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Marxism, Violence, and Tyrann

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

George Friedman
George Friedman
Affiliation:
Political Science, Dickinson College
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Extract

The problem of Marxism is the problem of tyranny. The central argument against Marxism is an empirical one: the universally tyrannical nature of all hitherto existing Marxist regimes. Defenders of Marxism must continually defend themselves against the charge that Marxism, when it comes to power, increases the sum total of human misery by increasing political oppression. Marxists have answered in several ways. Some have argued that the social and economic benefits of Marxism outweigh the political misery it causes. Others have argued that while tyranny might count against any particular regime, it is not intrinsic to Marxist regimes as such. Some have argued that tyranny is a transitional phase, necessary but impermanent. Finally, some Marxists have denied that the regimes they defend are tyrannical at all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Spring 1986 , pp. 188 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1986

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References

1 Palmiro Togliatti, in the course of condemning Stalinism in 1956, paused to say that, “It must not be forgotten, then, that even when this power of his [Stalin's] was established, the successes of Soviet society were not lacking. There were successes in the economic field, in the political field, in the cultural field, in the military field, and in the field of international relations. No one will be able to deny that the Soviet Union in 1953 was incomparably stronger, more developed in every sense, more solid internally, and more authoritative in its foreign relations than it was, for example, at the time of the first Five-Year plan.” Togliatti, Palmiro, “Questions on Stalinism,”Google ScholarJacobs, D., ed., From Marx to Mao and Marchais (New York: Longman, 1979), pp. 243–244.Google Scholar

2 So, for example, Roger Garaudy, a member of the French Communist party at the time, wrote that, “The Soviet Socialist model is characterized by the identification of collective ownership of the means of production with State ownership. But it is by no means axiomatic that the revolutionary role of the proletarian state should be transformed into an administrative one.” Garaudy, Roger, The Crisis in Communism (New York: Grove Press, 1970), p. 140.Google Scholar

3 This has been the standard Soviet position, and the one most faithful to Marx's own understanding of the matter. See Lenin, V. I., The Lenin Anthology, ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1975, pp. 320–325.Google Scholar Also see Marx's similar comments in the 1844 Manuscripts and in his Critique of the Golha Program. For the former see Marx, Karl, Marx–Engels Werke, (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1974), Erganzungsband, pp. 535–537.Google Scholar For the latter, see ibid., Volume 19, pp. 20–22.

4 Antonio Gramsci, for example, defended Stalin, saying that “Confusion of class–State and regulated society is peculiar to the middle classes and petty intellectuals, who would be glad of any regularization that would prevent sharp class struggles andupheavals”. Gramsci, Antonio, “State and Civil Society,”, Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p.258.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, , Xenephon, Hiero or Tyrannicus, ed. Strauss, Leo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p.12Google Scholar, sections 12–14.

6 For example, see , Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Ernest Barker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 226Google Scholar, Book V, Chap, vii: “Men tend to become revolutionaries from circumstances connected with their private lives”.

7 In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels write that, “For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is forced, merely in orderto carry through its aim, to represent its interest to be identical to the interest of all members ofsociety…”in Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 3, p. 47. Marx understood part of his taskto be that ofshowing these universalistic claims to be false. What motivated men were needs, and these needs were, to Marx, radically material and hence radically private in nature.

8 Thus, in both is Critique of the Gotha Program and in the section entitled “Private Property and Communism” in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx speaks of the universalization of privatization in the political organization of the first stage of socialism. In the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx writes that, “In negating the personality of man in every sphere, this type of communism is really nothing but the logical expression of private property, which is this negation. General envy constituting itself as a power…” Marx-Engels Werke, Erganzungsband, pp. 535–536. (It should be added that some have seen this as a critique of a particular idea about communism. Given the exact textual context, and his much later references in The Critique of the Gotha Program, others have argued more persuasively that this is a description of (stages.)

9 This tactical side to Marx's understanding of the role of violence can be seen in a speech he made in 1872: “But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same. You know that the institutions, more and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries–such as America, England, and if I were more familiar to your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland– where workers can attain their goal by peacefulmeans. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force…” The Marx–Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 523.Google Scholar

10 Marx–Engels Werke, Volume 3, p. 68.

11 , Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Borker, E. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 72.Google Scholar

12 The most famous debate along these lines was that between Lenin and Karl Kautsky. Lenin charged Kautsky with turning Marx into “an ordinary liberal”; Lenin, V. I., The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), p. 5.Google Scholar Kautsky, the head of the now legal Social–Democratic Party in Germany, made the claim that, “The proletariat has, therefore, no reason to distrust parliamentary actions… Besides freedom of the press and the right to organize, the universal ballot is to be regarded as one of the conditions prerequisite to die sound development of the proletariat”; Kautsky, KarlThe Class Struggle, trans. Bohn, W. E. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 188.Google Scholar This debate, which served as the frame for the debate between Social–Democracy andCommunism throughout the century, was repeated in the struggle between Maoists and official Communist parties in Europe in the late 60s and early 70s.

13 Marx–engel Werke, Volume 4, p. 184.

14 Marx–engels Werke, Volume 3, p. 70.

15 “The traditions of all of the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the living”; Marx–engels Werke, Volume 8, p. 116.

16 The distinction between the sense of proletarian unity engendered by the factory and by the experience of the revolution can be seen in Capital, Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 23, p. v. The same distinction is maintained in The German Ideology, Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 3, pp. 75–77, although the revolution is seen as expanding and deepening the sense of unit. Also see the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 1, p. 390, and The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 4, pp. 182–183.

17 , MarxThe Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx-Engels Werke, Erganzungsband, p. 539.Google Scholar

18 , Avineri in The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 188–194Google Scholar, is correct in arguing that Marx rejected terrorism. But all violence is not terrorism. For Marx, terrorism was merely individuated violence, without a mass base. Thus, Avineri's use of Marx's critique of terrorism as a base from which to attack the notion that Marx endorsed the necessity of mass violence (pp. 202–214) is erroneous. This can be seen most clearly on p. 217, the only mention by Avineri of praxis in relation to violence. Here, Avineri argues that violence is contingent, inasmuch as the nature of praxis precludes a priori knowledge of its concrete form. When (p. 194) Avineri argues that Blanquism is merely political, and hence alienated, he belies this position by being able to demonstrate through Marx what revolution is not. But what praxis must be is also knowable, since one can know its ends and know that its ends must be reflected in the means of attaining those ends. Thus, a radical transformation of being requires a radical, suprapolitical means. To argue that Blanquism is merely political presupposes the other side of the argument, that what is even more obviously merely political (reform politics) is equally unacceptable because it too, like Blanquism, represents only a limited and, hence, insufficiently radical side of revolutionary praxis.

19 See Engels's letter to Cuno, January 24, 1872, in Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 33, pp. 387–393, esp. p. 389.

20 Benjamin, WalterIlluminations (New York: Schoken, 1969), p. 162.Google Scholar

21 Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 3, pp. 67–69.

22 “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs on the brain of the living like a nightmare. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something entirely new, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis, they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service …” However, Marx says, “Earlier revolutions required world-historical recollections in order to drug themselves concerning their own content. In order to arrive at its content, the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead”; Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 8, pp. 115–117.

23 Marx, Marx-Engels Werke, Erganzungsban, pp. 518–521. The origin of violence is in the radical estrangement of the worker from the things, the people, and even the society which surrounds him.

24 Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 1, p. 370.

25 , Marx and , Engels, “Address to the Communist League,” Marx-Engels Werke, Volume 7, p. 378.Google Scholar

26 Marx-Engels Werke, Erganzungsband, p. 539.

27 What motivates all men is need. Even man's relationship to a class arises not from choice but from necessity. It is this necessity that leads men both to class solidarity, and to species-being as well. See, in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the section called “Estranged Labor” for a sketch of this process; Marx-Engels Werke, Erganzungsband, pp. 510–522.

28 Marx himself said this in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; see Marx-Engels Werke, Erganzungsband, p. 543. It was this self-described and self-justified lack which caused a good portion of what is today called Western Marxism to try to create a Marxist psychology by way of Freud. The most powerful of these attempts was Marcuse's, Herbert in his Eros and Civilization (New York: Vintage, 1962)Google Scholar; see in particular pp. 144–156.

29 See Sartre's famous introduction to Fanon's, FranzWretched of the Earth.Google Scholar See also Ponty's, Merleau defense of violence in Humanism and Terror, (Boston: Beacon, 1969)Google Scholar, particularly p. 34.

30 , Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, “The State and Revolution,” ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), pp. 324–325.Google Scholar

31 ibid., p. 324.

32 , Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, “The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism,” ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), p. 515.Google Scholar

33 Marx & Engels, “Address to the Communist League,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 511.

34 ibid., p. 219.