigate its significance. In any conjuncture of the class struggle, this opposition persists and, to take the most extreme hypothesis, if tomorrow, faced with the capitalist onslaught against the borders of the proletarian state, the communists resorted to bourgeois methods of coercion against the proletariat or any of its groupings, a profound involution would begin within the proletarian state, and it would no longer be a state of that nature that would triumph against the bourgeois assailant, but the “revolutionary and proletarian” window-dressing would begin to cover an ailment that capitalism had been able to bring into our own ranks.

It has been said a thousand times that socialism is a question of substance, not form. We must add that when, under the pretext of the “necessity of the hour”, form borrows from substance, the alteration that occurs is not occasional but definitive, and the consequences of this tactic will impose themselves with the same iron logic that produced the present massacre of the workers of Spain, China and the orgies of the Moscow Supreme Court from the initial errors committed at the start of the Russian revolution.

Before turning to our examination of the problem, we would like to make it clear that we are far from setting ourselves up as judges of Lenin and the artisans of the Russian Revolution, or giving the slightest credence to the social-democratic detractors of the Russian Revolution, who are trying to establish a necessary relationship of dependence between October 1917 and the current hecatomb in Russia, between Lenin and between Stalin. We are Marxists. The real tribute, the only tribute, to our forerunners is to see Lenin as a gigantic expression of his time, who achieved what none of us could have done, who left us a colossal legacy which it is our duty to apply and amplify in the light of current events. The proletariat will denounce Stalin and his social-democratic cronies as frauds in the same chain of infamy. The former massacring the class in 1935-38, the others trying to wash away the bloodstains on their hands in the red rivers that are currently flooding Spain, China, Russia, Italy and Germany, and which tomorrow will devastate the whole world in a succession of wars or a global conflagration.

The Notion of the State

In historical order, we witness the formation first of the class, then of the state. This is not the result of occasional circumstances but depends on economic evolution. The instrument of labor that separates man from nature thus determines an increase in production that gives rise to accumulation within the castes that are the primitive predecessors of “classes”, since the scale of production cannot satisfy the needs of the collectivity, while at the same time exceeding the consumption capacity of the privileged stratum. In these early days, social issues were able to be resolved more amicably, and a hierarchy was established. Solidarity existed between the different social functions, and the lower strata of workers were unable to feel that they needed more than society allowed. In the later phase of economic development, the situation is quite different. The very logic of accumulation leads to economic subjection, to constraint to maintain this subjection, and the State appears as a historical necessity determined both by the progression of production and the insufficiency of this production to allow the expansion of the needs of the collectivity—hence the division of society into classes.

These factors of historical evolution reveal both the distinctive character of the state (coercion) and the necessity of this state, which can only disappear when the scale of production, combined with the progress of civilization, not only enables the satisfaction of all existing needs, but also the generalization of needs to all producers. So, it is not just a question of believing that equality exists, since the worker and the peasant, the Englishman and the Chinese will receive what they demand, but of finding ourselves in a situation where both will have reached such a degree of progress and civilization that they will be in a real condition of equality. Only then can communist society be established.

Can the state, which came into being with the classes, and as a function of economic evolution, continue to exist after the destruction of the exploiting class, in the period of transition? Or will its continuation prejudge the victory won by the proletariat? Would there be a reversal of positions at the end of historical evolution, and would we find ourselves faced with the necessity of maintaining the state after the suppression of the exploiting class? We raise this question because it is of exceptional importance. It does not depend on chance, and to ignore it is to fall into the pincers that threw us from Lenin to Stalin.

We’ve already noted this. The state responds to two historical necessities: on the one hand, the coordination of production; on the other, the defense of the privileges of the ruling class. The first element persists even after the destruction of capitalism and will continue to exist not only until the full development of producers’ needs, but also until the maturation of the objective conditions for determining the equality of needs. The second element ceases to exist since the apparatus of bourgeois domination has been destroyed, but this in no way leads us to postulate that the character of the state would no longer be the same as before. It would be tragic to delude ourselves after the experiences we have just lived through.

The problem posed on its true foundations allows us to realize that, ultimately, at the end of the historical evolution that leads to the construction of communist society, and which is prelude to it, the laws of evolution are the same as those that exist in primitive communism and in all its successive phases. The destruction of an exploiting class as such, on its own, eliminates neither the division of society into classes, nor differentiation among workers, nor the necessity of the state itself. The question is rather this: will the trend of economic evolution, and indeed the very basis of tomorrow’s communist society, obey the laws of maximum centralization of production, of its discipline according to a meticulously studied plan, or the laws of decentralization, of a fragmented economic life? There can be no doubt. In the face of gigantic industrial installations, of formidable economic progress, there is no other solution than centralized discipline of all production. On the subject of centralization and decentralization, Lenin, in his polemic with Kautsky, said some definitive things that completely restore Marx’s thinking on this subject. Centralization is in no way opposed to the free development of individual initiative and does not necessarily imply constraint. The resulting discipline is nothing more than adherence, a channeling of all energies into the whole of planned industry.

The destruction of an exploiting class leaves class differentiation standing, and the state remains a necessity until the real conditions for communist society mature. On the other hand, the tendency that leads to communist society is that which emerges from economic evolution itself, and which leads to increasing centralization of production. The state persists after the destruction of capitalism because this destruction does not mean the disappearance of classes. Just as the state initially revealed a positive and negative character, so it will continue to do so after proletarian victory: as a necessary instrument of economic progress, and as a permanent threat to direct that progress, not to the advantage of producers, but against them and towards their slaughter.

Anarchists have obviously lost their raison d’être in the proletarian movement after proving the “correctness” of Bakunin’s criticisms of Marx in Spain, by becoming ministers, generals, police officers and violent defenders of the Catalan state, which can boast massacres of workers far exceeding the exploits of Mussolini and Hitler. But this does not prevent us from highlighting the notion that we must submit to the necessity of the state, even after proletarian victory, because its raison d’être exists in the order of production, in the insufficiency of the latter in relation to the needs of producers: needs that openly arise and those that also cannot, since the conditions of civilization have not yet allowed it.

But the state, despite the adjective “proletarian”, remains an organ of coercion, in permanent and acute opposition to the realization of the communist program; it is, as it were, the revelation of the persistence of the capitalist danger in all phases of life in the evolution of the transitional period.

To conclude on this point, we can affirm that the State, far from being able to express the proletarian class, represents its constant antithesis, and that there is a necessary opposition between the dictatorship of the proletarian State and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Notion of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Marx and Engels didn’t write much about this question. But it would be wrong to say that they did not express a definitive opinion. The experiences of the world proletariat in their time would have made it impossible for them to deal with this problem in an organic and systematic way, but all their writings provide us with some guidance on the subject.

If it is perfectly true that the idea of dictatorship is inseparable from that of coercion; it is equally true that if this coercion is carried out by the systems dear to capitalism, we shall have a dictatorship that is substantially bourgeois, with a proletarian name and flag. It would be futile to try to differentiate between capitalist and proletarian dictatorships solely on the basis of the means that one can use and the other should not. There are, of course, means that are specific to capitalism and repugnant to the proletariat, such as violence, but we understand that at certain times, and particularly during revolutionary eruptions, there is no alternative to violence. We will deal with this problem in greater detail below. Suffice it to say for now that Marx spoke of violence as the “midwife” of history, not as a means of solving the problems of social life.

The very essence of the idea of dictatorship is inseparable from the idea of class. It is applied to the bourgeoisie to explain its domination over the workers and will be applied to the proletariat to the extent it carries out its mission: its program in the economic, political and historical order. Any discrepancy that arises at any time during the transition period between dictatorship and the proletariat’s mission is a direct attack on the very idea of the class dictatorship. When, for example, Trotsky—and in a somewhat mitigated way Serge—justify Kronstadt by saying that on the one hand there was the proletarian state, and on the other the insurgents, where there were indeed workers, but where the strings were held by reactionaries on the lookout for a bourgeois restoration movement, arriving thereby at the conclusion that this was the way the revolution should act (Trotsky), or how it was forced to act (Serge), we find ourselves in the presence of a total upheaval in the ideas that should govern the management of the proletarian state. The problem is as follows: faced with a mutiny caused by famine, if the proletariat resorts to the same means as a bourgeois state, it becomes disguised, reversed and its substance becomes bourgeois.

This is how the problem is posed for us. Circumstances arise where a proletarian sector—and we concede that it may even have been the unconscious prey of enemy maneuvers—switches to fighting the proletarian state. How do we deal with this situation? BY STARTING FROM THE BASIC PREMISE THAT SOCIALISM CANNOT BE IMPOSED ON THE PROLETARIAT BY FORCE AND VIOLENCE. It was better to lose Kronstadt than to keep it, geographically speaking, given that this victory could have only one result: to alter the very basis and substance of the proletariat’s action. We know the objection: “but the loss of Kronstadt would have been a decisive loss for the revolution, perhaps the loss of the revolution itself.” Here we come to the crux of the matter. What are our criteria for analysis here? Are they those derived from class principles, or others drawn from a particular situation? More concretely. The ones that lead us to consider that it’s better for the workers to make a mistake, even a fatal one, or the others that lead us to say that our principles must be upheld, because then the workers will be grateful to us for having defended them, even through violence?

Every situation reveals two opposing kinds of criteria, leading to two very different tactical conclusions. If we base ourselves on the juxtaposition of forms, we arrive at the conclusions that emerge from the following proposition: such and such an organization is the PROLETARIAT; we must defend it because it is such and such, even if we have to break up a workers’ movement to do so. If, on the other hand, we base ourselves on substantial juxtaposition, we arrive at opposite conclusions: a proletarian movement that is manoeuvred by the enemy carries within itself an organic contradiction pitting proletarians against their enemies; to bring forth this contradiction, we need to use propaganda and EXCLUSIVELY propaganda among the workers, who in the course of events themselves will recover the class strength enabling them to break free from the enemy’s control. But if by chance it were to be true that the real stakes of this or that event were the loss of the revolution, it is certain that victory achieved by violence would not only be a concealment of reality (historical events such as the Russian Revolution never depend on an episode, and the crushing of Kronstadt can only have saved the revolution for superficial minds), but would determine the condition for the actual loss of the revolution: the attack on principles not remaining localized, but generalizing to the entire course of the proletarian state’s activity.

This digression will enable us to move forward more rapidly in clarifying the characteristics of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As the problem is transposed to that of the dictatorship of the proletarian class, we need to indicate the objectives and mission of the proletariat, and in which fields they are asserted, and through which organizations.

1. In the economic sphere. To deduce from the thesis that socialism is the natural son of the industrialization of the economy, the corollary that the workers must, in their own interest, make the sacrifices necessary for the construction of a highly-developed industrial economy, would be to give a red flag to the principles which govern the capitalist economy, and whose defenders are relentless in asserting that increased production is profitable above all to the workers. The proletariat knows that there is a clear opposition between the accumulation of surplus value and the part of the value of labor that is designated for it in the form of wages. This opposition remains throughout the transitional period and will only come to an end in communist society. The pole of concentration of surplus value is the state, whose laws inevitably lead to ever greater accumulation at the expense of the workers. There is no possible antidote other besides the class struggle, since the opposition is between two contrasting elements. Moreover, the Russian experience is definitive. Stalin represents (also in the economic sphere) a break with proletarian postulates. And the five-year plans, which succeeded in bringing about a gigantic industrial transformation, at the same time represented the miserable impoverishment of the workers.

Faced with a State whose NATURAL evolution is to oppose the economic progress of the workers, there is no other solution than the existence of trade union organizations with all their rights and, above all, their organic independence from the party and the State, and the right to strike.

2. In the political sphere. This is the specific domain of proletarian action, and it is here that the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat is concretely manifested. For the proletariat has no objective with regard to the nature of economic evolution: industrialization itself entails the inevitability of the triumph of socialism.

So, what is the mission of the proletariat? In a way, this is a matter of principle. There’s nothing to demonstrate, since the formula already contains the solution. But the interpretations that have been made of it call for careful clarification.

In the presence of class persistence, even after proletarian victory, it is a profound change of substance that will mark the opposition to bourgeois rule. As far as the exploiting classes are concerned, they no longer exist in social reality after the socialization of the means of production and the abolition of private property, but they continue to exist, in a state of power: they are the spectre that haunts the entire transition period. The inevitable errors of the proletariat’s economic and political management determine the objective condition for the emergence of a bourgeois restoration movement.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is by no means unfolding in conditions of freedom, due to the persistence of classes within a country’s borders, not to mention the capitalist regimes existing in other countries. In other words, an error is vitiated in its manifestation, and above all in its consequences, by de facto conditions and the existence of a pole capable of channelling it towards capitalist evolution. And this justifies the dictatorial solution. Clearly, in the long run, the economic premises (class persistence) not only render any dictatorial measure inoperative but threaten the state that resorts to it with a metamorphosis leading to its natural outlet, which is to use violence—or the threat of it—against workers who wish to escape the laws of accumulation. But we’re looking at a transitional period for which dictatorial measures are perfectly valid. In the final analysis, it’s a question of depriving capitalism of the possibility of taking advantage of the consequences of the inevitable errors of proletarian management, and of allowing the breadth of these errors to manifest itself within the confines of the proletarian class. This, then, is the justification for the dictatorship of the proletariat, albeit with two limitations:

1. That violence is justified only for the period of the revolutionary eruption, and in no way afterwards. And we wish to make it clear that socialism, which from the outset has included the abolition of the death penalty in its program, must apply this very objective to its class enemies during the normal period of its management, through the repressive justice of the organs of the State.

2. That workers’ movements will never be equated with enemy restoration manoeuvres. In this respect, we refer to the explanations we gave when speaking of Kronstadt, to which we obviously assimilate Makhno’s movements and, in general, all those in which workers’ groupings were involved, whatever their label. Violence against workers will never be used, and it will be a thousand times less justified once the proletariat is in power.

Having said this, it remains to examine the specific problem of the workers’ movement, where an infinite number of currents are agitating, and where only one current is called upon to represent the real interests of the proletariat. And here there can be no doubt: all these currents indirectly express the interests of the enemy, by rallying indirectly to the capitalist regimes existing abroad and directly with all the intermediate class formations, and, in the main order, with the state bureaucracy. But here again, the proposition: I (the class party) am the proletariat, the other (social democracy, anarchism, etc.) is the enemy; this proposition is inevitably transformed into this one: I (the proletarian party) lose my substance to acquire a capitalist one as soon as, to ward off enemy influence, I resort to the dictatorial means that are the hallmark of capitalism.

“The emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves”, said Marx, and this central formula of socialism is, for us, more than a concept to justify bullying workers who follow other conceptions.

It represents the fundamental principle of the proletariat. We, who are extremely intransigent in defending our own conceptions, and who admit no compromise with other currents, because we consider them detrimental to the course of the formation of the class party, are also of the opinion that all other conceptions represent a degree of the workers’ formation into a class; that their existence always manifests the incompleteness of the work of the class party, when it does not manifest, moreover, a tactical or principled error of the party. Our position therefore concludes in the formula that it is the proletariat itself which, by clearing the class party from its midst, also clears the cleansing course of all enemy infections, whatever name they may bear. The proletariat in power can only intervene through a mechanism (which must be class-based in nature) anchored in the organizations directly linked to the economic mechanism—the mechanism we said was driven by a state whose logic of development is to go against the demands and program of the proletariat. This mechanism can only be found in the trade unions, class-specific organs sensitive to the immediate and partial demands of the workers. All the currents at work within the working class will find a touchstone in the trade union. On the one hand, they will be forced to relate their politics to a class basis; on the other, the trade-union fractions of the proletarian party will find in these struggles the nourishment indispensable not only to their progress but also to the safeguarding of their communist nature.

The freedom of the trade union fractions must be total. These fractions must not only be able to reach the head of the central leadership, but they must also have freedom of the press, of assembly and of meetings, with no restrictions whatsoever.

To sum up, the dictatorship of the proletariat means the exclusion of all bourgeois rights, and the obligation for all currents within the working class to express themselves solely within trade union organizations.

The Dictatorship of the Party of the Proletariat

The foregoing considerations allow us to deal quickly with this aspect of the problem. For us, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of its class party, a dictatorship that manifests itself without any violent intervention against the proletariat and its groupings.

We have already explained why this dictatorship is necessary, given that, since economic production is class-based, it is essential to remove from the situation the bourgeois pole where the mistakes of proletarian management are concentrated, both economically and politically.

In the final analysis, the proletariat’s conquest of power is no more than a hypothesis subject to the verification of events. The proletariat is asserting itself as the protagonist in the remaking of society, around a program that represents the selection of a series of fundamental data enshrined by the workers’ struggle in different countries. Political evolution confirms a doctrinal position of Marxism, according to which while we may witness betrayals, compromises and the abandonment of individuals and groups, there is an iron continuity as regards political positions, and it is ultimately a single program that accompanies, expresses and guides the work of emancipation of the proletariat tending towards the construction of a communist society. The monolithic nature of the program is the premise of the need for a single proletarian party. It’s true that once power has been conquered, a thousand dangers beset the party that holds control of the state and can use it to force the adoption of the policy it supports. But the persistence of all the class organizations of the proletariat and, within it, the free development of all currents, represent a counterweight capable of preserving the party from degeneration.

In seizing power, the proletariat also asserts that it is within the ideological framework of proletarian action that action towards world revolution and the advent of communist society will develop. It is within this framework that freedom must be guaranteed to all fractions expressing divergences and reactions to party policy. And here, even more than in the case of trade union organizations, not only can no recourse to violence be tolerated, but, on the basis of organic centralism, no infringement can be admitted by the central party organs with regard to grassroots organizations. The entire party mechanism must be allowed to function in an absolutely free manner, and all latitude must be given to the formation of fractions which will be provided with the financial means necessary for their expansion by the party itself.

The course of events will test the party’s candidacy, as well as the political fate of the fractions moving within it. It is possible that, as was the case in Russia in 1920-21, the proletarian party will once again find itself faced with a dilemma: either risk everything but stand firm on proletarian principles, or—by exploring the need for a respite—undermine principles and remain in power in spite of everything. We need to agree on a point of great importance.

It is not a matter of elevating to questions of principle problems that can be reduced to secondary issues, and about which the final dilemma does not arise. But when it comes to fundamental issues, there is no room for hesitation, and it is a thousand times better to engage in battle with the certainty of defeat than to remain in power by inflicting a defeat on proletarian principles.

This is where the problem of violence arises. There is no doubt that the Lenin-Kautsky polemic was distorted by the political circumstances of the time. Kautsky’s denial of violence went hand in hand with his demand for democracy, and we know what this “democracy” means now that Spanish workers are paying for it today with their blood, after German and Italian capitalism found in the unbridled play of their democracy the possibility of fanning the revolutionary threat and machine-gunning revolutionary proletarians. Lenin was not the apostle of violence, as opposed to Kautsky’s denial of it, but the bearer of revolutionary Marxist science, destroying all the hypocrisies of democracy and re-editing the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The climate in which this polemic developed, and the class struggles of the time, led almost all Communists to believe that violence could solve political problems. Lenin’s idea that we have the state in our hands, so we can afford the NEP, and that tomorrow we’ll be able to take away from the capitalists what we’re giving them today, was part of this mystique of violence, which events have fully disproved. In itself, the NEP does not represent a transgression of communist principles, since it merely reveals a social situation that does not allow ostracism towards all non-socialist forms of economic management, and in this sense, it must be fully reclaimed by Marxists. But what needs to be rejected about the NEP is its central idea: we give today with the prospect of retracting tomorrow. No, there is no possible interruption between what we do and what we will do. There is an iron continuity in time, and we have to remain communist today if we are to be communist tomorrow. Admitting an economic concession to the capitalists, replacing requisitions with taxes in kind, in a word, liquidating wartime communism and enshrining the legality of economic formations corresponding to the socialist immaturity of the economy—these are just some of the measures that cannot be criticized from a Marxist point of view. But it’s a different matter when we consider that these economic developments can contribute to so much disorganization of the socialist economy, which is already contrary to the principles of communism. And it would be futile, even extremely dangerous, to resort to a play on words by asserting that since these measures restore economic life, they are beneficial to socialist evolution. Yes, they will be, but only if we clearly identify their nature, which is opposed to socialism and threatens the dictatorship of the proletariat. The experience of 1920-21 is there to give a concrete and indisputable aspect to these questions. The NEP is accompanied not only by the idea that, with the world proletariat defeated, we must move towards exploiting the differences between the capitalist states, but also in the domestic sphere with the idea of liquidating the trade union organizations with Kronstadt, with the subjugation of the proletariat during the NEP. It would have been quite different if, instead of asserting, as Lenin did, that socialism could benefit from the rebirth of capitalism, we had declared that this rebirth was inevitable and that it was against it that the proletariat should alert its organizations—first and foremost the trade unions.

In short, the mystique of violence must be rejected out of hand. The alternative posed by violence is not between the success it enables and the inevitable defeat that would result if it were not used. The alternative is between the proletariat’s program and the alteration that would result if violence were used. No defeat is more bitter and irremediable than that which the enemy achieves by metamorphosing the organs of the proletariat, and by instructing the proletarian party to apply its own methods.

The International Relations of the Proletarian State

We will be able to deal with this aspect of the problem all the better if we have been able to define the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which can be identified with that of the dictatorship of the proletarian party but is opposed to that of the dictatorship of the proletarian state. Clearly, in this area too, the natural tendency of the proletarian state is to mesh with the system of other capitalist states, and thus be able to flourish freely. But just as in the case of the bourgeoisie, crushed by the proletarian state and denied all possibilities, the same applies to the relations of the workers’ state beyond its borders. This state must be deprived of the possibility of establishing relations with other states. From a political point of view, the very fact of establishing relations with capitalist states is a direct affront to the proletarian program. From an economic point of view, there is no need for diplomatic representation for all commercial matters. As far as these are concerned, there is another safeguard to be taken. In almost every country, there are economic organizations with a class character, i.e. cooperatives. We are well aware that these are in no way subject to proletarian control, and that they are a breeding ground for opportunists. But their class character lends itself far better to commercial relations with the proletarian state than capitalist trusts. On the other hand, there is no doubt that entrusting them with all economic relations with the proletarian state is likely to increase the workers’ right of scrutiny and initiative.

The question of the proletarian state’s activity beyond its borders is secondary to that of the proletarian party’s relations with class parties in other countries. This is the crux of the matter. For us, who consider that the conquest of power in one country is a communist act only on condition that it is seen as an episode in the world struggle of the proletariat, the task of political leadership of the party in power can only be entrusted to the International; to an International where, far from the laws of numbers inevitably determining the hegemony of the party in power, we must be guided by the specific weight of the different proletariats and by a representation of party delegations, which will ensure a majority for the working classes who, because they are always under capitalist attack, retain a far surer class instinct. Bordiga’s apt remark in his day should be considered in all its value.

* * *

A final word. It could be said that all the measures currently being advocated are destined to fail, as was the case with an otherwise brilliant work: Lenin’s State and Revolution. Its author found it impossible to respect the conclusions he had defended in it. Let’s be clear. First of all, Lenin, in the heroic period of the Russian Revolution, was inspired by these considerations. Secondly, what’s the point of this skepticism on the part of the eternal “realists”? Under these conditions, there’s only one thing to do: proclaim that the communist program and its ideas are just words that reality will ensure sending into the clouds. We don’t think so, and we’re passionately sure we’re right.

Ottorino Perrone

You can also find this text in Spanish thanks to our comrades in Barbaria