INTRODUCTION
One can consider neither the writings of Marx and Lenin, nor the seven decades of Soviet Communism which succeeded them, without questioning the relationship between socialist theory and what Michel Foucault called “Gulag” practice. In the context of the Cold War, however, this act of questioning was often little more than an attempt to absolve those theoretical texts of responsibility, or establish their guilt, for their alleged consequences: the totalitarian Soviet state and the Gulag. Foucault cautions against uncritically positing the Gulag as simply some kind of historical error, and asking only how it happened that the theoretical purity of Marx and Lenin could be so greatly distorted. To Foucault, questioning the relationship between socialist theory and Soviet practice in a serious fashion means
[r]efusing to question the Gulag on the basis of the texts of Marx or Lenin or to ask oneself how, through what error, deviation, misunderstanding or distortion of speculation or practice, their theory could have been betrayed to such a degree. On the contrary, it means questioning all these theoretical texts, however old, from the standpoint of the reality of the Gulag. Rather than searching in those texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible.[1]
To Foucault, the texts are not innocent. They do not occupy the privileged position of neutrality, or of disconnectedness from subsequent generations’ use of them. Thus, Foucault argues that we must resist the temptation to confront the Gulag as a distortion of Marxism-Leninism. He advocates instead that readers of Marx and Lenin confront the texts themselves and seek to understand what it was about them which allowed them to become rallying points for Soviet ideology. In suggesting this approach, Foucault is not intent upon establishing a causal link between the theoretical texts of Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet reality. Rather, he suggests that this is a more fruitful way of relating actual Communist practice to Marxist-Leninist theory than simply positing the Gulag as a gross deviation from pristine texts—a sullying of these works by the deeds of unworthy men. For Foucault, the study of the Marxist-Leninist canon must be more than an exercise in absolution or condemnation.
In the same way that Foucault insists the theoretical texts of Marxism-Leninism be questioned in light of the reality of the Gulag, Leszek Kolakowski argues that readers of Marx and Lenin must avoid dismissing Leninism as a distortion or betrayal of ‘real Marxism’. Kolakowski does not deny that the question of the relationship between the writings of Marx and Lenin is a valid one. Nevertheless, for Kolakowski, to ask whether or not Leninism was a legitimate expression of Marx’s thought is to pose the question incorrectly. Framed in this manner, the question cannot be answered without making all kinds of presumptuous claims about ‘what Marx really thought’.[2] Like the act, to which Foucault objects, of disassociating Marxism-Leninism from Stalinism simply for the purpose of rescuing the theories from the reality of the Gulag, to hold that Leninism was a betrayal of Marx’s thought is, for Kolakowski, to do little more than engage in an ideological exercise.
The British socialist politician, Tony Benn, stated with some justification that
the distortion of the Marxist idea that developed in Russia was as great, and of the same character, as the distortion of the Christian teaching at the time of the Inquisition. But it is as wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his.[3]
Unfortunately, Benn’s approach to Marx does not tell us anything about Marx’s or Lenin’s ideas in their own right, but serves only to absolve Marx of responsibility for Bolshevism. Not only is this approach uninformative, but it fails to take into consideration the role of Marx’s writings (as what Kolakowski would call “sacred texts”) in the subsequent development of Lenin’s ideas. Kolakowski is careful to point out that all social movements, regardless of their orientation, are to be explained “by a variety of circumstances” and that “the ideological sources to which they appeal, and to which they seek to remain faithful, are only one of the factors determining the form they assume and their patterns of thought and action”.[4] He does not attempt to collapse the substance of social movements down to the content of their sacred texts because “no political or religious movement is the perfect expression of that movement’s ‘essence’ as laid down in its sacred writings”.[5] However, Kolakowski, like Foucault, believes that it is as much a mistake to underestimate the role of the texts, as “these writings are not merely passive, but exercise an influence of their own on the course of the movement”.[6]
In this manner, Kolakowski’s approach to Marxist social movements, such as Bolshevism, is different from that of Benn. Benn’s assessment of the Soviet experience consists of comparing the ‘essence’ of Marx’s thought with its practical existence as Bolshevism or the Gulag; in contrast, Kolakowski feels it is far more informative to ask what it was about Marx’s ideas that allowed them to become rallying points for Bolshevism. Rejecting the notion that those who interpret the canonical writings of Marx correctly are therefore possessed of the truth, Kolakowski concludes that it is as pointless to ask whether or not Lenin was a true Marxist as it is to ask whether or not Thomas Aquinas was a true Aristotelian or Ignatius Loyola was a true Christian.[7] While Kolakowski does not deny the legitimacy of exploring the relationship between Marx and his interpreters, including Lenin, such an exploration can never tell us whether Lenin should be regarded as an apostle or a renegade. It is inadequate to say that Leninism is ‘just a caricature’ of Marx’s thought because the essence of a caricature is that, despite its difference from the original, the original is still recognizable in it.[8] This is not to say that the connection of Marx to Lenin ought to be established for the equally ideological purpose of demonstrating Marx’s guilt. Marx cannot be held responsible for the questionable use of his work; nevertheless, the fact that his works were used as such cannot be dismissed out of hand. As Kolakowski puts it,
St. Paul was not personally responsible for the Inquisition and for the Roman Church at the end of the fifteenth century, but the enquirer, whether Christian or not, cannot be content to observe that Christianity was depraved or distorted by the conduct of unworthy popes and bishops; he must rather seek to discover what it was in the Pauline epistles that gave rise, in the fullness of time, to unworthy and criminal actions. Our attitude to the problem of Marx and Marxism should be the same.[9]
The manner in which Marx’s thought was reflected in subsequent Leninist practice is particularly relevant to the study of Lenin’s theory of the state, his views on its role in a socialist revolution, and his vision of an emancipated, socialist society. In the pamphlet State and Revolution, Lenin attempts to give a systematic account of Marx’s conception of the state, and of the future socialist society, in order to set the theoretical standard for all future discussion of it. This was no small task for several reasons. First of all, Marx’s most rigorous theoretical examination of the state, in 1843’s “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State”, remained unpublished until after Lenin’s death. Secondly, Marx’s writing, even at its finest, does not provide the best material for a general theory of the state. Marx was predisposed to situating his reflections upon the state in the context of specific historical events like Louis Napoleon’s coup d’ état of 1851 and the Paris Commune of 1871. At no point did he provide either a comprehensive theory of the state or a clear discussion of the institutions of post-capitalist society.[10] Thus, presenting a general theory of the modern state based on Marx’s writing was, for Lenin, not simply a matter of putting a new shine on a more or less complete theory. Rather, it was an alchemic process of extracting from Marx’s historical studies their implicit theoretical content and, with the aid of Friedrich Engels’ commentaries, integrating this into a systematic theoretical account of the state.
In spite of the difficulties Lenin faced in presenting a Marxist theory of the state, he successfully grasped Marx’s ideas in two important respects. Using Engels’ writing to fill in the theoretical gaps, Lenin gave an accurate rendering of Marx’s general conception of the state, i.e., as a reflection of the egoistic interests of civil society. Incapable of expressing anything but class interest, the state’s pretensions to universality were said to be false and only obscured the separation of the individual from power and the power of property over the individual. Furthermore, in spite of Marx’s tendency to gloss over such issues as the mechanics of the proletarian revolution and the character of the future, classless society, Lenin had at his disposal a clear vision of what socialist society would look like. In his account of the ill-fated Paris Commune of 1871 in Civil War in France, Marx described a social form in which (albeit briefly) the functions of the army and the police had been reintegrated into the general population of Paris and, thus, the coercive instruments of the state had been reabsorbed into the politicized individual. The state, ostensibly the expression of all citizens’ interests but understood by Marx to be little more than the institutionalization of class conflicts within civil society, had been superseded and class conflict abolished. Despite the lack of a well thought-out general theory of socialist society in Marx’s writing, Marx upheld the commune form, as it had existed in Paris, as an example of a society in which the prerequisites to socialism had been achieved. Thus, though Marx did not necessarily view the Paris Commune as a model for socialist society, the connection between Marx and Lenin can be clearly drawn. A.J. Polan puts it best when he says that “Marx endowed posterity with no other theory of the politics and government of socialist society than the commune-state; and Lenin incorporated into his politics the theory of the commune-state as elaborated by Marx, without additions and without omissions”.[11] As an attempt to incorporate the concept of the commune into the Bolshevik program, Lenin’s State and Revolution is quite true to Marx’s thought and indicates “a process, not of revision or development, but of straightforward inheritance”.[12]
Because Polan’s conclusion, that Lenin’s theory of the state represented a “straightforward inheritance” from Marx, recognizes that our task in reading Marx and Lenin is more complex than simply ‘rescuing’ Marx from Lenin’s subsequent misinterpretations, it would meet with Foucault’s and Kolakowski’s approval. Yet, even if one is willing to acknowledge how Marx’s theory of the state made the revolutionary program of Lenin’s State and Revolution possible, the manner in which Lenin’s theory of the state diverged from Marx should also be noted. Though it is evident that Marx’s writing on the state had a profound effect on Lenin’s State and Revolution, it is also regarding the theory of the state that Lenin departed from Marx to the greatest extent. While accepting Marx’s characterization of the state as a plenum of class interest, and of the commune as a form embodying the characteristics of socialist society, Lenin incorporated an idea into his theory which was not an instance of “straightforward inheritance”. This was the idea that the state, whilst a reflection of class conflict and bourgeois interests, was to have a leading role in the abolition of class conflict and the ushering in of a new socialist age.
In focusing upon this apparent deviation from Marx, it is instructive to recall what was said earlier. Foucault in particular warns against looking to Marx’s texts for a “condemnation in advance” of subsequent deviations from them. After all, any answer to the question of how Marx would have acted in Lenin’s circumstances, or how he would have assessed Lenin, is necessarily hypothetical. There is, both Kolakowski and Foucault would argue, nothing to be gained by looking to Marx for an anticipation and refutation of Lenin. However, without playing semantic games, it can be argued that there is in Marx’s writing a ‘condemnation after the fact’ of Lenin’s theory of the state. To uncover this, we must turn our attention from Lenin to Hegel.
In Philosophy of Right, Hegel posits a general theory of the state in which the state is viewed as the embodiment of reason in the world. As such, the state is not understood simply as an apparatus which makes and enforces laws, regulates industry, and maintains infrastructure. Rather, it is seen as the means by which civil consciousness can be influenced and the egoistic desires of individual men attenuated. The state is, in Hegel’s theory, the universal influence which fits human beings for life as members of an ethical community. But, according to Marx’s “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State”, this conception of the state inverts reality. While Hegel holds that the state exists independently of civil society, and that it is the repository of community and ethical life, Marx believes the state to be the institutional expression of the power relations inherent within civil society. For Marx, the state represents not the rule of reason over civil society but the coercive power of the propertied class over those who lack access to capital. As such, the state cannot be the independent means by which the fractious civil society is recast in the image of ethical community and universality. It can only serve to mediate and perpetuate the power relations of which it is a mere expression. Therefore, Marx rejects Hegel’s theory of the state on the grounds that it misunderstands the relationship between the state and civil society and that its conception of history, as the process of the state reconstituting civil society in the image of its own universality, is fundamentally incorrect.
In the first instance, Lenin accepts Marx’s conception of the state. Arguing that the state is merely the product of material conditions in a society (at a given stage of historical development) which the state itself is powerless to affect, Lenin appears to deny the Hegelian contention that the state is the worldly embodiment of universality (the ‘ethical idea’) and to side with Marx. Because of the inadequacy of the state and its inherent inability to speak for anything other than private property, Lenin advocates the abolition of the state and the reorganization of society along the lines of the Paris Commune as Marx described it.
However, for Lenin, the achievement of the commune-society does not imply a complete abolition of the state, once and for all, or the reabsorption of coercive state functions back into civil society. Instead, it entails the consolidation of state power in the hands of a revolutionary vanguard acting on behalf of the proletariat. By equating the achievement of the commune-society with the consolidation of state power in the hands of the proletariat, Lenin conflates the commune-form with another of Marx’s social forms: the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. For Lenin, this does not pose a problem because, with the state in the hands of the hitherto oppressed class, its coercive instruments will be employed to eliminate class conflict. In the process of extinguishing all conflict along class lines, the state destroys its raison d’être and, ultimately, withers away. However, in conflating the commune-form with the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin introduces into his theory of the state the notion that the state has a leading role in the reconstitution of civil society and that the state has the capacity to recast civil society in its own image. In effect, Lenin’s proposed proletarian society affirms two contradictory social forms simultaneously: the commune, which is a society in which the state has been transcended, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is still very much a state form. While Lenin recognizes the need for the abolition of the state, and the civil conflict of which it is a reflection, he also advocates the state as the means to this end.
Though it would be inappropriate, perhaps flippant, to characterize Lenin’s revolutionary program as ‘Hegelian’ on these grounds alone, his ideas about the role of the state in the shaping of civil society bear the mark of Hegel.[13] While Lenin’s State and Revolution maintains that the state is necessarily the reflection of class conflict, and that it exists to the extent that class conflict is irreconcilable, at the text’s heart is an affirmation of the proletarian state’s leading role in the abolition of class conflict. In emphasising the state’s role in building a classless society, Lenin affirms the state’s capacity to act universally and to stand outside the material concerns of civil society. Thus, in its most important components, Lenin’s theory of the state embodies ideas characteristic of Hegel.
As Foucault and Kolakowski have warned, it is profitless to discuss the relationship between Marx and Lenin by searching Marx’s writing for what Foucault calls a “condemnation in advance” of Leninism. To look for such a condemnation, for the purpose of disassociating Marx’s work from Leninism, is as much an ideological exercise as the orthodox Communist argument that Lenin was true to the word of Marx in every conceivable way. Both positions force Marx’s texts to do the impossible: to speak to a reality Marx could not foresee. All we are left with, it has been suggested, is the ability to take the texts as historical documents and to determine how, with the passage of time, they came to be expressed in the revolutionary program of Lenin. However, it is my contention that Lenin’s theory of the state may provide the reader with clear grounds on which to discuss the relationship of Marx and Lenin while avoiding speculation and ideological axe-grinding. Though Marx’s texts provide no “condemnation in advance” of Leninism, they do—specifically in regard to the theory of the state—provide a condemnation after the fact of Hegelian theory. As already noted, Lenin’s theory of the state embodies the Hegelian idea that the state had the capacity to act universally, and to reshape civil society in its universal image. Because Lenin’s conception of the state mirrors Hegel’s, a wedge can be driven between Lenin and Marx. In State and Revolution, Lenin affirmed and attributed to Marx a conception of the state which Marx explicitly rejected in Hegel. Marx cannot be called upon to speak to the manner in which his work was used by Lenin; yet, because Marx’s conception of the state was based upon a rejection of Hegel’s theory, a specific portion of Lenin’s theory can be assessed on the same grounds as Hegel’s was.
In sum then, what is at issue in this study is the relationship between the state and civil society as it is presented by Hegel, Marx, and Lenin. My purpose will be to demonstrate how much these three thinkers were vexed by the same problem, i.e., how best to achieve the synthesis of particular and universal interests. Most importantly though, I will suggest that Hegel and Marx, and especially Marx and Lenin, must be distinguished according to their views on the role of the state in achieving this synthesis. Lenin’s theory of the state mirrored Hegel’s in many important ways; thus, to the extent that Marx’s writing was an explicit critique of Hegel, it can also provide an implicit critique of Lenin.
My discussion focuses upon three works, one by each of the writers: Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx’s “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State”, and Lenin’s State and Revolution. It is divided into chapters accordingly.
Chapter One provides a description of Hegel’s metaphysical system which is, by necessity, cursory and introduces his theory of the state as a parenthesis within this system. It outlines the following parts of Hegel’s argument: 1) that the state is not only an instrument but the earthly embodiment of universality, Absolute Mind, and ethical life; 2) that the state qua ethical community has a triadic structure in which the Family, Civil Society, and the Political State are subsumed under the normative order known as Ethical Life, and Ethical Life is the third of three normative orders: Abstract Right, Morality, and Ethical Life; 3) that the state is necessitated by the inability of the Family and Civil Society to engender ethical life in individuals; and, 4) that the state, as an entity transcending the narrow, egoistic interests of civil society, has the capacity to bring individuals to consciousness of themselves as universal and ethical beings.
Chapter Two situates Marx as a critic of Hegel’s theory of the state and specifically discusses the nature of Marx’s critique. This involves a discussion of the two moments of Marx’s critique—transformation and demystification. This chapter also describes Hegel’s proposed mediating structures (the Executive and the Legislature) in further detail, and offers an exposition of Marx’s argument why these structures do not engender universality, and cannot be anything more than institutional expressions of the civil conflicts they were supposed to overcome. The failure of these mediating structures is attributed to their constitution and, ultimately, to their subservience to private property.
Chapter Three outlines Lenin’s attempt to reconstruct a Marxist theory of the state, and his case for the state’s abolition. This chapter attempts to come to terms with some problems of interpreting State and Revolution. Most importantly, it deals with the uneasy coexistence of ideas in Lenin’s writing on the state which calls into question his interpretation of Marx’s thought.
Finally, Chapter Four consists of a recapitulation and some concluding remarks.
Having said all this, I find it necessary to state exactly what this thesis is not meant to accomplish. My aim is not to demonstrate once and for all ‘what Marx really said’, to argue that Lenin bowdlerized Marx’s thought, or to pigeon-hole Lenin as a Hegelian rather than a Marxist. This would be a rather sterile exercise. My aim, recognizing the merits of Foucault and Kolakowski, is to explore Lenin’s theory of the state as an entirely plausible outcome of Marx’s thought while showing that, at the same time, it embodied characteristics that Marx had earlier rejected in Hegel’s theory.
Back to Table of Contents[1]Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 (Colin Gordon et al., trans.; New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 135.
[2]Remarkably, some writers have declared that they are privy to just such information. See G.D.H. Cole, What Marx Really Meant (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1934) and H.B. Acton, What Marx Really Said (New York: Schocken Books, 1974 [1967]).
[3]Interview with Alan Freeman in The Benn Heresy (London: Pluto Press Limited, 1982), 172.
[4]Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: I. The Founders (P.S. Falla, trans.; Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 [1978]), 2.
[10]In letters to Ferdinand Lassalle and Friedrich Engels, Marx indicated his intention to work out his theory of the state in detail. The manuscripts of which this proposed work was a part were eventually published as Grundrisse. See “Marx to Ferdinand Lassalle, 22 February 1858” and “Marx to Friedrich Engels, 2 April 1858” in Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels: Collected Works (Vol. 40; New York: International Publishers, 1983), 270, 298.
[11]A.J. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics. (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 7. Though Polan’s contention that Lenin integrated Marx’s concept of the commune into his own theory in an unaltered form is credible, his use of the word “commune-state” is problematic. As will be discussed in Chapter III, Marx understood the Paris Commune to be a social form in which the state had been superseded. For this reason, Polan’s reference to the “commune-state” is, perhaps, contradictory.
[13]It is not the purpose of this study to present textual evidence suggesting that Lenin’s State and Revolution drew directly upon Hegel’s writing. It is worth noting, however, that in Karl Ballestrem’s discussion of the relative merits of Lenin’s major philosophical works—Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and Philosophical Notebooks—the author argues that “certainly, the general direction of [Lenin’s] philosophical development tends towards a gradually higher esteem and to a greater incorporation of Hegel in his thinking”. See Karl G. Ballestrem, Die Sowjetische Erkenntnismetaphysik Und Ihr Verhältnis Zu Hegel (Dordrechet, Holland: D. Reidel Publishers, 1968), 78. Translation in this instance by J. Knackstedt.