Editing Philosophical Research:The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (section)

== Power and its Abolition ==

Page 6.

There is a popular objection, however, that it is not possible to abolish power by exercising power. So the repetition of Bakunin goes, a worker’s government has no interest in its self-abolition.

The interlocutor that one often finds oneself faced with expressing this objection is often more interested in accusing than attempting to address the actual issue of class struggle.

Class struggle developed naturally within different stages of human history–where there is some dominant social class, be it feudal, slave-owning, or a form of capitalism, there are oppressed classes–subaltern classes.

Under capitalism, we are prrsented with the dominance of the capitalist class. Marxism commonly regards this state of affairs as the “dictatorship” of the bourgoisie.

The problem for Marxism here is not so much about how to go about immediately dismantling the capitalist state but understanding the source of its power.

Page 7.

The revolution that Marxism calls for is not attempting to slow down the struggle or deviate it into some form of piece-meal affair.

It is important recognise that there are society-wide forces that cannot simply be prefigured away, and must be dealt with head-on and acknowledged, not simply “abolished”:

<blockquote>In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.
</blockquote>
Marx, “Preface”, ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'' (1859).

When Marx talks about the “appropriateness” of the relations of production with respect to the development of the forces of production, it is easy to repeat, again, the popular and convenient interpretation that historical materialism just means the “economic base” of society controls or determines necessarily the rest of human social life.

The repetition of this assertion amounts to a vulgarisation of Marxism.

Page 8.

What has been forgotten is that Marx’s materialism did not regard the relations of production and forces of production as neatly conscious mental cognition in such a way as to collect conscious social life wholly within the political-economic superstructure.

Such an intepretation is reminiscent of Althusserianism–and probably of the Kantian division between the phenomenal and noumenal–things that occur in experience, and obversely the spooky “thing-in-itself” which produces our experience of the world external to our senses, but is located completely outside the conscious human world.

It is not so. Every moment of the capitalist mode of production involves conscious rational thought. But it is not the case that this is some kind of Idealism.

Page 9.

Simple negation of the capitalist state is bound to be insufficient for the task of revolution. Whether it be purely physical, or some combination of psychic and non-cognitive metaphysical trappings, it matters not–

Humanity is integrated into a form of life that fits everyone into a division of labour. Every form of class society possesses some unique or defining structure of their division of labour. It was from their analysis of the division of labour under capitalism that Marx and Engels identified not just the causes of modern oppression, but also its future potentialities.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary for Marxists because it acknowledges not merely the moral requirement for revolution, but also that, in some foundational way, there are objective forces at play in revolution which cannot be liquidated through will alone.

The dictatorship of the proletariat addresses this. The process of dissolving all power, all forms of

Page 10.

hegemony within society does require the assumption of power, the exercise of some form of social authority and coercive institutions.

The assumption of political dominance by the working class exists only so long as the mode of production has not transitioned to communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat ''is'' indeed about a switching place between struggling classes.

But it is not the case that it necessitates merely just another form of oppression. Remember the proletariat–wage-labour–is an ''instrument of production'', a form of productive force.