Basing themselves on the experience of revolutions in the 19th century, the Paris Commune of 1871 in particular, Marx and Engels concluded that:
1. In order for the working class to abolish capitalism and begin building a classless, socialist society — what they called ``communism'' — it must conquer political power and, by degrees, expropriate capitalist property, centralising the means of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class.
2. The state institutions of even the most democratic capitalist state serve to uphold the rule, and defend the interests, of the capitalist class, i.e., represent the social dictatorship of the capitalist class, and therefore cannot serve as instruments with which to overthrow that rule and transfer political power to the working class.
3. The dismantling of the capitalist state, in the first place its repressive apparatus (military forces, police, judicial and penal system) is a necessary prerequisite for the conquest of political power by the working class.
4. Between capitalist society and socialist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this there will be a period of political transition in which the state can be nothing other than the instrument of the revolutionary rule of the working class (what they called ``the dictatorship of the proletariat'').
5. Unlike all previous forms of class rule, in which the state was an instrument for the forcible suppression of the majority by the minority ruling class, the workers' state represents the interests of the great majority and forcibly suppresses the power of the former minority ruling class, the capitalist class. The state institutions of the dictatorship of the proletariat must therefore be radically different from those of a capitalist state, or any previous state.
6. The political form that the workers' state would take would be that of a workers' democracy based on elected councils of working people's delegates exercising both legislative and administrative functions, and in which:
8. The workers' state is the instrument of a propertyless class whose liberation from exploitation and oppression can only be realised through the construction of a classless, socialist society. The workers' state is therefore transitional; it will wither away as the socialist society comes into being on a world scale.
These fundamental conclusions about the necessity and character of the workers' state have been confirmed by the experience of socialist revolutions in the 20th century, beginning with the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Despite these experiences, there are still those who proclaim that the workers' movement can attain its socialist goals within the framework of the institutions of capitalist democracy, through reliance on parliamentary elections and the gradual conquest of ``positions of power'' within these institutions. This reformist concept must be energetically opposed and denounced for what it is — a cover-up for the abandonment of the struggle for working-class power and a substitute of ever more systematic collaboration with the capitalist class for a policy of consistently fighting for the interests of the working class.
Far from reducing the costs of ``social transformation'' or ensuring a ``slower but peaceful'' transition to socialism, this reformist policy, if it should determine the political attitude of the working class in a period of unavoidable class confrontation, can only lead to bloody defeats and mass slaughters as the 1965 coup in Indonesia and the 1973 coup in Chile demonstrated. Adherence to such a policy by the German Social Democracy was a major factor in the triumph of fascism in Germany in 1933. Pursuit of a similar policy by the Spanish Communist Party, following Stalin's Popular Front line, also contributed to the victory of fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
1. The working class is profoundly democratic in its aspirations. As the class struggle sharpens, the workers spontaneously strive to create democratic forms of organisation in order to most effectively employ their chief weapon in their fight against capitalism — collective action.
2. As their mass mobilisations grow in intensity, the workers seek to create progressively broader forms of democratic self-organisation, including elected strike committees, factory committees, and finally, in a revolutionary upsurge, elected councils that extend beyond individual workplaces, tend to encompass larger and larger sections of the allies of the working class, and challenge the power and prerogatives of the capitalist state machine.
3. The generalisation, coordination and centralisation of such councils (soviets), together with the growing paralysis and initial disintegration of the organs of capitalist power, creates a revolutionary crisis in society, a situation characterised by the existence of two parallel, competing centres of power.
4. To fulfil their role as organs of revolutionary struggle, the soviets must seek to include all political tendencies within the insurgent population and guarantee the right to freely debate policies and actions. In this sense, they are the highest form of the united front.
5. A multi-faceted struggle erupts between the class-collaborationist and the class-struggle forces within the soviets and other mass organisations for leadership of the insurgent population. A process of selection unfolds, that makes possible the rapid growth of a revolutionary socialist party — provided it has grown sufficiently before these events to appear as a credible alternative leadership to the masses and has a sufficiently large and tested nucleus of cadre firmly based in the working class.
6. The transformation of this revolutionary cadre organisation into a mass workers' party is the decisive element in winning a majority to the revolutionary perspective of the conquest of state power by the workers and their allies.
7. The first qualitative step in establishing the democratic power of the working class is the revolutionary replacement of the capitalist government by a working people's government based on the soviets and other organs of mass revolutionary struggle.
8. Such a government stands at the head of a turbulent, transitional process, during which the capitalist class retains significant advantages. Unless it acts decisively to consolidate the organs of revolutionary mass struggle as the new institutions of state power, that is, to replace the weakened capitalist state with a workers' state, and to organise the workers to assert control over the capitalists, the revolutionary foundations of the working people's government will gradually be undermined. The capitalists will use their economic power to unleash economic chaos, leading increasing sections of the working people to become demoralised, inactive, and confused. The erosion of the masses' confidence in the revolutionary leadership will enable the capitalists to reassert their political power — to oust the working people's government, re-establish a capitalist government, rebuild the capitalist state machine, and dismantle the democratic gains of the revolutionary upsurge.
9. The consolidation of the workers' state and mechanisms for workers' control over the capitalists enables the working class to prepare itself to begin ``wresting by degrees'' productive property from the capitalist class, to establish a state monopoly of foreign trade and to introduce a planned economy.
10. The pace of this qualitative transformation is dependent upon the ability of the workers' state to break the resistance of the capitalists to the consolidation of workers' power; the acquisition by the working class of the administrative experience and technical skills to begin managing state-owned industries and participating in national economic planning; and the cementing of the alliance between the working class and the exploited sections of the petty-bourgeoisie, above all the working farmers.
11. In effecting the transition from a capitalist economy to the nationalised, planned economy of a socialist state, it is to the benefit of the working class to seek to take advantage of those capitalists, and the even larger layer of managers and middle-class technicians, who can be persuaded to place their managerial and technical skills at the service of the working class.
12. Success in carrying through these tasks depends not only upon the evolution of the international and domestic relationship of class forces, but above all upon the political calibre and consciousness of the revolutionary leadership, of its ability to act decisively to educate, organise and mobilise the workers to defend and advance their common interests.
In the course of its struggle for power, the working class will have to create a workers' militia to defend itself against the violence organised by the capitalist class. As long as the power of imperialism has not been broken, following a victorious seizure of power by the working class, any workers' state will need to build a professional and highly trained revolutionary army in addition to the militia. The militia, the ``people in arms,'' serves an important function as a direct expression of the new workers' power, in addition to providing a backup and reserve for the revolutionary army.
The balanced interrelationship of the two systems, of the professional revolutionary army and the workers' militia, will depend on the concrete international situation any workers' state faces, as well as the general level of development of the country. This is because the ability to utilise a militia in any conflict depends upon factors such as how quickly it can be mobilised and transported, and how many workers can be spared from production as well as on the nature of the external threat. Only with the overthrow of the imperialist rulers in the major countries, above all in the United States, will it be possible to make the militia system the sole form of defence of workers' power.
In order to most effectively function as an instrument of defence of the democratic power of the workers, the army of a workers' state must have an overtly working-class character. In creating the Red Army, for example, the Bolsheviks abolished the old officer caste system with its hierarchy of ranks and privileges. The officer caste in capitalist armies is necessary to maintain capitalist authority over soldiers recruited from among the working people. Similarly, as part of the process of consolidating its control over the Soviet workers' state the Stalinist bureaucracy reintroduced the old officer caste system in 1935.
The urgent necessities of military preparedness against wars of aggression by imperialism by no means imply or justify bureaucratic restrictions on the exercise of democratic rights by the working people.
The capacity for self-defence and the armed strength of a workers' state are increased by a high level of political understanding and conviction on the part of the masses; a high level of political activity, mobilisation and alertness; and internationalist education and activity.
Two key factors in the capacity of any workers' state to defend itself are:
Far from being a ``luxury'' in a world situation characterised by potential wars of imperialist aggression, workers' democracy is a major asset in the hands of a workers' state, even from a purely military point of view. Because it is politically difficult for imperialism to embark on military adventures without provoking massive working-class opposition at home, it tries to weaken such opposition by increasing repression and restricting the democratic rights of working people. Workers' democracy in the workers' states would exercise an increasing power of attraction on the exploited masses of the capitalist countries, undermining the military strength of imperialism.
All of the norms of a workers' democracy may not be realisable under every circumstance. Under conditions of civil war or foreign military intervention resulting from attempts by the former ruling class and its international allies to overthrow the workers' power, the rules of war must apply. Restrictions on the rights to political organisation and in some extreme cases, even on the expression of opinions may well be necessary. No social class, no state, has ever granted full rights to those who actively engage in acts of war to overthrow it, and the workers' state cannot do otherwise.
In all cases, however, the workers' state should strive to maximise the real democracy enjoyed by the working people, including under conditions of civil war. This is the best means to mobilise the power of the workers and their allies; heighten their social responsibility, self-discipline and fighting spirit; raise their self-confidence, consciousness, creativity, and their conviction in their capacity to advance toward socialism; and increase their active support of and participation in the administration of their own state.
If extreme conditions such as civil war or massive economic dislocation make certain restrictions of democratic rights unavoidable, the basic nature and limitation of such restrictions should be clearly understood by the workers. It is necessary to clearly and frankly explain before the whole working class that such restrictions are inescapable and temporary measures, not part of the social and political norms of the rule of the working class. Historically, they are vestiges of the struggle to eradicate class society; not the harbinger of the new social order. Insofar as restrictions are necessitated by the class struggle, they should be limited, both in scope and time, and revoked as soon as possible.
The direct and material responsibility for any restrictions of workers' democracy lies with the capitalist counter-revolution and international imperialism. The members of the former ruling class must be put on notice by the working class that the way they will be treated depends upon their behaviour toward the workers' power.
The Stalinist regimes systematically used the pretext of imperialist military threat to repress any form of political criticism, opposition, or nonconformism. This has created a profound and healthy mistrust among the working people of the world toward the abuse of the penal, judicial and police institutions of a workers' state to outlaw the free expression of ideas. It is therefore necessary to stress that, outside of the extreme conditions of war, the use of repressive measures by a workers' state against attempts to overthrow workers' power should be circumscribed to criminal acts strictly separated from the realm of ideological activities.
In the sphere of criminal law and justice, a workers' democracy should uphold and extend the progressive conquests of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, incorporating them into its constitution and penal code. These include such rights as:
Obviously, every workers' state must defend itself against attempts to overthrow it and violation of its laws. The constitution and penal code of a workers' state will forbid and punish acts of armed rebellion, attempts at overthrowing workers' power through violence, terrorist attacks on individual representatives of the working people, sabotage and espionage in the service of foreign capitalist states, etc. But there must be a strict distinction between violent acts against workers' power and the expression of reactionary, pro-capitalist ideas. Against armed violence, the workers' state will necessarily defend itself by repression of those carrying out such acts. Against reactionary ideas, the workers' state should defend itself by ideological struggle.
The measures that the workers will have to take to defend their rule against capitalist counter-revolution will vary according to the conditions they face, as will the specific forms of workers' democracy. An industrially underdeveloped country where the working class is a minority and which is surrounded by powerful imperialist states will obviously face more immediate threats of capitalist counter-revolution than the victorious workers of the United States. And while it is undeniable that the social relationship of forces in such a country puts objective obstacles on the road of the full flowering of workers' democracy, the best way to face and solve the problems confronting any workers' state is through the maximum possible amount of workers' democracy.
State power of the working class is indispensable in order to prevent these ``islands of capitalist influence'' from becoming bases for the restoration of capitalism. The constitution and penal code of a socialist state (i.e., of a workers' state that has expropriated capitalist property in industry, banking and wholesale trade, introduced a state monopoly of foreign trade and a planned economy) will severely limit, if not totally outlaw, private appropriation of means of production and the private hiring of labour.
Well after the capitalist class has lost its positions as a ruling class politically and economically, the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas, customs, habits, and cultural values will linger on in relatively large spheres of social life and among a considerable section of the population. But it is completely wrong to draw the conclusion that administrative repression of bourgeois concepts or values is a necessary condition for building a socialist society. On the contrary, historical experience confirms the counterproductive character of administrative attempts to suppress reactionary bourgeois ideas. Suppression merely drives those who hold such ideas underground and prevents the leadership of the socialist state from gaining an accurate picture of the real level of consciousness and understanding of the masses. In the long run, such methods even strengthen the hold of reactionary ideas and place the great majority of workers in the position of being ideologically disarmed before them, because of lack of experience with genuine political struggle and ideological debates.
The only effective way to eliminate the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the working class lies in:
1. The creation of objective conditions under which these ideas lose the material roots of their attraction and the basis upon which they reproduce themselves, i.e., the eradication of money-commodity relations and capitalist norms of distribution of consumer goods and services.
2. The waging of a relentless struggle against these reactionary conceptions in the field of ideology and politics itself, which can only be successful under conditions of open debate.
3. The utilisation by the socialist state of an education policy based on teaching the new generation a scientific, materialist approach to life. At the same time, freedom of religious observance creates the best circumstances to gradually overcome obscurantist ideas in the course of free and open confrontation with scientific ideas.
Only those who have no confidence in the correctness of the materialist world outlook or in the capacity of the working class to understand its own social interests can shrink from open ideological conflict with those who hold procapitalist ideas. In fact, it is only through an open confrontation of ideas that the working class can educate and free itself from the influence of alien class ideas.
Building a socialist society involves a gigantic remoulding of all aspects of social life. It involves a revolutionary transformation in the relations of production, in the mode of distribution of products, in the work process, in the forms of administration of the economy and society, and in the customs, habits and ways of thinking of the great majority of people. It involves the fundamental reconstruction of all living conditions: reconstruction of cities, development of social services that will end the domestic servitude of women, complete revolutionising of the education system, restoration and protection of a habitable natural environment, technological innovations to conserve natural resources and eliminate pollution. All these endeavours, for which humanity has no blueprints, will give rise to momentous debates and conflicting proposals. Any restriction of these debates can only hinder the emergence of majority agreement around the most effective steps toward the construction of socialism.
Such debates will continue throughout the period of transition to socialism. They also concern the eradication of social evils that are deeply rooted in class society and that will not disappear immediately with the elimination of capitalist exploitation — the results of alienation and of the oppression of women, of national and racial minorities, and of other specially oppressed social groups. The eradication of these crippling legacies of class society necessitates freedom of organisation and action for independent movements of these oppressed social layers.
Under capitalism and even pre-capitalist forms of commodity production, it is the law of value — an objective economic law, operating beyond conscious social control — that regulates economic life, that determines the social allocation of labour, raw materials, and producer goods. The socialist revolution represents a giant leap toward the conscious regulation of humanity's economic and social destiny. While this process comes to a completion only with the emergence of a worldwide socialist society, it begins with the expropriation of capitalist property by the workers' state and the conscious planning of the nationalised economy. While the law of value cannot be completely eliminated during the transition period between capitalism and socialism, its domination must be overcome or the economy cannot be planned.
Planning means allocation of economic resources according to socially established priorities rather than according to blind market forces and the rule of private profit. But who will establish these priorities, which involve the well-being of tens and hundreds of millions of human beings?
Experience in the USSR and the other socialist states has conclusively shown that bureaucratic planning, that is, planning without the democratic participation of the working people, is extremely wasteful and inefficient. This is true not only because of the waste of material resources and productive capacities and great dislocations in the plan, but — most damaging of all — because of the systematic stifling of the creative and productive potential of the workers. Workers' democracy greatly reduces these shortcomings by placing the system of planning under the control of the producers/consumers.
While democratic planning does not guarantee that the majority will not make mistakes in the allocation of social resources, it provides the working people — the ones who will suffer the consequences of these mistakes — with the power to correct their errors.
Nationalised property in a socialist state, established by expropriating the capitalist class, has no automatic bias toward socialism. The expropriation of capitalist property is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for advancing to socialism. It opens the road to the working class taking the productive apparatus of society into its own hands and beginning the conscious advance toward socialism, but the creation of a nationalised, planned economy does not guarantee this advance. The construction of socialism is not an administrative task of managing state property and planning, regardless of how committed and socialist-minded the administrators may be. The construction of socialism depends fundamentally on the increasing involvement of the workers themselves in the administration of all aspects of social life, on the deepening of their socialist consciousness, and on the international extension of the socialist revolution.
The irreplaceable role of the conscious leadership of a revolutionary party becomes even more important with the conquest of state power by the working class. A mass revolutionary workers' party must lead the workers and their allies in running a state and charting a course toward socialism. Until capitalism has been uprooted on a world scale this is a much more difficult task than overturning a capitalist state.
The problems of defence of the workers' state, internally and internationally against capitalist powers; of consolidating democratic organs of workers' power; of organising the economy on new foundations; of aiding the development in other countries of mass revolutionary workers' parties with self-confident and experienced leaderships; of combating reactionary ideas and prejudices, and inequalities inherited from the past — all these problems of the period of transition to socialism, cannot be solved without the leadership of a revolutionary party of worker cadres educated in the Marxist program and tested in struggle.
The leadership of the revolutionary party cannot be imposed on the workers by force and against their will; it must be won by demonstrating in action the correctness of its policies.
The social emancipation of the working class can be achieved only by the activity of the working class itself, not by a self-proclaimed benevolent and enlightened elite. It follows that the role of the revolutionary workers' party both during and after the conquest of power is to lead the working class politically; to develop the mobilisation and activity of the working class in defence of its interests; to help the workers engage in decision-making at wider and wider levels; and to struggle within the working class for majority support for the party's proposals through persuasion, not through administrative or repressive measures.
To ensure that it is able to preserve its character as an organisation made up of the most class-conscious and militant workers, voluntarily united on the basis of agreement with its aims and perspectives, and leading the working class through the methods of political persuasion, the revolutionary party must ensure that its apparatus (central leadership bodies and full-time staff) remains separate and distinct from the apparatus of the workers' state.
In the early Soviet republic under Lenin's leadership, all parties except the Bolsheviks ultimately arrayed themselves with the armed capitalist counter-revolution against the workers' state. As a result, within the early Soviet state there was only one political party represented in the democratic organs of workers' power, in the soviets. However, no theoretical document of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or the Marxist movement in Lenin's time, advances the view that a monopoly of political activity by one party is necessary to maintain working-class power. The Stalinist rationalisation, developed after Lenin's death, that each social class is represented by a single party, is historically false and served simply as an apology for the monopolisation of political life by the Stalinist bureaucracy, a monopoly based on its usurpation of the political power of the Soviet working-class.
A political party is a part of a class and since each class is heterogeneous — made up of backward and advanced layers — one and the same class may give rise to, or support, different parties. A social class can only resolve its common problems through an inner struggle of tendencies, groups, and parties. This was true for the capitalist class under feudalism and capitalism, and for the workers under capitalism. It will remain true for the working class during the transition period between capitalism and socialism.
The workers must be free to organise political groups and parties without a priori ideological restrictions. The give-and-take of free discussion and political debate within the working class is the most effective way to decide the innumerable problems of theory, strategy and tactics involved in the titanic task of building a classless society under the direction of the traditionally oppressed, exploited and downtrodden masses. Freedom for these masses to organise political groups and parties, subject only to any restrictions the working people themselves find necessary to protect their power against the old ruling class, is the only road to authentic workers' democracy.
Any attempt by a privileged stratum to dictate to the workers which political parties they may recognise and vote for is a blow not to the class enemy, but to the working class; it undermines the exercise of political power by the workers. The working people themselves, through their free vote, should determine which political parties are represented in the democratic organs of workers' power.
Similarly, to grant a single party a monopoly of access to printing presses, radio, television, other mass media, and assembly halls, etc., restricts rather than increases the democratic rights of the working people. This applies equally to mass organisations or professional associations (such as writers' unions) controlled exclusively by a single party. The right of working people, including those with dissenting views, to have access to the material means of exercising democratic rights (freedom of the press, of assembly, of public protest, the right to strike, etc.) is essential to the development and maintenance of workers' democracy, as is the independence of the trade unions from the state.
Political parties are a reflection of the class struggle in the sphere of politics, that is, in questions relating to government policy and the use of state power. As long as class conflict exists and state power is needed by the workers to defend their class interests, political parties will continue to exist. They can disappear only with progress toward a socialist society and the withering away of classes and class conflict and, therefore, of the state. As political parties, including the revolutionary workers' party, wither away with the disappearance of classes, other forms of organisation reflecting differences of opinion and debating differing views and proposals in various spheres of social life will come into being and flourish. As society advances toward socialism and classes wither away, the revolutionary workers' party will encompass within its ranks larger and larger sections of the population and, at the same time, increasingly dissolve into these new forms of organisation of discussion and debate.