ON THE
DICTATORSHIP
OF THE
PROLETARIAT

Contents
[Part II]

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Foreword

 
 
 
What is the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'?

In the following study I should like to suggest the first elements of a reply to this question, a question whose topical nature has brought it to the attention of all Communists. I hope thus to contribute to opening and to advancing a now unavoidable theoretical discussion in the Party and around it.

    The decisions of the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party on this point, in spite of their apparently abstract character, have produced what might be considered a paradoxical result -- in any case, a result which has surprised certain Communists.

    The theoretical question of the dictatorship of the proletariat was not explicitly mentioned in the Preparatory Document. It arose in the course of the discussion, when the General Secretary of the Party, Georges Marchais, took up the suggestion of abandoning the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of removing it as soon as possible from the Party statutes. From that moment on, this question dominated the pre-Congress debate: its solution seemed to be the necessary consequence and the concentrated expression of the political line approved by the Congress. The Central Committee's report, presented by Georges Marchais, made the point at great length: in order to establish a foundation for the democratic road to socialism for which the Communists are fighting, a new way must be found of posing and assessing the theoretical question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Congress in fact unanimously decided to abandon the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat, considered out-of-date and in contradiction with what the Communists want for France.

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    But this decision settled nothing, at root. No-one can seriously claim that the question was subjected to a profound examination during the preparatory debates, and even less during the Congress itself.[1] So it is not surprising, under these circumstances, that Communists are asking questions about the exact meaning of this decision. They are asking how far it implies a rectification or a revision of the principles of Marxism. They are wondering how it helps us to analyze the past and present experience of the Communist Movement. They are wondering what light it sheds on the present situation of the International Communist Movement, faced with an imperialism which, in spite of the crisis, is as aggressive as ever. They are wondering what changes will have to take place in their daily activity and struggles.

    They are asking: what precisely is the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'? How is it to be defined? And, consequently, if the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is being rejected, then what exactly is it that is being rejected? This common-sense question is very simple, and it ought not to be difficult to resolve -- but it is clearly decisive. To anyone who thinks about the problem it will become quite clear that the expressions 'rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat' and 'renouncing the dictatorship of the proletariat' can have no precise meaning as long as this question has not been answered. It is quite clear that there is a very close link between the abandonment of a political line or of a theoretical concept and the content and the objective meaning of the alternative which is adopted.

    But since not all Communists are agreed on the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the result is precisely that the discussion which apparently took place did not go to the roots of the matter. And since the concept or concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as they figured in the discussion, do not correspond to its objective reality; since, in spite of appearances, the discussion was not really about the dictatorship of the proletariat but

    If you want an example, just look at the reaction of the French bourgeoisie, which did not miss the opportunity of fishing in troubled waters and of exploiting our weakness, even at the theoretical level. Its most illustrious ideologists (Raymond Aron) and political chiefs (Giscard d'Estaing), newly qualified as Experts in Marxism, are making full use of their positions in order to trap the Communists in a dilemma: either give up the theory and practice of the class struggle, or return to the one-way street of the Stalin deviation, which of course had such a lasting effect in weakening the Party. Their tactic: to jump onto the Communist Party's own separation of the Leninist principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the politics of popular union -- and popular union really is a condition of victory over big capital -- in order to take the argument one (logical) stage further: by demanding that the Party should abandon class struggle too, since the dictatorship of the proletariat is nothing but the consequent development of this class struggle.[2] In addition, they claim that the decision made by the 22nd Congress, thus by the Communists themselves, amounts to an admission that these same Communists have up to the present indeed been opposed to democracy, that they have been fighting against it, and against freedom, in fighting for socialist revolution.

I 
 
Paris (1976)- 
Moscow (1936) 

 
 
In order for a discussion to get to the bottom of a question, it needs clear starting-points. A correct, Marxist definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the first of these starting-points, in the theoretical field. It is not sufficient in itself: you cannot settle political questions by invoking definitions. But it is necessary. If you do not pay explicit attention to it, you run the risk of implicitly adopting not the Marxist definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat but a definition imposed by the constant pressure of the dominant bourgeois ideology. That is what happened at the 22nd Congress, whatever is said to the contrary. I am not going to quote or sum up the details of the debates: everyone remembers them, or can look them up. I shall be as brief as possible, in order to direct attention to what seems to me most important, namely the way in which the problem was posed; this more or less, leaving aside details, underlay the reasoning presented at the Congress. To many comrades it seems to be the only possible way of posing the problem, it seems 'obvious' to them today. We shall therefore begin by examining it.

'Dictatorship or democracy'
The question was first of all posed within the framework of a simple alternative: either 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or the 'democratic road to socialism'. The choice was between these two terms: no third solution, no other alternative. Given the definitions used, this choice is imposed more by 'logic' than by history. The historical arguments in fact are only introduced after the event, they only ornament and illustrate a logical schema so simple

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that it seems unavoidable. We are told that the choice is not between a revolutionary path and a reformist path, but between two revolutionary paths, both based on mass struggle, a choice between two kinds of means to make revolution. There are 'dictatorial' means of struggle and 'democratic' means: they are suited to different circumstances of place and time, and they produce different results. The Congress thus had to demonstrate what distinguishes the democratic from the dictatorial means, and did so by borrowing three common contrasts.
(a) First, the contrast between 'peaceful' political means and 'violent' means. A democratic road to socialism, it is said, excludes on principle armed insurrection against the State as a means of taking power. It excludes civil war between the classes and their organizations. It therefore excludes both white terror, exercised by the bourgeoisie, and 'red' counter-terror, exercised by the proletariat. It excludes police repression: for the workers' revolution does not tend to restrict liberties but to extend them. In order to maintain themselves in power democratically, the workers must not primarily use constraint, the police and 'administrative methods', but political struggle -- i.e., in the event, ideological propaganda, the struggle of ideas.
(b) Secondly, the contrast between 'legal' and 'illegal' means. A democratic road to socialism would allow the existing system of law to regulate its own transformation, without recourse to illegality. The transformation of the existing system of law -- for example, in the form of the nationalization of enterprises -- is only to be carried out according to the forms and norms contained in (bourgeois) law itself, according to the possibilities which it opens up. Such a revolution would therefore not contradict the law; on the contrary, it would simply realize in practice the principle of popular sovereignty to which it constantly refers. Conversely it is the legality -- therefore the legitimacy -- of this revolutionary process which is supposed to authorize and strictly to limit the use of violence. For every society and every State, so the argument goes, have the right (and the duty) forcibly to repress 'crimes', the illegal attempts of minorities to oppose by force and by subversion the abolition of their privileges. Thus, if the need for constraint arises, this will be considered no fault of the new regime itself. And this use of violence will not be a form of class violence, but a constraint on particular individuals, just as bourgeois law itself

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now provides.
(c) Finally, the contrast between union and division, which is linked to the contrast between majority and minority. In the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is said, political power is exercized by the working class alone, which itself is still only a minority. Such a minority is and remains isolated: its power is clearly fragile, it can only maintain itself by violence. The situation, so the argument goes, is exactly opposite when, in the new historical conditions, the socialist State represents the democratic power of a majority. The existence of the union of the majority of the people, the 'majority will', expressed by universal suffrage and by the legal government of the majoritarian political parties, is therefore supposed to guarantee the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism -- a revolutionary socialism, certainly, with respect to its social content, but gradual and progressive with respect to its means and forms.

    Once you accept and reason according to these contrasts (I have only mentioned the most important ones), contrasts which become more and more closely linked to and dependent on one another, then at each stage you are forced to choose one of the two poles: civil war or civil peace; legality or illegality; union of the majority or the isolation of the minority and the division of the people. At each step you have to work out which choice is 'possible' and which is not; which is the one that you 'want' and which is the one that you 'do not want'. A simple choice between two historical roads for the transition to socialism, a choice between two conceptions of socialism, two systematically opposed 'models'. On the basis of these choices, the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is implied, must be defined as the violent political power (in both senses of the term 'violent': repression and recourse to illegality) of a minoritarian working class, bringing about the transition to socialism by a non-peaceful road (civil war). To this, one last argument -- and it is not the least important -- may be added, since it is a natural consequence: that such a road would lead to the political domination of a single party and end by institutionalizing its monopoly. Many comrades demand of us: if you do not want to abandon the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, at least admit frankly that you are for a one-party system, against the plurality of parties. . . .

    But what are we to think of these pairs of alternatives?

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    Their first characteristic is that they do not make a real analysis possible, because they contain the answer to every question ready-made. Posed in these terms, the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat already implies its solution. It is an academic exercise. To define the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a simple matter of listing its disadvantages, compared with the democratic road. To analyze the concrete conditions of the transition to socialism in France becomes a simple matter of self-congratulation on the fact that the evolution of history now (finally) allows us to take the good road, that of democracy, and not the bad road, that of dictatorship. You can be very optimistic about socialism when you know that history itself is looking after the job of creating the conditions which will impose precisely the choice preferred in the first place. It only requires one more step in order to draw the conclusion: when a capitalist country has a non-democratic State (as in the case of Tsarist Russia), it cannot make the transition to socialism except in a non-democratic manner, with all the risks attached. But when a capitalist country is also (as in the case of France) a country of an 'old democratic tradition', it can make the transition to socialism in a manner which is itself democratic. Better: the transition to socialism will slowly appear to the immense majority as the only means of preserving democracy, which is under attack by big capital. Better still: the socialism which can be established in this case will be right from the first a superior form, rid of the contradictions and dangers represented by dictatorship (of the proletariat).

    This line of argument is indeed seductive, but that does not explain how Communist militants, involved for years in the class struggle, have nevertheless allowed themselves to be taken in by it and to adopt its 'common sense' language. To understand why they have done so, we must look into the question of what -- in the history of the Communist movement itself and in the interpretation of Marxist theory which has prevailed in the movement for many years -- could have produced this kind of 'common sense'. In this connexion the arguments of the 22nd Congress are dominated by three ideas which are by no means new, and which are clearly present. First: the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat is, in its essential characteristics, identical to the road followed in the Soviet Union. Secondly, the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat represents a particular 'political regime', a set of

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political institutions which guarantee -- or fail to guarantee -- the political power of the working class. Finally -- and this is the decisive point at the theoretical level -- the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a means or a 'path of transition' to socialism. It must now be shown why these three simple ideas, though they are the product of real historical causes, are nevertheless incorrect.

Three simple and false ideas
A few words on these three ideas.

It is enough to read the reports of the debates of the 22nd Congress, and earlier contributions,[3] in order to recognize that behind the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat there lies first of all the problem posed by the historical evolution of the Soviet Union. It is no accident if, at the very same time that the Party is claiming that socialism is on the agenda in France, its leaders are also publicly raising their voices to pose the question of its 'differences' with the policy of the Soviet Communists, in terms such that it is clear that a real contradiction is involved. Look at the facts, which the careful selection of words cannot hide: disagreements on 'socialist democracy' (therefore on the structures of the Party and State); disagreements on 'peaceful co-existence' (which our Party refuses to accept as implying the status quo for capitalist countries like France, as overshadowing the class struggle, or -- even worse -- as requiring the socialist countries to give political support to the power of the French big bourgeoisie); disagreements on 'proletarian internationalism' (which our Party refuses to interpret in terms of 'socialist internationalism', an interpretation dramatically illustrated by the military invasion of Czechoslovakia). Such contradictions demand a thoroughgoing explanation. This question clearly lay behind the deliberations of the Congress. And it is this question, and no other, which underlies the argument several times advanced by Georges Marchais: 'The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" today has an unacceptable connotation for the workers and for the masses.' This is the vital question, and not the example of the fascist dictatorships which have appeared since the

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extend this formulation to the symmetrical opposite, in everyday language, of democracy: i.e., dictatorship? The State, the level of political action and institutions, is quite distinct from the other levels, in particular from the economic level, is it not?

    I want to concentrate on this idea, even though I have had to present it schematically, because it plays a crucial role in the thinking of many Communists. And here again the question of the Soviet Union arises. It is this idea for example which might lead us to say: from the 'economic' point of view, essentially, socialism is the same everywhere, its 'laws' are universal; but from the 'political' point of view, it can and must be very different, since Marxism teaches the relativity of the superstructures, the relative independence of the political superstructures and of the State vis-à-vis the economic base. And it is this idea too which might lead us to say: the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union resulted in catastrophic consequences from the point of view of the political régime, it resulted in the establishment of a political régime which is not really socialist, which contradicts socialism, because, from the political point of view, socialism implies the widest possible liberty and democracy. But, it will be argued, this did not prevent the development of socialism as an 'economic system', or at least it only held it back a little, hindered it, made it more difficult, without affecting its 'nature', its essence. The proof: in the Soviet Union there is no exploiting bourgeoisie, monopolizing property in the means of production, no anarchy in production; there is social, collective appropriation of the means of production, and social planning of the economy. Thus the anti-democratic political regime has, it is argued, nothing to do with the 'nature' of socialism; it is only a historical 'accident'. To which it is added, with an apparently very materialist air, that there is nothing astonishing about the fact that the superstructure is 'lagging behind' the base -- such is the law of the history of human societies, which guarantees that, sooner or later, the political regime will come into line with the mode of production, will come to 'correspond' with the mode of production.

    But it has to be pointed out that we are dealing here with an extraordinarily mechanistic caricature of Marxism, linking a mechanistic separation between State and means of production with a mechanistic dependency of politics on the economic base

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(in the form of the talk about the 'nature' of socialism, about 'accidents', about things which are 'in advance' of others which are 'lagging behind'). In such a perspective it is already impossible to explain the history of the capitalist State. It is a fortiori impossible to pose the problem of what changes, in the relation of politics and of the State to the economic base, when a transition is made from capitalism to socialism and to the dictatorship of the proletariat.[5]

    Now this idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a simple 'political régime' directly determines the terms in which the problem of the political power of the working class, or of the working people, is posed. The dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a special form of the political power of the working people, and a narrow form at that (since not all working people are proletarians). In fact, this amounts to saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a form of government (in the legal, constitutional sense), that it represents a particular system of institutions. To choose between a number of paths of transition to socialism, for or against the dictatorship of the proletariat, is -- according to this idea -- to choose between a number of systems of institutions, notably between institutions of a parliamentary or so-called 'pluralist' type (containing several political parties) and institutions of a non-parliamentary type, in which the power of the working people is exercized through a single party. Socialist democracy differs from the dictatorship of the proletariat, in this view, as one political regime differs from another; it is conceived of as another form of the political power of the working people, in which other institutions organize in a different way the choice of the 'representatives' of the working people who run the government, and the 'participation' of individuals in the functioning of the State.

    According to this picture the transition to socialism could be conceived, in theory at least, either in terms of a dictatorial form of politics or in terms of a democratic form. It would depend on the circumstances. It would depend in particular on the degree of development, on the level of 'maturity' of capitalism: in a country where capitalism is particularly developed, where it has reached the stage of State Monopoly Capitalism, big capital would already be practically isolated, the development of economic relations

A Precedent: 1936
Let us stop there for a moment. Before undertaking the study of the Marxist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat for its own sake, we must briefly look at the historical antecedents of the situation which I have just described. Such a situation does not just drop out of the sky. It is not so much that the decision of the 22nd Congress was the logical consequence, or the recognition after the event, of a long political evolution which had led the Party towards an original revolutionary strategy; it is rather that the particular conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat to which it referred had already, in all essentials, been for a long time accepted and even dominant in the International Communist Movement. The decision of the 22nd Congress does have an historical precedent, without which it would remain in part incomprehensible.

    We ought at this point to recall a fact of which most young Communists are unaware, or whose importance with regard to the present debate is not clear to them. It was the Soviet Communists themselves, under Stalin's direction, who first historically 'abandoned' the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in a quite explicit and reasoned way. They did so in 1936, on the occasion of the introduction of the new Soviet Constitution. The 1936 Constitution solemnly proclaimed, less than twenty years after the October Revolution, the end of the class struggle in the USSR .[¥] According to Stalin, who inspired and laid the foundations of what is even today the official theory of the State in the USSR, distinct classes still existed in the Soviet Union: working class, peasantry of the State farms and collective farms, intellectuals,

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industrial managers and State administrators.[6] But these classes were no longer antagonistic, they were equal members of a union, of an alliance of classes, which constituted the foundation of the Soviet State. From that moment on, the Soviet State was no longer concerned with classes as such, but, beyond the differences which separate them, with the individuals, with all the citizens, with all the working people. It became the State of the whole people.

    Even then it was possible -- and it is still possible in retrospect to ask questions about the validity (and even about the good faith) of the statement: 'Class antagonisms have disappeared'. This statement came for example only a few years after the collectivization of agriculture, which witnessed an outbreak of class conflict as acute as the conflicts of the revolutionary period, in which the socialist State had to break the resistance of the capitalist peasantry (the kulaks) and also, no doubt, of whole masses of the poor and middle peasantry, by using every available means, both propaganda and force. Above all, the statement came at the very moment when there began to develop in the whole country, and among all classes, what we now know to have been a bloody mass repression, of which the great 'Moscow trials' were only the visible and spectacular facade. How are we to explain this repression (which was then only in its first phase!) in a materialist way, unless we relate it to the persistence and development of a class struggle which, though it was perhaps unforeseen and uncontrolled, was nevertheless quite real? How are we to interpret the proclamation of the 'end' of the class struggle, and the administrative decision to finish with the dictatorship of the proletariat, except as an amazing refusal to look the existing state of things in the face, that in turn, by the mystifying effects which it produced, then reinforced and crystallized a tragic theoretical and practical deviation? This example, if there was need of it, would already be sufficient to warn us that the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is no historical guarantee against violence; in fact it might even suggest that, in this case, such violence only becomes more cruel and damaging to the people and to the revolution.

    Stalin did not of course retrospectively reject the past applic-

    'The total victory of the socialist system in all the spheres of the national economy is now an established fact. This means that the exploitation of man by man has been suppressed, abolished, and that the socialist property of the instruments and means of production has developed into the unassailable foundation of our Soviet society. [. . .] Is it still possible to call our working class a proletariat? Obviously not [. . .] The proletariat of the USSR has become an absolutely new class, the working class of the USSR, which has destroyed the capitalist economic system and reinforced socialist property in the instruments and means of production, and is steering Soviet society on the road to communism.'

    This second thesis is the most important aspect of the argument developed by Stalin, because it brings to light the theoretical deviation underlying the 1936 decision. It is a deviation of an evolutionist type, in which the different aspects of the revolutionary process are isolated from one another, and presented as moments which simply follow one another, distinct historical 'stages'. Revolution, as Stalin presents it, begins by overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie, by eliminating capitalist property, by replacing the old State apparatus by a new one: this is the first transitory stage, the stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Once this period has been completed, a new stage is entered, that of socialism: socialism is based on a particular 'mode of production',

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and brings with it a stable State, the socialist State, which is no longer a class State, but a State of the whole people, a people made up of different classes of working people collaborating peacefully together. And it is within socialism, under the direction of the socialist State, that the 'foundations' of a future society, communism, are being laid, more or less quickly according to the rhythm of the development of the productive forces; under communism, the State will become superfluous, just as classes themselves will disappear. In all, therefore, three successive stages, each one of which can only begin when the preceding stage has run its course; and the links between them, according to Stalin's theory, can be explained by the great historical necessity of the development of the productive forces, to which Stalin's mechanical materialism attributes the role of the motor of history.

    As a consequence, two essential factors were eliminated, or at least pushed to one side: the dialectic of historical contradictions, and class struggle.

    The dialectic disappeared, because Stalin, in his theory of successive stages, purely and simply suppressed the tendential contradiction brought to light by Marx and Lenin: the proletarian revolution is both the 'constitution of the proletariat as a ruling class', the development of a State power which makes this a reality, and the revolution which undertakes, on the material foundations created by capitalism, the abolition of all forms of class domination, and therefore the suppression of every State. What Marx and Lenin had analyzed as a real contradiction, Stalin dissolved in a scholastic manner (in the strict sense of the term), by distinguishing mechanically between separate aspects and stages: first the abolition of antagonism, then the abolition of classes; first the construction of a 'new type' of State, a socialist State, then the disappearance of every State (Stalin did not answer the legitimate question: why should the State now disappear, since the 'socialist State' already represents the power and the interests of the whole people? Or, at least, he was content to point out that 'Marx had foreseen' its disappearance). One more example can be added to this list of mechanical distinctions: the idea that first comes dictatorship (dictatorship of the proletariat, transition to socialism), then comes democracy (socialism).

    The class struggle ceased, at the same time, to represent in Stalin's theory the motor of historical transformations, and in

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particular of revolutionary transformations. It represented no more than a particular aspect of certain stages. There is thus a necessary connexion between Stalin's general argument (cf. Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1938), according to which the motor of history is the development of the productive forces, the class struggle being only an effect or a manifestation of this, and his theory of socialism: socialism is the transition to the classless society, which takes place not as an effect of the class struggle itself, but after the completion of the class struggle, as an effect of a different kind of necessity, a technical-economic necessity directed by the State. And there is a necessary connexion between this conception of socialism, the proclamation of the 'total victory of socialism' in the USSR, and the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which coincided with a strengthening of the bureaucratic and repressive State apparatus. In the same way there is a necessary connexion, in Marxist theory, between the opposite theses: the recognition of real contradictions in the historical relation of the proletariat to the State, and the demonstration that it is impossible to abolish class divisions except through the development of the class struggle itself, since classes are, historically, nothing but the effects of antagonistic class relations, effects which appear, are transformed and disappear together with these relations. The 1936 decision (and it was no accident that it took the Statist form of a constitutional decision, and thus bore the profound imprint of bourgeois ideology) therefore put the seal on the link, then the intimate fusion, between a particular practice and a particular theory. Anyone who is surprised that the 'freest', most democratic (restoring universal suffrage) constitution in the world should have been accompanied by the establishment of the most anti-democratic bureaucratic and police apparatus, and a fortiori anyone who reassures himself by interpreting all this as a proof that, 'at the level of principles at least', socialism maintained its links with democracy, thereby permanently blinds himself with regard to the real history of socialism, with its contradictions and retreats. You must take account of this paradox: that the tendential fusion of Marxist theory and the Labour Movement, which is the great revolutionary event of modern history, also extends to their deviations. The misunderstanding or underestimation of the class struggle in theory does not prevent it from unleashing itself in practice: for the precise reason, one which

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deserves to be recalled today for the benefit of all those who seem to doubt it, that the class struggle is not an idea but an unavoidable reality. Yet the theoretical misunderstanding of the class struggle is not simply a theoretical event: its result is that the proletariat can lose the practical initiative bought at a high price, it can become the pawn of social relations of exploitation and oppression instead of the force capable of transforming them.[7]

There can of course be no question here of making a direct comparison between the decision taken by Stalin and the Soviet Communists in 1936 and that just taken by the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party. Neither the intentions (which however count for little in history), nor especially the historical conditions, and therefore the anticipated effects, are the same. However, the decision of the 22nd Congress can neither be understood nor seriously discussed independently of this precedent.

    The first reason is that it does in fact constitute one of the remote consequences of the decision of 1936. To restrict ourselves to the theoretical level, it is this decision, and more generally the whole of the ideological output which prepared for it and surrounded it, that imposed on the whole International Communist Movement a dominant mechanistic and evolutionist conception of Marxism, based on the primacy of the development of the productive forces, within which the dictatorship of the proletariat only functioned as a means, or even as a political 'technique' for the establishment of the socialist State (in spite of the fact that the Guardians of the Dogma insistently repeated and even hammered in the fact that it was a necessary means). For this decision provided -- at the cost of a gigantic effort of idealization and thus of misinterpretation of Soviet reality, for which millions of Communists in every land were enrolled, willingly or unwillingly -- the means

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for its own immediate 'verification'. The proof that Marxism, in its evolutionist and technicist Stalinian version, was 'true' and 'scientific' was precisely that the dictatorship of the proletariat had come to an end, that a 'definitive' victory had been won over capitalism, that a socialist society and State had been constructed which were now confronting other tasks -- fundamentally peaceful, technical, cultural and economic tasks. In other words, this proof on the omni-historical scale was in reality nothing more than an imaginary projection, onto the 'facts', of the very theory which it was supposed to verify.

    We are therefore obliged to state that the French Communist Party -- at the very moment when, in order to respond to the demands made by its own revolutionary struggle, it is trying to fight its way out of this mystification and at last to take a critical look at socialist history -- is nevertheless trapped more firmly than ever in the theory on whose basis the critique is being developed: it is posing, in the same general form, the same question of the 'transition to socialism', even if it has tried to provide a different answer. Unfortunately, it is the question itself which is wrong, and it is this question which has to be rejected.

    But the decision of the 22nd Congress is not therefore simply a remote consequence of its 1936 precedent: it also constitutes, in the changed conditions, its repetition. It is simply that what Stalin and the Soviet Communists applied to socialism in the period following the seizure of power by the workers, the 22nd Congress applied to the period before the seizure of power, to the very process of the 'transition to socialism'. But the procedure is the same: having argued that ecqnomic and social conditions have now 'matured' in this respect, the Party declares that the moment has come to renounce the use of dictatorship, which was always irregular, and adopt democratic means, espousing legality and popular sovereignty. The same rectification (or revision) of the Marxist conception of the State is therefore necessary: the State, it is said, is not only and not always an instrument of class struggle; it also has 'another' aspect, one which is repressed under capitalism, but which allows it to become an instrument for the management of public affairs in the common interest of all citizens. The same restriction of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat to its repressive aspect is involved, together with its immediate identification with the institutional peculiarities of the Russian

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Revolution (the single party, the limits on universal suffrage and on individual liberties for representatives of the bourgeoisie). The same restriction is placed on the role of the class struggle and of the antagonism between capital and the proletariat in the historical process of the disappearance of classes. It is therefore impossible to avoid asking the question: can you really hope, when you repeat the precedent of 1936 in this way, to rectify the deviation which it represents? Is it not more likely that this deviation will be retrospectively reinforced, within the framework of a nowadays untenable compromise? And above all: are you not exposing yourself once more to the nasty surprises reserved by the class struggle for those who do not take full account of the contradictions which it involves and of the antagonisms which lie hidden within it during the historical period of the socialist revolutions?

    These questions must be asked, and will become more and more urgent. Only through practice will satisfying answers be found. But this will only happen if we succeed in 'settling accounts' with the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has been passed on to us in its Stalinian form in a truncated and deformed image that is today being in all innocence reproduced. And because fifty years of the history of the Communist Parties and of revolutionary struggles, marked with victories and with defeats, have brought their own objective and contradictory sanction to Leninism, which the same Stalin was not wrong to define, formally, as 'Marxism in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution', it is also and necessarily a question of settling accounts with Leninism. Therefore, in order to begin, we must re-establish what it is and study it, so that we can discover the real questions which it raises.

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2 
 
Lenin's Three Theoretical 
Arguments about The 
Dictatorship of the 
Proletariat 

 
 
Everyone knows that Lenin never wrote a 'treatise' on the dictatorship of the proletariat (which has since been done), and neither did Marx and Engels. As far as Marx and Engels are concerned, the reason is obvious: apart from the brief and fragmentary experiences of the 1848 revolutions and of the Paris Commune, whose main tendency they were able to discover and to analyze, they were never able to study 'real examples' of the problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As far as Lenin is concerned, the reason is different: for the first time, Lenin was confronted with the real experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now this experience was extraordinarily difficult and contradictory. It is the contradictions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as it was beginning to develop in Russia, that form the object of Lenin's analysis and of his arguments. If you forget this fact, you can easily fall into dogmatism and formalism: Leninism can be represented as a finished theory, a closed system -- which it has been, for too long, by Communist parties. But if on the other hand you remain content with a superficial view of these contradictions and of their historical causes, if you remain content with the simplistic and false idea according to which you have to 'choose' between the standpoint of theory and that of history, real life and practice, if you interpret Lenin's arguments simply as a reflection of ever changing circumstances, less applicable the further away they are in history, then the real causes of these historical contradictions become unintelligible, and our own relation to them becomes invisible. You fall into the domain of subjective fantasy. In Lenin's concrete analyses, in his tactical slogans is expressed a

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permanent effort to grasp general historical tendencies and to formulate the corresponding theoretical concept. If you do not grasp this concept, you will not be able to study, in a critical and scientific manner, the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

    In order to be as clear as possible, I shall first of all set out en bloc what seems to me to constitute the basis of the theory as you find it in Lenin.

    The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat can be summed up in outline in three arguments, or three groups of arguments, which are ceaselessly repeated and put to the test by Lenin. They can be found in identical form, explicitly or implicitly, in every page of the texts of Lenin covering the period of the Russian revolution, and in particular they appear every time that a critical situation, a dramatic turning-point in the revolution necessitates a rectification of tactics, on the basis of the principles of Marxism, in order to realize the unity of theory and practice. What are these three arguments?

The first of them deals with State power.

    You can sum it up by saying that, historically speaking, State power is always the political power of a single class, which holds it in its capacity as the ruling class in society. That is what Marx and Lenin mean when they say that all State power is 'class dictatorship'. Bourgeois democracy is a class dictatorship (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie); the proletarian democracy of the working masses is also a class dictatorship. Let us be more precise: this argument implies that, in modern society, which is based on the antagonism between capitalist bourgeoisie and proletariat, State power is held in an absolute way by the bourgeoisie, which does not share it with any other class, nor does it divide it up among its own fractions. And this is true whatever the particular historical forms in which the political domination of the bourgeoisie is realized, whatever the particular forms which the bourgeoisie has to make use of in the history of each capitalist social formation in order to preserve its State power, which is constantly menaced by the development of the class struggle.

    The first thesis has the following consequence: the only possible historical 'alternative' to the State power of the bourgeoisie is an equally absolute hold on State power by the proletariat, the class of wage-labourers exploited by capital. Just as the bourgeoisie

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cannot share State power, so the proletariat cannot share it with other classes. And this absolute hold on State power is the essence of all the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat, whatever their transformations and historical variety. To talk about an alternative, however, is really imprecise: we ought rather to say that the class struggle leads inevitably to the State power of the proletariat. But it is impossible to predict in advance, in any certain way, either the moment at which the proletariat will be able to seize State power or the particular forms in which it will do so. Even less can we 'guarantee' the success of the proletarian revolution, as if it was 'automatic'. The development of the class struggle can neither be planned nor programmed.

The second agument deals with the State apparatus.
You can sum it up by saying that the State power of the ruling class cannot exist in history, nor can it be realized and maintained, without taking material form in the development and functioning of the State apparatus -- or, to use one of Marx's metaphors which Lenin is always borrowing, in the functioning of the 'State machine', whose core (the principal aspect: but not the only aspect -- Lenin never said that) is constituted by the State repressive apparatus or apparatuses. These are: on the one hand, the standing army, as well as the police and the legal apparatus; and on the other hand, the State administration or 'bureaucracy' (Lenin uses these two terms more or less synonymously). This thesis has the following consequence, with which it is absolutely bound up: the proletarian revolution, that is, the overthrow of the State power of the bourgeoisie, is impossible without the destruction of the existing State apparatus in which the State power of the bourgeoisie takes material form. Unless this apparatus is destroyed -- which is a complex and difficult task -- the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot develop and fulfil its historical task, the overthrow of relations of exploitation and the creation of a society without exploitation or classes. Unless this apparatus is destroyed, the proletarian revolution will inevitably be overcome, and exploitation will be maintained, whatever the historical forms in which this takes place.

    It is clear that Lenin's arguments have immediate bearing both on the State and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. The two problems are inseparable. In Marxism you do not have on one side a general theory of the State, and on the other side a (particu-

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lar) theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There is one single theory only.

    The first two arguments, which I have just set out, are already contained explicitly in Marx and Engels. They were not discovered by Lenin, though Lenin did have to rescue them from the deformation and censorship to which they had been subjected in the version of Marxist theory officially taught by the Social-Democratic parties. Which does not mean that, on this point, Lenin's role and that of the Russian revolution were not decisive. But if we restrict our attention to that core of theory which I have been talking about, it is true that this role consisted above all of inserting the theory of Marx and Engels for the first time in an effective way into the field of practice. It allowed a fusion to take place between the revolutionary practice of the proletariat and masses on the one hand and the Marxist theory of the State and of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the other -- a fusion which had never, or never really taken place before. Which means that although important progress in organization took place in the Labour Movement after Marx's time, this was accompanied by a considerable reduction in its autonomy, in its theoretical and practical independence from the bourgeoisie, and thus in its real political force. It is the transformation of Marxism into Leninism which enabled it to overcome this historical regression by taking a new step forward.

    This brings us to the third argument which I mentioned.

This third argument deals with socialism and communism.

    It is not without its precedents, without preparatory elernents in the work of Marx and Engels. It is obviously no accident that Marx and Engels always presented their position as a communist position, and only explicitly adopted the term 'socialist' (and even more so the term 'social-democrat') as a concession. We can in fact say that in the absence of this position (and of the thesis which it implies) the theory of Marx and Engels would be unintelligible. But they were not in a position to develop it at length. This task fell to Lenin, and in carrying it out he based his work on the development of the class struggles of the period of the Russian revolution, of which his work is therefore the product, in the strong sense of the term. This argument is now meeting the fate which the first two arguments suffered before the time of Lenin and the Russian revolution: it has been 'forgotten', deformed (with dramatic consequences) in the history of the Communist move-

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ment and of Leninism, just as the first two arguments were forgotten in the history of Marxism.

    A first, very abstract formulation is sketched out by Marx in the Communist Manifesto and in the Critique of the Gotha Programme : it is that only communism is a classless society, a society from which all forms of exploitation have disappeared. And since capitalist relations constitute the last possible historical form of exploitation, this means that only communist social relations, in production and in the whole of social life, are really in antagonistic contradiction with capitalist relations, only they are really incompatible, irreconcilable with capitalist relations. Which implies a series of immensely important consequences, both from the theoretical and especially from the practical point of view. It implies that socialism is nothing other than the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proietariat is not simply a form of 'transition to socialism', it is not a 'road of transition to socialism' -- it is identical with socialism itself. Which means that there are not two different objectives, to be attained separately, by 'putting the problems into an order': first of all socialism, and then -- once socialism has been constructed, completed, once it has been 'developed' (or 'developed to a high level'), i.e. perfected, once it has, as they say, created the 'foundations of communism' -- secondly a new objective, the transition to communism, the construction of communism. There is in fact only one objective, whose achievement stretches over a very long historical period (much longer and more contradictory, no doubt, than was imagined by the workers and their theoreticians). But this objective determines, right from the start, the struggle, strategy and tactics of the proletariat.

    The proletariat, the proletarian masses and the whole of the masses of the people whom the proletariat draws with it are not fighting for socialism as an independent aim. They are fighting for communism, to which socialism is only the means, of which it is an initial form. No other perspective can interest them, in the materialist sense of this term. They are fighting for socialism just because this is the way to arrive at communism. And they are fighting for socialism with the means already provided by communist ideas, by the communist organization (in fact by communist organisations, because the Party can never be more than one of them, even if its role is obviously decisive). In the last analysis, the masses are fighting to develop the tendency to com-

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munism which is objectively present in capitalist society, and which the development of capitalism reinforces and strengthens.

    A very important consequence follows, which I will state in abstract form: the theory of socialism is only possible when developed from the standpoint of communism, and the effective realization of socialism is only possible from the standpoint of communism, on the basis of a communist position in practice. If this position is lost, if it drops out of sight, if the extraordinary difficulties of achieving it lead us to ignore or to abandon it in practice, even if it still has a place in our theory, or rather is still talked about as a distant ideal, then socialism and the construction of socialism become impossible, at least in so far as socialism represents a revolutionary break with capitalism.

    It is now a question, not of working out all the implications of these arguments, but simply of preparing a more complete analysis, of explaining the way in which it is formulated, and of countering certain false interpretations and unfounded objections.

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3 
 
What is State Power?

 
 
The question of power is the first one which must be examined. It is the most general question: it is in the historical possession of power by such-and-such a class that you find in concentrated form the conditions either of the reproduction of the existing social relations (relations of production and exploitation) or of their revolutionary transformation. It is also the most immediate question, the one which the workers face in their daily struggle for liberation, one which can be very quickly settled in one way or the other as soon as a revolutionary situation leads them into an open confrontation with the ruling class on the political terrain.

    Lenin, following Marx, constantly pointed out that the basic question of revolution is that of power: who holds power? and on behalf of which class? It was the question posed in the weeks immediately preceding the October Revolution (the question of the 'two revolutions', bourgeois and proletarian): will the Bolsheviks seize power? That is to say: will the Bolsheviks be the instrument of the seizure of power by the masses of the working people, who have become conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism between their own interests and those of the bourgeoisie? Or will the bourgeoisie, rallying to itself the remnants of Tsarism, imposing by terror and by mystification its hegemony over the peasant masses and even over a fraction of the proletariat, and supported financially and militarily by its imperialist allies, succeed in crushing the revolution and re-establishing the bourgeois State, thanks to which, in spite of the change in political form, the essential factor (exploitation) can persist? All the revolutions and all the counter-revolutions which have taken place since, however diverse their conditions, their forms and their duration, only provide massive confirmation of this point. Which means

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that it is valid for the whole of modern history: and what is modern history but the history of revolutions and counter-revolutions, their head-on clash being felt even inside those countries which, temporarily, 'benefit' from an apparent tranquillity? That is why you will never find a revolutionary who does not recognize, at least in words, the decisive character of the question of power.

    But there is more. You only have to follow the course of any socialist revolution (especially the Russian Revolution) in order to convince yourself that this question, which has to be immediately decided, nevertheless cannot be settled once and for all. It remains -- or better, it reproduces itself-- throughout the whole revolutionary process, which provides it in the forms imposed by each new conjuncture with a determinate answer. Will State power be held or lost? That is the question with which the historical period of the dictatorship of the proletariat begins. But it is also a question which continually reappears, just as long as a reason for its appearance persists in the form of the existence of class relations in production and in the whole of society. As long as this basis exists, the dictatorship of the proletariat remains necessary in order to develop the revolutionary forces and to defeat the counter-revolutionary forces whose contradictory unity is not destroyed until long after the seizure of power.

    This shows that the problem of power can absolutely not be reduced to a tactical question. The forms in which this seizure of power is carried out in the first place (armed uprising, prolonged people's war, peaceful political victory, other perhaps unprecedented forms) depend strictly on the conjuncture and on national particularities. We know that, even in the Russian conditions of the period between April and October 1917, Lenin did for a short time believe that the conditions existed for a peaceful (but not 'parliamentary') victory of the revolution, when he launched for the first time the slogan: 'All power to the Soviets!' In fact, there exists no historical example of a revolution which can be reduced to a single one of these forms, which does not represent an original combination of several forms. But in any case this diversity does not affect the nature of the general problem of State power, or rather it represents only one aspect of this problem, which must not be taken for the whole. The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat has nothing essentially to do with the conditions and forms of the 'seizure of power' . But it is ultimately linked with the

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question of holding power, which in practice determines the whole course of the revolution.

    If this is how things are, it is because, in the last analysis, State power is not the power of an individual, of a group of individuals, of a particular stratum of society (like the 'bureaucracy' or 'technacracy') or of a simple, more or less extensive fraction of a class. State power is always the power of a class. State power, which is produced in the class struggle, can only be the instrument of the ruling class: what Marx and Engels called the dictatorship of the ruling class.[1]

    Why the term 'dictatorship'? Lenin answered this question absolutely clearly in a ceaselessly repeated phrase, whose terms only have to be properly explained:

    'Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws.

    The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.

    This [is a] simple truth, a truth that is as plain as a pikestaff to every class-conscious worker [. . .] which is obvious to every representative of the exploited classes fighting for their emancipation [. . .] which is beyond dispute for every Marxist.' (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, C.W., XXVIII, 236 [p. 11].)

    Elsewhere, Lenin uses an equivalent and very illuminating expression (I am quoting from memory): Dictatorship is the absolute power, standing above all law, either of the bourgeoisie or of the proletariat. State power cannot be shared.

Marxism and bourgeois legal ideology
'As plain as a pikestaff to every class-conscious worker', says Lenin. He is right, because this argument is only the logical

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development of the recognition of the class struggle, and this recognition is part of the daily experience of the exploited workers, in their struggle against exploitation. Which does not mean that this logical development does not have to overcome any obstacles. On the contrary, it never stops coming up against the power (i.e. the operation) of bourgeois legal State ideology, which the bourgeoisie has a vital interest in maintaining. Bourgeois legal ideology inevitably influences the workers themselves. They are not 'vaccinated' against it: indeed, it is inculcated in them by all the practices of the bourgeois ideological State apparatuses, from their childhood in the primary school to their adult participation as citizens in the political institutions of the country. To develop the analysis of the State from the proletarian standpoint of the class struggle is therefore at the same time to criticize its constantly resurgent bourgeois legal representation.

    The whole question of 'democracy' versus 'dictatorship' is profoundly rooted in legal ideology, which then reappears within the labour movement itself in the form of opportunism: it is striking to note the degree to which the terms in which this opportunism is formulated remain constant from one period to another. It is impossible to understand the reason unless you go back to its cause, the reproduction of legal ideology by the bourgeois State apparatuses.

    Legal ideology is related to the law; but although it is indispensable to the functioning of the law, it is not the same thing. The law is only a system of rules, i.e. of material constraints, to which individuals are subjected. Legal ideology interprets and legitimates this constraint, presenting it as a natural necessity inscribed in human nature and in the needs of society in general. The law, in practice, does not 'recognize' classes, which is to say that it guarantees the perpetuation of class relations by codifying and enforcing rules addressed only to 'free' and 'equal' individuals. Legal ideology on the other hand 'proves' that the social order is not based on the existence of classes but precisely on that of the individuals to which the law addresses itself. Its highest point is the legal representation of the State.

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    Bourgeois legal ideology tries (successfully) to make believe that the State itself is above classes, that it only has to do with individuals. That these individuals are 'unequal' in no way embarrasses it, since, seeing that they are 'equal' in the sight of the law, any State worthy of the name will naturally set about dealing with these inequalities . . . So it would follow that State power cannot be described as the exclusive domination of a single class, because this expression, from a legal point of view, actually does not make sense. Instead of the idea of the domination of a class you find in legal ideology, to be precise, the notion of the State as the sphere and the organization of public interests and of public power, as against the private interests of individuals or groups of individuals and their private power. It is essential to grasp this fundamental aspect of bourgeois legal ideology if you do not want to find yourself, voluntarily or otherwise, trapped within its implacable 'logic'.

    I said that the law is not the same thing as legal ideology, though the latter sticks to it like a limpet; and here is the direct proof: the distinction between the 'public' and the 'private' spheres is a very real legal relation, constitutive of all law, whose material effects are unavoidable as long as law exists. But the idea that the State (and State power) must be defined in terms of this distinction, as the 'public' sector or sphere, as the organ of 'public' service, of 'public' security and order, of 'public' administration, of 'public' office, etc., represents a gigantic ideological mystification. The legal distinction 'public'/'private' is the means by which the State is able to subordinate every individual to the interests of the class which it represents, while leaving him -- in the bourgeois epoch -- the full 'private' liberty to trade and to undertake 'business' . . . or to sell his labour power on the market. This distinction is however not the historical cause of the existence of the State. Otherwise one would have to admit that, like the omnipotent God of our priests and philosophers, the State is its own cause and its own end.

    The same circle is in operation in the manner in which bourgeois legal ideology presents the opposition between 'dictatorship' and 'democracy': as a general and absolute opposition between two kinds of institutions or of forms of State organization, in particular of two types of government. A democratic State cannot, from its own point of view, be a dictatorship, because it is a 'constitutional State' in which the source of power is popular

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sovereignty, in which the government expresses the will of the majority of the people, etc. Bourgeois legal ideology thus performs a clever conjuring trick: it ceaselessly explains, convincing itself and especially convincing the masses (it is only the experience of their own struggles which teaches them the contrary) that the law is its own source, or, what comes to the same thing, that the opposition between democracy (in general) and dictatorship (in general) is an absolute opposition. This really is the case, it says, because democracy is the affirmation of the law and of its legitimacy (and 'democracy taken to the limit' is the affirmation of and respect for the law taken to the limit), while dictatorship is the negation of this same legality. For bourgeois ideology, in short, where does law come from? -- from democracy. And where does democracy come from? -- from the law. To the notion of the State as the 'public' sphere, as 'public' service, is now added, to complete the circle, the idea of the 'popular will' (and of 'popular sovereignty'): the idea that 'the people' is a unified whole (collectivity, nation), unified beneath its divisions, linking together the 'will' of all the individuals and transforming it into a single will represented in the legitimate majority government.

    You must therefore make a choice: either the system of notions of bourgeois legal ideology, which rules out any analysis of the State in terms of class struggle, but which precisely for this reason serves the class struggle of the bourgeoisie of which the existing State is the instrument; or the proletarian point of view, which denounces this mystification in order to struggle against the class domination of the bourgeoisie. Between these two positions there is no possible compromise: it is impossible to 'make room' for the standpoint of the class struggle inside the bourgeois legal conception of the State. As Lenin said, with reference to Kautsky:

    'Kautsky argues as follows: "The exploiters have always formed only a small minority of the population".

    This is indisputably true. Taking this as the starting point, what should be the argument? One may argue in a Marxist, a socialist way. In which case one would proceed from the relation between the exploited and the exploiters. Or one may argue in a liberal, a bourgeois-democratic way. And in that case one would proceed from the relation between the majority and the minority.

    If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters inevitably transform the State (and we are speaking of democracy,

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i.e., one of the forms of the State) into an instrument of the rule of their class, the exploiters, over the exploited. Hence, as long as there are exploiters who rule the majority, the exploited, the democratic State must inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters. A State of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a State; it must be a democracy for the exploited, and a means of suppressing the exploiters ; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from "democracy".

    If we argue in a liberal way, we must say: the majority decides, the minority submits. Those who do not submit are punished. That is all.' (C.W., XXVIII, 250. [The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, pp. 30-31]

    For the Marxist theory of the State, which involves a class standpoint diametrically opposed to that of bourgeois legal ideology, every democracy is a class dictatorship. Bourgeois democracy is a class dictatorship, the dictatorship of the minority of exploiters; proletarian democracy is also a class dictatorship, the dictatorship of the immense majority of working and exploited people. By holding on to the direct relation between the State and the class struggle, we preserve the only key to its materialist analysis.

    Let us return to Lenin's phrase, which I quoted above: 'A power standing above the law'. Does this definition mean that a State power might exist without any law, without any organized legal system -- and here we must include the dictatorship of the proletariat, since the dictatorship of the proletariat is once again always a State power, as is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie? Absolutely not. It means on the contrary that every State imposes its power on society through the mediation of a system of law, and thus that the law cannot be the basis of this power. The real basis can only be a relation of forces between classes. It can only be a relation of historical forces, which extends to all the spheres of action and intervention of the State, i.e. to the whole of social life, since there is no sphere of social life (especially not the sphere of the 'private' interests defined by law) which escapes State intervention; for the sphere of action of the State is by definition universal.

    We might here deal with a current 'objection', which is of course in no way innocently meant, which creates confusion by surrep titiously reintroducing the point of view of legal ideology.

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According to this objection, Lenin's definition of the State is 'too narrow' , since it identifies State power with the repressive function, with the brutal violation by the ruling class of its own law. Apart from the fact that this objection is not at all new -- contrary to what one might think, given that, though it is in fact a theoretical revision of Leninism, it is presented as an example of theoretical progress and as 'transcending' Lenin's position -- it is particularly absurd from a Marxist or even quite simply from a materialist point of view.

    In Lenin's definition the essential factor is not repression or repressive violence, as exercized by the State apparatus about which we were just speaking, and by its specialized organs -- police, army, law courts, etc. He does not claim that the State operates only by violence, but that the State rests on a relation of forces between classes, and not on the public interest and the general will. This relation is itself indeed violent in the sense that it is in effect unlimited by any law, since it is only on the basis of the relation of social forces, and in the course of its evolution, that laws and a system of legislation can come to exist -- a form of legality which, far from calling this violent relation into question, only legitimates it.

    I said that this current objection is particularly absurd, because if there is anything true about repression, for example police repression, it is precisely the fact that it does not stand 'above the law'. On the contrary, in the vast majority of cases it is provided for and organized by the law itself (a law which can, in case of need, be specially constructed to this end by the ruling class with the aid of its legislative and judicial State apparatus). It is worth recalling in this connexion that the closure of factories put into 'judicial liquidation' or their simple 'transfer' elsewhere, the sacking of workers, the seizure by the bailiffs of debtors' property, the attacks on 'illegal' popular demonstrations are all perfectly legal practices, at least in most cases, while the use of strike pickets attempting to prevent non-striking workers or blacklegs from entering a factory, the occupation of factories, organized opposition to evictions from workers' homes, and political demonstrations dangerous to the government constitute, in the official language, 'interference with the right to work', 'attacks on the property right', or 'threats to public order', and are quite illegal. You only have to think a little about the significance of these everyday

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examples in order to understand Lenin's formula: 'Class dictatorship is a power above the law'. It is therefore not a question of forgetting about the law, of reducing State power to its repressive functions, but of recognizing the true material relation between State power, law and repression.

    You will see at the same time how absurd it is to present the bourgeoisie, and in particular the imperialist bourgeoisie of the present day, as a class driven by history, by the crisis of its own system, to 'violate its own legality'! It may of course happen, in fact it certainly does sometimes happen, that the working people, defending themselves step by step against exploitation and making use in this struggle of all the means at their disposal, including legal means, succeed in exploiting, in the fight against a particular employer or a given administrative decision, the 'gaps' in the existing system of legislation and the contradictions which even the unceasing activity of the jurists has been unable to eliminate, and even certain favourable legal provisions which they have been able to force through by their struggles. No trade union or Communist militant is however unaware of the extraordinary difficulties of such an enterprise and of its necessary limits, and especially of the fact that it can in any case never succeed except on the basis of a certain relation of forces, and with the support of mass pressure. But, above all, what this ceaselessly repeated struggle teaches the working people is precisely the fact that the ruling class, because it holds State power, remains in control of the game: from the standpoint of the ruling class -- as long as you do not confuse this standpoint with the moral conscience of its jurists and its petty-bourgeois ideologists -- law is not an intangible absolute. In applying the law, or in getting it applied, it may be necessary to find a way round it; it certainly always has to be transformed and adapted to the needs of the struggles of the capitalist class and of the accumulation of capital. And if this process of adaptation cannot be carried out without calling into question the constitutional form (the public institutions -- parliamentary, legal and administrative) in which the power of the ruling class is exercized then, in that case, the bourgeoisie is not averse to making a political 'revolution': the history of France, from 1830 to 1958, provides enough examples of the fact.

    No relation of forces between the classes can be maintained without institutionalized repression. But no relation of forces can

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be maintained by or rest on or be identified with repression alone. That would be a completely idealist notion. An historical relation of forces between the classes can only be founded on the whole of the forms of the class struggle, and it is perpetuated or transformed in function of the evolution of all the forms of the class struggle. In particular, it rests on the relation of economic forces, in which the bourgeoisie possesses the advantage of the monopoly of the means of production, and therefore of permanent control and pressure on the conditions of life and work of the masses. And it rests on the relation of ideological forces, in which the bourgeoisie possesses the advantage of legal ideology (including what Lenin called 'constitutional illusions' and the 'superstitious religion of the State', which are supported by bourgeois law), the advantage of the whole of bourgeois ideology materialized in the daily operation of the ideological State apparatuses, in which the exploited workers themselves are held.

    Lenin's definition cannot therefore be 'too narrow', in the sense that it might be supposed to take account of only one aspect of State power (the repressive aspect). On the contrary, it aims precisely to show that all the aspects of State power (repressive and non-repressive, which actually cannot be separated) are determined by the relation of class domination and contribute to the reproduction of its political conditions. In this sense, all the functions of the State are through and through political: including of course, the 'economic' and 'ideological' functions. But Lenin's definition is just 'narrow' enough to exclude the possibility that, in a class society, any aspect whatever of the State might escape the field of class antagonism.

    In reality the distinction between a 'narrow' and a 'broad' definition of the State is an old theme, which can be traced a long way back in the history of the labour movement. It was already invoked by the theoreticians of Social-Democracy against the Marxist theses on the' State and the dictatorship of the proletariat: 'Marx and Engels regard the State not as the State in the broad sense, not as an organ of guidance, as the representative of the general interests of society. It is the State as the power, the State as the organ of authority, the State as the instrument of the rule of one class over another', wrote the Belgian Socialist Vandervelde in 1918, quoted by Lenin. (C.W., XXVIII, 322. [The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky , pp. 134]) The need, stressed by Marx, to overthrow the State power of the bourgeoisie by

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destroying the bourgeois State apparatus would in this perspective obviously only concern 'the State in the narrow sense' . . . As far as 'the State in the broad sense' is concerned, the organ of guidance and public service, it would have to be not destroyed but developed: the point would be to make 'the transition from the State in the narrow sense to the State in the broad sense', to organize 'the separation of the State as an organ of authority from the State as an organ of guidance, or, to use Saint-Simon's expression, of the government of men from the administration of things' (Vandervelde; in op. cit., pp. 323-24 [p. 136]). The reference to Saint-Simon's humanist technocratism is illuminating.

    Those of our comrades who, after the event, are hurriedly seeking 'theoretical' foundations for the abandonment of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat are being driven into exactly the same position. Here is a typical example. Francois Hincker, immediately after the 22nd Congress of the French Party, published a series of three articles in which he wrote:

    'Throughout the whole history of the Marxist-Leninist labour movement, two appreciations [sic ] of the concept of the State have circulated and intersected. [. . .] A "narrow" appreciation: the State is a repressive apparatus which has been produced by the governing class [sic ], which is separated from the social base (relations of production), and intervenes on it from the outside [. . .] A "broad" appreciation: [. . .] the essence of the State is the organization of the functioning of class society in the direction of the reproduction of the existing relations of production, in the direction of the reproduction of the domination of the ruling class. [. . .] Everything suggests that, precisely, to "do politics", for the political personnel of the ruling class, is to surpass the immediate and competing interests of the individual members of the bourgeoisie. This domination, this hegemony, is exercised by means of repression, by means of ideology, but also by means of organization, to the point that, and just because, it renders services which, taken separately, have a universal use-value. This last aspect has not been sufficiently attended to by the old and new classics of Marxism.[2] [. . .] The ruling class has to represent its interests in universal terms, [. . .] to construct roads, schools, hospitals, to assure the

function of arbitration in the form of a system of justice, which in general works in favour of the ruling class [sic ], but which also, willy nilly, guarantees a certain security, a certain order, a certain state of peace, etc.'[3]

    Thus he finally comes up with this pearl of Statist ideology: 'To smash the State is to develop the democratic State with the aim of causing it to take on its full social function'.[4]

    In fact, if the State 'in the broad sense' could not be reduced to class domination, if this domination only affected its operation after the event, pulling it and deforming it 'in the direction' of the reproduction of such domination, and sooner or later coming into contradiction with the 'needs of society', then the revolutionary struggle would not be a struggle against the existing State, but more fundamentally a struggle for that State, for the development of its universal functions, a struggle to rescue it from the abusive 'stranglehold' maintained on it by the ruling class . . . It is not surprising, then, that this definition of the State quite simply adopts the traditional image provided for it by bourgeois legal ideology. The Marxist thesis says: it is because the social relations of production are relations of exploitation and antagonism that a special organ, the State, is necessary for their reproduction; that is why the maintenance of the working population, which capitalism needs and the conditions of the development of the productive forces, which capitalism needs -- including the construction of roads, schools, hospitals -- must inevitably take the form of the State. But what we are now being offered, on the contrary, is the bourgeois thesis (whose value has, it seems, not been 'sufficiently attended to' by the classics of Marxism) that the State is something other than the class struggle; that it is partly (for the essential part) detached from that struggle, and that it limits the field of the class struggle (by subjecting it to the demands of the 'whole' of society). In turn it is at most limited (shackled and perverted) by that struggle.[5] Thus, if these limits are overcome, it will be all the more 'free' to fulfil its universal (democratic) functions . . . But all this

    Remember Marx's words in the Communist Manifesto : 'Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.' In the same way the disappearance of the State is to him identical with the disappearance of society itself!

    In other words, it is impossible really to separate the recognition of the class struggle from the recognition of the class nature of the State as such -- from which follows the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As soon as you admit that the State, with respect to such-and-such of its functions, may stand outside of the field of class determination, as soon as you admit that it might constitute a simple 'public service' and represent the interests of the whole of society before representing those of the ruling class, otherwise than as the historical interests of the ruling class, then you are inevitably led to admit that the exploiters and the exploited 'also' have certain historical interests in common (those of the 'nation', for example), that their struggle does not determine the whole field of social relations, that it is restricted to a certain sphere of social life or that it may disappear under the weight of certain higher demands. And to crown it all, this limitation (therefore in fact abandonment) of the class point of view is invoked precisely with respect to the present-day development of the State, which represents historically the expression, reinforcement and concentration of the power of the ruling class, in step with the development of imperialism and the aggravation of its contradictions.

    I have just been speaking about the class interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole. In fact, the bourgeoisie as a class has only one fundamental interest in common. Except for this interest, everything divides it. The interest in question is the maintenance and extension of the exploitation of wage labour. It should there fore be easy to see what Marx and Engels intended by their argument about State power: State power can belong only to a single class just because its roots lie precisely in the antagonism between

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the classes, in the irreconcilable character of this antagonism. Or better: in the reproduction of the whole of the conditions of this antagonism. There is no 'third way' between the extension of this exploitation, for which the bourgeoisie is fighting, because its very existence depends on it, and the struggle for its abolition, led by the proletariat. There is no possibility of reconciling these two corresponding historical tendencies. Marx and Lenin were always trying to demonstrate this point: the basis of the petty-bourgeois ideology of the State -- and this is true even when it penetrates socialism and the organizations of the working class -- is the idea that the State represents at its own special level a site of conciliation in the class struggle between the exploiters and exploited. And the no. 1 key point of the proletarian conception of the State, an idea which is absolutely unacceptable to bourgeois and especially petty bourgeois ideology is the idea that the State results from the irreconcilable, antagonistic character of the class struggle, and is a tool of the ruling class in this struggle. The historical existence of the State is immediately linked to that of the class struggle, even when, indeed especially when it tries to fulfil 'general social functions', whether economic or cultural: for these general functions are necessarily subordinated to the interest of the ruling class and become means of its domination. The more important and diverse these functions become, the more this characteristic of the State as a tool of class rule comes to the fore.

Has the proletariat disappeared?
Let us put the point in another way: the only 'limits' on the class struggle are set by the class struggle itself, by the material means which it provides to the exploited masses to organize and mobilize their forces. One thing ought indeed to be clear: to the extent that class struggle is ever attenuated, it is not because antagonistic class interests have been reconciled or because the conflict between them has been transcended. On the contrary, it is because a certain relation of forces has been imposed in struggle by the proletariat. To take only one example, which has sometimes provoked debates inside the labour movement and has necessitated the vigilance or intervention of the Communists: the fact that representatives of the working people are elected to public bodies (Parliament, municipal councils) is an index of their strength and a help to them

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in their struggle, one means among others of taking this struggle further forward; but it certainly does not entail that the workers thereby hold the least scrap of State power, as if State power could be divided up into a number of different local or individual powers, shared out between the classes in proportion to their political strength, and thus cease to be absolutely in the hands of the ruling class. It is the experience of struggle itself, provided that this experience is consistently developed, which inevitably leads to the recognition of State power as the instrument of the ruling class, to what Marx called its class dictatorship.[6]

    If State power really is the dictatorship of a single class, in the sense which I have just indicated, it must be either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or that of the proletariat, which constitute tendentially the two classes of modern society, the two classes produced and reproduced by the development of capitalism. The class State, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat are three concepts representing the moments of a single antagonistic process. This is illustrated once again by the discussion now taking place, for, as we have seen, the rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat leads immediately, by the logic of the ideological reasoning which it sets in motion, to avoiding, watering down and finally revising the idea of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and therefore of the State as a class instrument. Thus you can begin to see why the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat is inseparable from the Marxist theory of the State and of the class struggle: let it go, and the rest crumbles!

    The proletarian revolution is the reversal of the existing relation of social forces, the establishment in the course of the struggle of a new relation of forces, the opposite of that which previously existed. To imagine that this reversal could take any other form than the dictatorship of the proletariat is to imply that there exists in history, over against the bourgeoisie, an antagonistic force other than the proletariat, a 'third force' independent of the proletariat, capable of uniting the working people against capital. This always more improbable miracle, this 'third force' is the saviour which petty-bourgeois ideology has long been awaiting in order to escape from the class antagonism within which it feels itself to be squeezed; this force it 'discovers' successively in the peasantry, the

absolute character of the antagonism between classes (which is the root of the whole question) with the idea of the immutability of social classes, an idea which can then be triumphantly 'disproved by the facts': this confusion actually amounts to a denial of the antagonism between the classes, to its progressive attenuation, and consequently to the conjuring away of the need for a revolutionary break with capitalism. Just as, in other circumstances, the transformation of the knowledge produced by the natural sciences allowed idealist philosophy to proclaim that 'matter has disappeared', we are here faced with a situation in which it is being ever more openly explained that classes are disappearing: no more 'bourgeoisie', in the strict sense, no more 'proletariat', in the strict sense. Power lies, so we are told, not with the bourgeoisie as a class, but in the hands of a few families, or rather of twenty-five or thirty individuals, the Company Presidents of the great groups of monopolies; that is, it lies nowhere, or rather in a simple, abstract politico-economic system which owes the persistence of its influence over men, over the people, only to the backwardness of their political consciousness! The antithesis to the capitalist system is no longer the proletariat, but everyone, or almost every one: for almost everyone, in one sense or another, is part of the working people! The proletariat is now interpreted simply as one category of working people among others.[7]

    The facts (since they have been mentioned) are quite different. They show that, with the development of capitalism, and especially of present-day imperialism, the antagonism is actually getting deeper and progressively extending itself to all regions of the world, leaving an ever narrower margin of manoeuvre to the social classes left over from the past in their attempts to provide themselves with an independent economic and political position. The centralization of the State power of the bourgeoisie and its dependence in relation to the proletariat on the process of accumulation of capital are increasing. The transformation of more and more working people into proletarians, even if it sometimes runs up against historical obstacles which slow it down, is inexorably running its course.

    Of course, the history of capitalism does demonstrate a ceaseless