Communist Strategy and Tactics
AMONG the basic Marxist canons of which the Manifesto remains a treasure house, we would like to draw the reader’s attention especially to certain cardinal principles of revolutionary strategy and tactics. For despite the numerous changes in socio-political conditions and consequently in the nature of communist activities, these principles still constitute invaluable guidelines for, and a trusted touchstone to judge, all parties claiming to be Marxist.
To start with, look at the first nine paragraphs of section II. In place of the boastfulness and arrogance of many a ‘Marxist’ party and leader of our time, we find here the natural modesty of true communists; in place of the petty bourgeois sectarianism that vitiates the Left movement today, the proletarian vanguard’s largeness of mind, which does not even recognise any special interests of a communist party apart from those of the entire working class, and sees its role not in fighting other working class parties but in leading them forward. Even the theoretical superiority of communists is viewed not as a great discovery by some “would-be universal reformer”, not as power of omniscience (as vulgar ‘Marxists’ tend to do) but as “merely express[ing], in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.” But who does not know that this “mere” general expression did to social science what another ‘simple’ generalisation E=mc2 did in modern physics?
The sobriety and the spirit of unity, however, did not prevent the authors of the Manifesto from mounting a merciless attack, in Section III, on the existing schools of “reactionary” and “bourgeois” socialism, complete with a relatively respectful though straight-forward criticism of the followers of deceased utopian socialists like Charles Fourier, Saint Simon and Robert Owen. This they considered as necessary for educating the ranks of the proletariat as the aggressive defence of the basic communist positions against virulent bourgeois propaganda, which they did in Section II.
Another distinctive quality of communist politics highlighted in Manifesto is this: “The communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.” (Section IV) Marx and Engels speak here of a continuous and consistent linking of the immediate task to the ultimate goal, of tactics to strategy, and this principle can act as a powerful preventive against the instinctive striving towards easy success in disregard for future consequences.
But in practice we are pained to see, for example, how parties professing by Marxism often keep themselves confined within the immediacy of economism and how the long-term interests of the working class are sacrificed at the altar of immediate parliamentary gains, sought to be secured through unprincipled alliances with bourgeois parties, thereby corrupting the consciousness of the working people. In this way, abandonment of this mandatory principle of Marxism, this bulwark against opportunism, gives rise to the opposite of Marxism – to revisionism:”To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment – such is the policy of revisionism.” (Lenin in “Marxism and Revisionism” (1908))
Then there is the principle of broad-based unity with all fighting forces against the common enemy together with full political independence of the Communist Party, including the right to freely criticise the allies. Principled relations of unity and struggle were developed with militant reformists like Chartists in England; Agrarian Reformers in America; Social Democrats in France; the insurrectionists in Poland and so on(Section IV). The next, wider, circle of unity was the “union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries”. Here “parties” referred to various fighting democratic parties as well as forces/parties in the making, with a good many of whom Marx had direct link as one of the vice-chairmen of the Brussels Democratic Association, and certainly not to those who were democratic in name alone.
What about communists’ relation with the bourgeoisie? Obviously it is antagonistic. But in the era of democratic revolution, under certain conditions there could be elements of unity too. In Germany, the Manifesto declares, Communists “fight with the bourgeoisie wherever it acts in a revolutionary way” (emphasis ours) even as they educate the proletariat about its “hostile antagonism” with that class, so that it embarks upon a struggle against the bourgeoisie itself as soon as the latter comes to power.
The absolute condition for communist support to the bourgeoisie – or a section/sections of it, we may add – is very clear: the latter must prove itself to be revolutionary in action, not merely in words. Experience of the past 160 years and more tells us that such an occasion arises extremely rarely. It never arose in Russia, which was why Bolsheviks never accepted the Menshevik line of unity with the Cadets – for example in Duma elections in the name of warding off the Tsarist black hundreds. In China the Kuomintang did act in a revolutionary way for brief periods by conducting armed struggle against Japanese aggressors; during those periods the Communist Party of China joined them in the war of national liberation while simultaneously continuing political struggle against it. In contrast to such positive examples, we find Indian Mensheviks uncritically allying themselves with this or that bourgeois party in the name of keeping the “main enemy” at bay and often with the explicit calculation of securing some immediate electoral gains – the be-all and end-all for those who do not “represent and take care of the future” of the communist movement in India.
The Manifesto’s directive that communists should prepare seriously for, and “immediately begin”, the struggle against the bourgeoisie after the latter attains political supremacy, in a way introduces the concept of uninterrupted revolution – the seamless progression from democratic to socialist revolution. As we know, Lenin and Mao developed this idea consistently and successfully in their respective countries; the majority of Indian Marxists are also committed to this strategic-tactical principle, calling the first stage the stage of people’s or new or national democratic revolution so as to distinguish it from the old type of democratic revolution led by the bourgeoisie.
But how will the proletarian revolution forge ahead? The Manifesto spells out the basic steps:
“The proletariat of each country must... first of all, settle matters with its own bourgeoisie”, i.e., “acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the (italics in the original) nation” and thus “win the battle of democracy”. (Section II) That is to say, it will strive to carry the democratic revolution to consummation under its leadership.
It will then “use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organised as a ruling class;” and to rapidly develop the productive forces. “[I]n the beginning” this will involve “despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production.” Gradually these measures will outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order” and eventually lead to “entirely revolutionising the mode of production”. (Ibid)
Clearly, what is envisaged here is “revolution in permanence”, as the authors of the Manifesto would call it shortly afterwards
A couple of most important and widely debated themes presented here merit our attention.
One, the Manifesto declares: “though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.” There is no hint at all that the working class in a particular country must not take power so long as its counterparts in at least several other countries have prepared themselves to do the same. On the contrary, Germany was singled out as the country where “the bourgeois revolution... will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.”
It is another matter that this expectation did not come true, but there is evidence that Marx and Engels took it very seriously. In March 1948 they fought vigorously against the “export revolution” plans of a good many foreign immigrants in Paris (plans for sending armed legions to their home countries to start revolutions there) and drew up, on behalf of the Communist League, Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, which elaborated on the brief ten-point outline programme of the Manifesto in the specific context of Germany. This national programme was widely circulated in France and Germany. From Paris (where Marx, after being arrested in and exiled from Brussels, had come to settle in March and setup the new CC of the League along with Engels and others) more than 300 German workers were sent one by one to participate in the unfolding revolution in Germany. In early April both Marx and Engels themselves proceeded to their native land to try and veer the revolution to a socialist course. Never did they subsequently say that this attempt at seizure of political power in a single country was a mistake.
From all this, one point clearly stands out. Marxists are staunch internationalists; they know that the struggle for socialism is essentially an international struggle that can be consummated only by the joint effort of the proletariat in all, or at least the most developed countries. But this does not prohibit the working class in one country to initiate that struggle if conditions are conducive there.
Second, the Manifesto offers us a preview of sorts about the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It appears towards the end of Section II, just before and after the ten point programme. We find that proletarian dictatorship is conceived as a necessary link – the last link – in a long chain of historical developments. The working class, the authors say, “is compelled by the force of circumstances” (emphasis added) to organise and fight as a class; in course of that fight makes itself the ruling class; forcibly sweeps away the old, oppressive socio-political system and ushers in a classless society, thereby abolishing also “its own supremacy as a class”. Public power, no longer an organised political power in the hands of one class (the bourgeoisie under capitalism, the working class during dictatorship of the proletariat) to rule over other classes, is now vested in “a vast association of the whole nation”, where “the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all”.
Has there ever been, before or after the Manifesto, a more radical yet constructive view of the abolition of the state, a nobler vision of free, all-round, synchronised development of one and all, of the individual and the collective?
Very clearly, then, the point of departure and axis of socio-historical progress is class struggle and the destination – classless communist society. In this forward march of history across millennia, proletarian dictatorship is a relatively very short but extremely challenging last leg – the last bridge leading humanity from its strife-torn “prehistory”
Inchoate ideas like these were subsequently developed in such works as The Civil War in France; Critique of the Gotha Programme (both by Marx), Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (three chapters from Engels’ Anti-Duhring) – not exhaustively though, because the authors of the manifesto refused, as a matter of principle, to compose the music of the future. They took the Paris Commune –where, as they pointed out, the proletariat established majority rule for the first time in history – as a primary model of proletarian dictatorship and highly appreciated the Commune’s non-formalistic, participatory-democratic features such as universal suffrage, people’s right to recall elected representatives and merging of legislative and executive functions of the state. In these features Marx saw a “thoroughly expansive political form” and observed that a bureaucratic structure in their place would go completely against the spirit of the commune.
In this view, proletarian dictatorship is to be founded on the direct, active and enthusiastic participation of the masses in policy-making and governance. Herein is rooted the prospect and promise – and also the necessary condition – of gradually overcoming or transcending the dictatorship and its practical embodiment – the state – in course of socialist material and cultural construction.