Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority
1. Introduction
Of all the ideas central to socialist philosophy and practice, few have been scorned, misunderstood, celebrated or feared more than the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat: the post-revolutionary transitional government that stands between the capitalist state ridden by class-struggle and the communist abolition of class rule leading to the establishment of a classless society.
This paper tries to contextualise, explain and defend such an idea as part of a more general attempt to suggest the ongoing relevance of the Marxist theory of the state for contemporary theories of political legitimacy.
I shall label the theory of legitimacy grounded on the defence of the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat: the limited legitimacy theory of political authority.
Such a theory, I want to suggest, represents a plausible alternative to existing liberal and anarchist accounts and has important implications for a number of other key debates in contemporary political theory, including the normative significance of the state, the relation between authority and freedom, the transition from non-ideal to ideal theory theory, the meaning and relevance of utopia, and the possibility of utopias about justice.
The structure of the paper is as follows.
Section 2 outlines the paper’s methodology and provides a few preliminary clarifications.
Section 3 situates the Marxist conception of dictatorship within an interpretive history that combines elements from two republican traditions, the Roman and the French one.
Section 4 outlines the limited legitimacy view of political authority that I am interested in exploring.
Section 5 defends some core features of the idea of dictatorship in its relation to limited legitimacy.
Section 6 discusses the implications of my account for the relation between non-ideal and ideal theory, and for the meaning and relevance of utopia.
Section 7 concludes.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
MARXIST THOUGHT
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
2. Some preliminary observations
Recent political theory has sought to restore the analytical credibility of a number of concepts and themes central to the Marxian critique of capitalism.
Exploitation, domination, distributive injustice, class-ridden inequalities are only some of the core ideas whose plausibility has been established either by showing how a broadly socialist account of justice survives the complications (or implausibility) of key tenets of Marx’s economic theory (e.g. the labour theory of value) 2 or by pointing out the family-resemblances with liberal theories of justice such as egalitarian or neo-republican ones. 3
This paper is, in one way, on a par with such efforts.
It shares the methodological ambitions of the analytical Marxist agenda, departing at various junctures from the letter of Marx’s corpus, discarding details that are inessential to the argument and seeking to supplement implausible or incomplete premises with more persuasive ones.
In another way, the attempt takes an entirely different direction.
I take off where the existing analytical Marxist agenda leaves a gap: Marx’s account of politics and his related critique of the state.
While a number of ground-breaking studies have shown us the ongoing relevance of Marx’s critique of capitalism and the plausibility of the concept of class exploitation, the related and equally important account of legitimacy that underpins Marx’s critique of the state has been entirely neglected.
In this paper, I try to remedy this gap.
Before explaining how, a few clarifications are in order.
Firstly, in the following pages I shall completely bracket the problem of exploitation under capitalism.
That is to say, I shall make no effort to show that there is such a thing as capitalist relations of production and that this set of relations reveals a specific form of injustice affecting the agents whose social positions reflect and replicate that injustice, among others capitalists and workers.
All of that will be taken for granted. 4
Secondly, I will steer clear of the debate on the exact reasons for why capitalism is unjust, if at all.
I shall assume that Marx does have a theory of injustice but I shall have very little (in fact nothing) to contribute to the debate on whether the labour theory of value is essential to that theory (as in the traditional reading) or whether it is sufficient to focus on property relations (as with more revisionist theories). 5
Thirdly, I shall refrain from addressing questions of a more conceptual nature, for example whether exploitation is a form of domination, or whether Marx’s theory of justice is in fact significantly different from liberal egalitarian accounts of justice as fairness. 6
As long as my readers agree that capitalism is unjust for either of these reasons, the question of the legitimacy of the institutions required to abolish it remains a pertinent one (regardless of any internal disagreements of why exactly capitalism should be abolished).
Conversely, those who disagree with the core of Marx’s theory, who think that talking about capitalism is like talking about unicorns, or who maintain that there is in fact no superior (more just) alternative to capitalist relations, will find very little of interest in the following pages.
2 See for example Gerald A. Cohen, "The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation," Philosophy & Public Affairs 8, no. 4 (1979) and John E. Roemer, "Property Relations Vs. Surplus Value in Marxian Exploitation," Philosophy and Public Affairs 11, no. 4 (1982) and for a critique Jeffrey Reiman, "Exploitation, Force, and the Moral Assessment of Capitalism: Thoughts on Roemer and Cohen" ibid. 16, no. 1 (1987). For a review see Paul Warren, "Should Marxists Be Liberal Egalitarians?," Journal of Political Philosophy 5, no. 1 (1997).
3 See for a discussion of the analogies with liberal egalitarian theories of justice Jeffrey H. Reiman, "The Labor Theory of the Difference Principle," Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 2 (1983) and Ziyad I. Husami, "Marx on Distributive Justice," ibid. 8, no. 1 (1978). For a discussion of the analogies with neo-republican theories see Nicholas Vrousalis, "Exploitation, Vulnerability, and Social Domination," ibid. 41, no. 2 (2013).
4 There is of course a long debate on whether Marx had a theory of justice at all, for a review of the literature see Norman Geras, "The Controversy About Marx and Justice," Philosophica 33 (1984).
5 For a defence of the property-relations account see Cohen and Roemer and for a critique Jeffrey Reiman, "Exploitation, Force, and the Moral Assessment of Capitalism: Thoughts on Roemer and Cohen " ibid. 16, no. 1 (1987).
6 See, for example, Vrousalis cit for references to the first problem and Jeffrey H. Reiman, "The Labor Theory of the Difference Principle," for the second.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
2. Some preliminary observations
Recent political theory has sought to restore the analytical credibility of a number of concepts and themes central to the Marxian critique of capitalism.
Exploitation, domination, distributive injustice, class-ridden inequalities are only some of the core ideas whose plausibility has been established either by showing how a broadly socialist account of justice survives the complications (or implausibility) of key tenets of Marx’s economic theory (e.g. the labour theory of value) 2 or by pointing out the family-resemblances with liberal theories of justice such as egalitarian or neo-republican ones. 3
This paper is, in one way, on a par with such efforts.
It shares the methodological ambitions of the analytical Marxist agenda, departing at various junctures from the letter of Marx’s corpus, discarding details that are inessential to the argument and seeking to supplement implausible or incomplete premises with more persuasive ones.
In another way, the attempt takes an entirely different direction.
I take off where the existing analytical Marxist agenda leaves a gap: Marx’s account of politics and his related critique of the state.
While a number of ground-breaking studies have shown us the ongoing relevance of Marx’s critique of capitalism and the plausibility of the concept of class exploitation, the related and equally important account of legitimacy that underpins Marx’s critique of the state has been entirely neglected.
In this paper, I try to remedy this gap.
Before explaining how, a few clarifications are in order.
Firstly, in the following pages I shall completely bracket the problem of exploitation under capitalism.
That is to say, I shall make no effort to show that there is such a thing as capitalist relations of production and that this set of relations reveals a specific form of injustice affecting the agents whose social positions reflect and replicate that injustice, among others capitalists and workers.
All of that will be taken for granted. 4
Secondly, I will steer clear of the debate on the exact reasons for why capitalism is unjust, if at all.
I shall assume that Marx does have a theory of injustice but I shall have very little (in fact nothing) to contribute to the debate on whether the labour theory of value is essential to that theory (as in the traditional reading) or whether it is sufficient to focus on property relations (as with more revisionist theories). 5
Thirdly, I shall refrain from addressing questions of a more conceptual nature, for example whether exploitation is a form of domination, or whether Marx’s theory of justice is in fact significantly different from liberal egalitarian accounts of justice as fairness. 6
As long as my readers agree that capitalism is unjust for either of these reasons, the question of the legitimacy of the institutions required to abolish it remains a pertinent one (regardless of any internal disagreements of why exactly capitalism should be abolished).
Conversely, those who disagree with the core of Marx’s theory, who think that talking about capitalism is like talking about unicorns, or who maintain that there is in fact no superior (more just) alternative to capitalist relations, will find very little of interest in the following pages.
2 See for example Gerald A. Cohen, "The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation," Philosophy & Public Affairs 8, no. 4 (1979) and John E. Roemer, "Property Relations Vs. Surplus Value in Marxian Exploitation," Philosophy and Public Affairs 11, no. 4 (1982) and for a critique Jeffrey Reiman, "Exploitation, Force, and the Moral Assessment of Capitalism: Thoughts on Roemer and Cohen" ibid. 16, no. 1 (1987). For a review see Paul Warren, "Should Marxists Be Liberal Egalitarians?," Journal of Political Philosophy 5, no. 1 (1997).
3 See for a discussion of the analogies with liberal egalitarian theories of justice Jeffrey H. Reiman, "The Labor Theory of the Difference Principle," Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 2 (1983) and Ziyad I. Husami, "Marx on Distributive Justice," ibid. 8, no. 1 (1978). For a discussion of the analogies with neo-republican theories see Nicholas Vrousalis, "Exploitation, Vulnerability, and Social Domination," ibid. 41, no. 2 (2013).
4 There is of course a long debate on whether Marx had a theory of justice at all, for a review of the literature see Norman Geras, "The Controversy About Marx and Justice," Philosophica 33 (1984).
5 For a defence of the property-relations account see Cohen and Roemer and for a critique Jeffrey Reiman, "Exploitation, Force, and the Moral Assessment of Capitalism: Thoughts on Roemer and Cohen " ibid. 16, no. 1 (1987).
6 See, for example, Vrousalis cit for references to the first problem and Jeffrey H. Reiman, "The Labor Theory of the Difference Principle," for the second.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom
When we think of dictatorship, we think of Hitler and Stalin, of Mao and Saddam.
We associate the notion of dictatorial rule to of the arbitrary power of individuals who rely on oppression, fear, and the exercise of violence (whether physical or psychological) to achieve desired political goals.
One of the unfortunate implications of this contemporary use of the term is that it equates dictatorship with despotism and tyranny, which have a rather different genealogy and use in the history of political thought. 7
The idea of dictatorship that I want to explore in this paper is another.
My account retrieves a use of the term in the writings of Marx and Engels that combines influences from two distinct intellectual traditions: the Roman republican concept of dictatorship, and its modification and adaptation to circumstances of revolutionary transition at the time of the French Revolution.
In this alternative, non-derogatory, use, dictatorship refers to a provisional form of rule that is collective rather than individual, and authorized by a vast majority of the people rather than despotic.
It is connected to a distinctive mode of political activity, one that characterises a legitimate institutional intervention in circumstances of crisis and transition, that aims to realise the real freedom of the people, and that grounds what I shall call a limited legitimacy view of political authority.
On the limited legitimacy view of political authority, a dictatorial institution protects people from the institutional anarchy that risks replacing the destruction of an obsolete political order, whilst accepting that the political authority that paves the way to the establishment of a truly free society can only enjoy a limited form of legitimacy.
Before proceeding to explain all this, an important clarification is in order.
The actual occurrence of the term ‘dictatorship’ in Marx’s writings is much more scattered and infrequent than one might gather from my remarks above, and also from its incredible influence in the subsequent Marxist tradition.
Alternative formulations to the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, include formulations like ‘rule (Herrschaft) of the working class’, ‘the political rule of the proletariat’ or even ‘social republic’.
They appear just as frequently throughout Marx’s writings. 8
But in what follows I shall stick to the more familiar (and also more controversial) formulation of ‘dictatorship’ because that is the one Marx uses in the text that most clearly links dictatorship to the issue of freedom and to the problem of legitimacy in circumstances of revolutionary transition: The Critique of the Gotha Programme.
Here, the idea of dictatorship is introduced shortly after defining the meaning of freedom in relation to the institution of the state.
Freedom, it is argued, consists in “converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it”. 9
The legitimacy of dictatorship is then linked to the legitimacy of this transition.
But to defend its role, we need to understand what is meant by ‘state’ and by ‘society’ and how freedom is implicated in the relation between the two.
7 For an analysis of the genealogy of the concept of dictatorship which distinguishes between a positive use of the term, going back to the Roman republican tradition, and a negative use, which emerged after the appropriation of the concept during the French revolution, see Wilfried Nippel, "Saving the Constitution: The European Discourse on Dictatorship," in In the Footsteps of Herodotus. Towards European Political Thought, ed. Janet Coleman and Paschalis Kitromilides (Florence: Olschki, 2012). For a slightly different interpretation which explains how the pejorative use also has Roman roots, see Claude Nicolet, "Dictatorship in Rome," in Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism, ed. Peter Baehr and Melvin Richter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For an analysis of the relation between the concept of dictatorship and those of tyranny and despotism, see Andrew Arato, "Conceptual History of Dictatorship (and Its Rivals)," in Critical Theory and Democracy: Civil Society, Dictatorship and Constitutionalism in Andrew Arato's Democratic Theory, ed. Enrique Peruzzotti and Martin Plot (Oxford Routledge, 2013).
8 See for a discussion Hal Draper, "Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," New Politics 1, no. 4 (1961) and Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Volume 3: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), pp. 175-325. For an analysis of the idea of social republic in connection to 19th century republican thought see Bruno Leipold, "Marx's Social Republic," in Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage, ed. Karma Nabulsi, Stuart White, and Bruno Leipold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
9 “Critique of the Gotha Programme” in Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 611.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom
When we think of dictatorship, we think of Hitler and Stalin, of Mao and Saddam.
We associate the notion of dictatorial rule to of the arbitrary power of individuals who rely on oppression, fear, and the exercise of violence (whether physical or psychological) to achieve desired political goals.
One of the unfortunate implications of this contemporary use of the term is that it equates dictatorship with despotism and tyranny, which have a rather different genealogy and use in the history of political thought. 7
The idea of dictatorship that I want to explore in this paper is another.
My account retrieves a use of the term in the writings of Marx and Engels that combines influences from two distinct intellectual traditions: the Roman republican concept of dictatorship, and its modification and adaptation to circumstances of revolutionary transition at the time of the French Revolution.
In this alternative, non-derogatory, use, dictatorship refers to a provisional form of rule that is collective rather than individual, and authorized by a vast majority of the people rather than despotic.
It is connected to a distinctive mode of political activity, one that characterises a legitimate institutional intervention in circumstances of crisis and transition, that aims to realise the real freedom of the people, and that grounds what I shall call a limited legitimacy view of political authority.
On the limited legitimacy view of political authority, a dictatorial institution protects people from the institutional anarchy that risks replacing the destruction of an obsolete political order, whilst accepting that the political authority that paves the way to the establishment of a truly free society can only enjoy a limited form of legitimacy.
Before proceeding to explain all this, an important clarification is in order.
The actual occurrence of the term ‘dictatorship’ in Marx’s writings is much more scattered and infrequent than one might gather from my remarks above, and also from its incredible influence in the subsequent Marxist tradition.
Alternative formulations to the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, include formulations like ‘rule (Herrschaft) of the working class’, ‘the political rule of the proletariat’ or even ‘social republic’.
They appear just as frequently throughout Marx’s writings. 8
But in what follows I shall stick to the more familiar (and also more controversial) formulation of ‘dictatorship’ because that is the one Marx uses in the text that most clearly links dictatorship to the issue of freedom and to the problem of legitimacy in circumstances of revolutionary transition: The Critique of the Gotha Programme.
Here, the idea of dictatorship is introduced shortly after defining the meaning of freedom in relation to the institution of the state.
Freedom, it is argued, consists in “converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it”. 9
The legitimacy of dictatorship is then linked to the legitimacy of this transition.
But to defend its role, we need to understand what is meant by ‘state’ and by ‘society’ and how freedom is implicated in the relation between the two.
7 For an analysis of the genealogy of the concept of dictatorship which distinguishes between a positive use of the term, going back to the Roman republican tradition, and a negative use, which emerged after the appropriation of the concept during the French revolution, see Wilfried Nippel, "Saving the Constitution: The European Discourse on Dictatorship," in In the Footsteps of Herodotus. Towards European Political Thought, ed. Janet Coleman and Paschalis Kitromilides (Florence: Olschki, 2012). For a slightly different interpretation which explains how the pejorative use also has Roman roots, see Claude Nicolet, "Dictatorship in Rome," in Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism, ed. Peter Baehr and Melvin Richter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For an analysis of the relation between the concept of dictatorship and those of tyranny and despotism, see Andrew Arato, "Conceptual History of Dictatorship (and Its Rivals)," in Critical Theory and Democracy: Civil Society, Dictatorship and Constitutionalism in Andrew Arato's Democratic Theory, ed. Enrique Peruzzotti and Martin Plot (Oxford Routledge, 2013).
8 See for a discussion Hal Draper, "Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," New Politics 1, no. 4 (1961) and Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Volume 3: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), pp. 175-325. For an analysis of the idea of social republic in connection to 19th century republican thought see Bruno Leipold, "Marx's Social Republic," in Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage, ed. Karma Nabulsi, Stuart White, and Bruno Leipold (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
9 “Critique of the Gotha Programme” in Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 611.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom, continued ...
What does Marx mean by state?
No more and no less than what we usually mean by the term: a public institution which claims sovereignty over a particular territory, has a monopoly over the use of force and has the authority to coercively regulate relations between people.
States are divided by boundaries and have importantly different histories, cultures, and social practices which shape and constrain the exercise of their administrative, executive or judicial powers.
But, at any given point in history, they also share some essential features.
The most important one, for purposes of our analysis, is the current economic basis of their political relations, which has a historically specific character.
States produce, exchange and trade in a global environment whose rules and regulations play a crucial role in shaping some fundamental constraints to their political systems, notwithstanding the historical and sociological differences between them.
Marx calls this set of constraining practices, as they apply to modern historical conditions, the capitalist system of production, while also recognising that this system is in a different stage of development in each particular state. 10
As indicated, I shall bracket the part of the argument that explains how capitalism historically comes about, what is wrong with it and why we might need to replace it with a different set of social relations (call it communism).
Suppose there is something wrong with the capitalist system of production and suppose that communism is a justified ideal.
The question is: what role does the state play in the transition from one to the other?
Or to put it in Marx’s terms: “What transformation will the state undergo in communist society?”
“What social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?” 11
This is where the dictatorship of the proletariat makes its entrance.
Marx introduces it to answer the question of the role of the state and the necessity of a transitional form of authority that stands between the overthrow of the capitalist state and communist society.
As he argues, between the two “lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other."
"Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”. 12
To properly understand why dictatorship represents an intermediate and transitional form of political authority that stands between the capitalist state and communist society, it might be useful to briefly illustrate where the concept comes from.
Marx and Engels inherited it from the revolutionaries of 1848, who had inherited it from the revolutionaries of 1789, whom in turn, as Marx knew, modelled themselves after the Roman republic and “performed the task of their time [...] in Roman costume and with Roman phrases”. 13
In the constitution of the classical Roman republic, the office of the dictator was conceived as a supreme office of magistracy required to guide the republic under exceptional circumstances of crisis (war or civic unrest). 14
Given the complex system of checks and balances of the Roman constitution, in cases of imminent threat to the republic speedy emergency measures were required to establish order and stability.
To avoid delays, and after deliberation in the senate, the consuls nominated a dictator, although a popular vote was also in principle possible.
Once nominated, the dictator became the chief executive and supreme commander of the Roman army both within the city and outside.
His powers were virtually unlimited and superior to those of any other Roman magistrate but the terms of office were supposed to be as brief as possible.
Once the emergency was over, dictators would abdicate as quickly as they could, and typically their office would not go beyond a six-months term.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” in Selected Writings, cit. pp. 329-330. For a more detailed discussion of how the concept of dictatorship was invoked by the revolutionaries of 1789 and 1848 and reached Marx and Engels, see Draper cit.
14 See Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 109-110
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom, continued ...
What does Marx mean by state?
No more and no less than what we usually mean by the term: a public institution which claims sovereignty over a particular territory, has a monopoly over the use of force and has the authority to coercively regulate relations between people.
States are divided by boundaries and have importantly different histories, cultures, and social practices which shape and constrain the exercise of their administrative, executive or judicial powers.
But, at any given point in history, they also share some essential features.
The most important one, for purposes of our analysis, is the current economic basis of their political relations, which has a historically specific character.
States produce, exchange and trade in a global environment whose rules and regulations play a crucial role in shaping some fundamental constraints to their political systems, notwithstanding the historical and sociological differences between them.
Marx calls this set of constraining practices, as they apply to modern historical conditions, the capitalist system of production, while also recognising that this system is in a different stage of development in each particular state. 10
As indicated, I shall bracket the part of the argument that explains how capitalism historically comes about, what is wrong with it and why we might need to replace it with a different set of social relations (call it communism).
Suppose there is something wrong with the capitalist system of production and suppose that communism is a justified ideal.
The question is: what role does the state play in the transition from one to the other?
Or to put it in Marx’s terms: “What transformation will the state undergo in communist society?”
“What social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?” 11
This is where the dictatorship of the proletariat makes its entrance.
Marx introduces it to answer the question of the role of the state and the necessity of a transitional form of authority that stands between the overthrow of the capitalist state and communist society.
As he argues, between the two “lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other."
"Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”. 12
To properly understand why dictatorship represents an intermediate and transitional form of political authority that stands between the capitalist state and communist society, it might be useful to briefly illustrate where the concept comes from.
Marx and Engels inherited it from the revolutionaries of 1848, who had inherited it from the revolutionaries of 1789, whom in turn, as Marx knew, modelled themselves after the Roman republic and “performed the task of their time [...] in Roman costume and with Roman phrases”. 13
In the constitution of the classical Roman republic, the office of the dictator was conceived as a supreme office of magistracy required to guide the republic under exceptional circumstances of crisis (war or civic unrest). 14
Given the complex system of checks and balances of the Roman constitution, in cases of imminent threat to the republic speedy emergency measures were required to establish order and stability.
To avoid delays, and after deliberation in the senate, the consuls nominated a dictator, although a popular vote was also in principle possible.
Once nominated, the dictator became the chief executive and supreme commander of the Roman army both within the city and outside.
His powers were virtually unlimited and superior to those of any other Roman magistrate but the terms of office were supposed to be as brief as possible.
Once the emergency was over, dictators would abdicate as quickly as they could, and typically their office would not go beyond a six-months term.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” in Selected Writings, cit. pp. 329-330. For a more detailed discussion of how the concept of dictatorship was invoked by the revolutionaries of 1789 and 1848 and reached Marx and Engels, see Draper cit.
14 See Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 109-110
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom, continued ...
The office of the dictator had several features that made it an attractive solution in cases of civic crisis and profound conflict dividing the political community. 15
Firstly, it was a freedom-enhancing institution.
The dictator was authorised by the people and senate of Rome and the powers it held were intended to protect the free citizens of the republic from severe threat coming from outside, or from destructive conflicts erupting within.
Secondly, it was limited in nature.
The legitimacy it enjoyed was limited to the duration of the crisis, and came to an end once the crisis was over.
Moreover, although the executive powers of the dictator were virtually unchecked, its legislative capacity was extremely limited.
A dictator could only abrogate old laws but not make new ones and the office itself could only be held for a short term.
Thirdly, it was a transitional institution, adequate only for circumstances of emergency.
The legitimacy it enjoyed applied in the case of extreme crisis, and only for as long as such crisis continued to threaten the order of the republic and risked plunging it in a condition of anarchy.
The freedom-enhancing nature of the office of the dictator, as well as the limited, and transitional nature of the legitimacy it enjoyed are crucial to explain why the office of the dictator became such a celebrated republican institution throughout history and the history of political thought, from Machiavelli to Rousseau and from Marat to Babeuf (to mention but those figures that were most influential in shaping Marx and Engels’s analysis). 16
For Machiavelli, the idea of popular authorisation in the service of the freedom of the people was crucial since, as he argued, “while the dictator was appointed according to public orders, and not by his own authority, he always did good to the city”. 17
Likewise, Rousseau praised the role of the dictator in the defence of public freedom and emphasised its compatibility with the idea of the general will since “if the laws as an instrumentality are an obstacle to guarding against it (the greatest danger to the city)”, then “a supreme chief is named” who “suspends the Sovereign authority”.
In these cases, he continued, “the general will is not in doubt, it is obvious that the people’s foremost intention is that the State not perish”. 18
15 On the relation between dictatorship and circumstances of emergency, see J. Ferejohn and P. Pasquino, "The Law of the Exception: A Typology of Emergency Powers," International Journal of Constitutional Law 2, no. 2 (2004).
16 For an excellent account of the reception of the idea in the history of political thought see Nippel and Christian Bruschi, "La Dictature Romain Dans L'histoire Des Idées Politiques De Machiavel À La Révolution Française," in L'influence De L'antiquité Sur La Pensée Politique Européenne (XVI-XXème Siècles), ed. Michel Ganzin (Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires d'Aix Marseille).
17 Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1517] 1996). For a thorough discussion of Machiavelli on dictatorship, see Marco Geuna, "Machiavelli and the Problem of Dictatorship," Ratio Juris 28, no. 2 (2015).
18 Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Of the Social Contract," in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1762] 1997), p. 138.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom, continued ...
The office of the dictator had several features that made it an attractive solution in cases of civic crisis and profound conflict dividing the political community. 15
Firstly, it was a freedom-enhancing institution.
The dictator was authorised by the people and senate of Rome and the powers it held were intended to protect the free citizens of the republic from severe threat coming from outside, or from destructive conflicts erupting within.
Secondly, it was limited in nature.
The legitimacy it enjoyed was limited to the duration of the crisis, and came to an end once the crisis was over.
Moreover, although the executive powers of the dictator were virtually unchecked, its legislative capacity was extremely limited.
A dictator could only abrogate old laws but not make new ones and the office itself could only be held for a short term.
Thirdly, it was a transitional institution, adequate only for circumstances of emergency.
The legitimacy it enjoyed applied in the case of extreme crisis, and only for as long as such crisis continued to threaten the order of the republic and risked plunging it in a condition of anarchy.
The freedom-enhancing nature of the office of the dictator, as well as the limited, and transitional nature of the legitimacy it enjoyed are crucial to explain why the office of the dictator became such a celebrated republican institution throughout history and the history of political thought, from Machiavelli to Rousseau and from Marat to Babeuf (to mention but those figures that were most influential in shaping Marx and Engels’s analysis). 16
For Machiavelli, the idea of popular authorisation in the service of the freedom of the people was crucial since, as he argued, “while the dictator was appointed according to public orders, and not by his own authority, he always did good to the city”. 17
Likewise, Rousseau praised the role of the dictator in the defence of public freedom and emphasised its compatibility with the idea of the general will since “if the laws as an instrumentality are an obstacle to guarding against it (the greatest danger to the city)”, then “a supreme chief is named” who “suspends the Sovereign authority”.
In these cases, he continued, “the general will is not in doubt, it is obvious that the people’s foremost intention is that the State not perish”. 18
15 On the relation between dictatorship and circumstances of emergency, see J. Ferejohn and P. Pasquino, "The Law of the Exception: A Typology of Emergency Powers," International Journal of Constitutional Law 2, no. 2 (2004).
16 For an excellent account of the reception of the idea in the history of political thought see Nippel and Christian Bruschi, "La Dictature Romain Dans L'histoire Des Idées Politiques De Machiavel À La Révolution Française," in L'influence De L'antiquité Sur La Pensée Politique Européenne (XVI-XXème Siècles), ed. Michel Ganzin (Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires d'Aix Marseille).
17 Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1517] 1996). For a thorough discussion of Machiavelli on dictatorship, see Marco Geuna, "Machiavelli and the Problem of Dictatorship," Ratio Juris 28, no. 2 (2015).
18 Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Of the Social Contract," in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1762] 1997), p. 138.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom, concluded ...
But it is important to emphasise that such a supreme magistracy could only perform its role if it is kept to a limited time, since “the pressing need once passed, the Dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or vain”. 19
Combined with the first two, the idea of dictatorship as a transitional, emergency measure, became a central reference point in the early communist debates between Babeuf, Darthé and Debon during the meetings of the Conspiracy of the Equals in the winter of Year IV (1796) of the first Republic.
According to Buonarroti’s description of the events, the history and experience of the French Revolution had made it clear to the conspirators that “a people so strangely elongated from the order of things, was but poorly qualified to make a useful choice, and had need of extraordinary means to replace it in a condition in which it would be possible for it to exercise effectually and not in mere fiction, the plenitude of its sovereignty”. 20
The conspirators invoked the example of ancient states and the magistracy of the dictatorship to explain the need to fill the power vacuum left by the Ancient Régime and to avoid slipping into a condition of anarchy where effective decision-making would be impossible.
It was the first time that the Roman term was invoked not in function of preserving old laws but in a forward-looking plan to radically transform the constituted order.
As Buonarroti describes it, the aim of the dictatorship was that of proposing to the people a “plan of legislation simple and suited to ensure to it equality and the real exercise of its sovereignty and to dictate provisionally the preparatory measures necessary to dispose the nation to receive it”. 21
When the question of the possible abuse of powers by the magistrate was raised, those who spoke in its favour (Debon and Darthé) argued, in Rousseauian fashion, that the danger could be averted “by the clear and legal exposition of the end to be attained by it – and by imposing limits beforehand to its duration”. 22
Hence the French revolutionary adaptation of the Roman concept amounted to the justification of rule by a small group of enlightened revolutionaries in the service of a truly free future republic.
The process of authorisation relied not on the existing constitutional structure but in the measures brought forward by the revolutionary political class.
And the temporal limits to dictatorship were specified not in accordance with any existing legal procedures but in line with such revolutionary plans.
19 Ibid.
20 Filippo Michele Buonarroti, Buonarroti's History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality; with the Author's Reflections on the Causes and Character of the French Revolution, trans. James Bronterre O'Brien (London: H. Hethrington, 1836).
21 Ibid, p. 105.
22 Ibid.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
3. Dictatorship and freedom, concluded ...
But it is important to emphasise that such a supreme magistracy could only perform its role if it is kept to a limited time, since “the pressing need once passed, the Dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or vain”. 19
Combined with the first two, the idea of dictatorship as a transitional, emergency measure, became a central reference point in the early communist debates between Babeuf, Darthé and Debon during the meetings of the Conspiracy of the Equals in the winter of Year IV (1796) of the first Republic.
According to Buonarroti’s description of the events, the history and experience of the French Revolution had made it clear to the conspirators that “a people so strangely elongated from the order of things, was but poorly qualified to make a useful choice, and had need of extraordinary means to replace it in a condition in which it would be possible for it to exercise effectually and not in mere fiction, the plenitude of its sovereignty”. 20
The conspirators invoked the example of ancient states and the magistracy of the dictatorship to explain the need to fill the power vacuum left by the Ancient Régime and to avoid slipping into a condition of anarchy where effective decision-making would be impossible.
It was the first time that the Roman term was invoked not in function of preserving old laws but in a forward-looking plan to radically transform the constituted order.
As Buonarroti describes it, the aim of the dictatorship was that of proposing to the people a “plan of legislation simple and suited to ensure to it equality and the real exercise of its sovereignty and to dictate provisionally the preparatory measures necessary to dispose the nation to receive it”. 21
When the question of the possible abuse of powers by the magistrate was raised, those who spoke in its favour (Debon and Darthé) argued, in Rousseauian fashion, that the danger could be averted “by the clear and legal exposition of the end to be attained by it – and by imposing limits beforehand to its duration”. 22
Hence the French revolutionary adaptation of the Roman concept amounted to the justification of rule by a small group of enlightened revolutionaries in the service of a truly free future republic.
The process of authorisation relied not on the existing constitutional structure but in the measures brought forward by the revolutionary political class.
And the temporal limits to dictatorship were specified not in accordance with any existing legal procedures but in line with such revolutionary plans.
19 Ibid.
20 Filippo Michele Buonarroti, Buonarroti's History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality; with the Author's Reflections on the Causes and Character of the French Revolution, trans. James Bronterre O'Brien (London: H. Hethrington, 1836).
21 Ibid, p. 105.
22 Ibid.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority
The conceptualisations of dictatorship that I have outlined in the previous section shape the intellectual background against which Marx and Engels developed their own analysis.
But in tracing these intellectual influences it is important to be aware of both the analogies and the differences.
On the surface, analogies abound.
Firstly, for Marxists too, dictatorship is a measure necessary to establish the real freedom of the people.
In line with the republican legacy, freedom is here understood as capacity for self-mastery.
Its realisation is linked to an ideal of popular rule that distinguishes between people’s effective capacity for self-government and a fictional exercise of it, corrupted by the existence of profound conflict or pervasive inequality in society.
Secondly, for Marxists too the establishment of a dictatorship is understood as a transitional and provisional measure.
A dictatorship is only called for in circumstances of conflict, to avoid the power gap left by the collapse of previously deficient institutions and the descent into complete anarchy due to the fact that the future ideal society is yet to be realised.
Thirdly, a dictatorship is a legitimate institution.
But the legitimacy it enjoys is of a limited nature.
It is limited temporally since, as we saw, a dictatorship is justified only for as long as the political conflict a society faces is ongoing, least it degenerate into despotism.
But there is also a deeper limitation, due to the recognition of the fact that for as long as the revolutionary people needs to resort to the coercive power of the state to enforce an obligation to obey the (new) laws, the promise of real freedom as self-mastery can never be fully maintained.
This deeper limitation, I want to argue, is at the heart of a distinctive Marxist theory of legitimacy, which has been little noticed so far.
But before one can properly grasp it, it is important to highlight the differences from the two republican lines of thought I have sketched above: the Roman and the French one.
The most important difference, with regard to the Roman republican tradition, is that in the case of the Roman republic, the office of the dictator was essentially a conservative institution.
The background assumption was that the republican order protected people’s freedom to a satisfactory degree, and civic harmony was only occasionally disrupted by extreme emergencies of an external or internal kind.
In the Marxist account, freedom is far from being already guaranteed by the existing institutional setup.
Since class struggle and conflicts between different groups are the background conditions shaping the existence of any political order, the task of realising freedom is not of a restorative kind.
Moreover, even if one were to accept that external aggression or internal threat are at the root of specific crises, this is just what appears at the surface.
The real conflict, at the bottom of all others, is of a material nature, and has to do with control over the production and distribution of resources and the way in which different social classes are positioned vis-à-vis particular relations of production.
Secondly, although dictatorship is in both cases a transitional and provisional institution, the goal of transition has very different meanings and implications.
In one case, the Roman republican one, a political order returns to the status quo ante and offices and positions continue to be distributed in the same way they were before.
In the case of Marxism, the transitional period of dictatorship already begins to shape a new distribution of political and social roles.
Political offices become revocable, the bureaucratic class is disbanded, the professional army is abolished and replaced by citizen militias, ordinary working people begin to fill traditional judicial, administrative and governmental roles by rotation. 23
Finally, to return to the temporally limited nature of dictatorship, there are some differences here too.
While in the Roman case the terms of office of the dictator were constitutionally restricted to about six months, in the Marxist case, no time frame was specified.
But since the transition was constrained by the progressive reshaping of political roles indicated above, we can safely assume that it would have been longer than six months.
And even though Marx and Engels conceived the duration of dictatorship in terms of years rather than generations, there is one case in which the estimate covered a whole life-span and stretched to the time where “a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap." 24
Some of these differences between the Marxian conception of dictatorship and the Roman one are in line with the adaptation of the Roman idea to revolutionary circumstances, an adaptation that, as we saw, has its origins in the Conspiracy of the Equals. 25
21 Ibid, p. 105.
22 Ibid.
23 I shall return to these measures in the following section.
24 Frederick Engels, "Introduction to Karl Marx's the Civil War in France," in Collected Works of Marx and Engels (hereafter CW) (New York: International Publishers, (1891) 1990), p. 191. For a discussion of the temporal dimension with regard to Marx and Engels and some further evidence on the claim that Marx and Engels thought of the transition period as taking years rather than generations, see Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Volume 2: Classical Marxism, 1850-1895 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), pp. 231-246.
25 For reasons of space, I will leave aside here the important debate during the French Revolution that shaped both the discussions of the conspirators and the experience of the Paris Commune which clearly influenced the Marxist analysis, but for an excellent discussion, see Albert Soboul, "Some Problems of the Revolutionary State 1789-1796," Past and Present 65, no. 1 (1974).
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority
The conceptualisations of dictatorship that I have outlined in the previous section shape the intellectual background against which Marx and Engels developed their own analysis.
But in tracing these intellectual influences it is important to be aware of both the analogies and the differences.
On the surface, analogies abound.
Firstly, for Marxists too, dictatorship is a measure necessary to establish the real freedom of the people.
In line with the republican legacy, freedom is here understood as capacity for self-mastery.
Its realisation is linked to an ideal of popular rule that distinguishes between people’s effective capacity for self-government and a fictional exercise of it, corrupted by the existence of profound conflict or pervasive inequality in society.
Secondly, for Marxists too the establishment of a dictatorship is understood as a transitional and provisional measure.
A dictatorship is only called for in circumstances of conflict, to avoid the power gap left by the collapse of previously deficient institutions and the descent into complete anarchy due to the fact that the future ideal society is yet to be realised.
Thirdly, a dictatorship is a legitimate institution.
But the legitimacy it enjoys is of a limited nature.
It is limited temporally since, as we saw, a dictatorship is justified only for as long as the political conflict a society faces is ongoing, least it degenerate into despotism.
But there is also a deeper limitation, due to the recognition of the fact that for as long as the revolutionary people needs to resort to the coercive power of the state to enforce an obligation to obey the (new) laws, the promise of real freedom as self-mastery can never be fully maintained.
This deeper limitation, I want to argue, is at the heart of a distinctive Marxist theory of legitimacy, which has been little noticed so far.
But before one can properly grasp it, it is important to highlight the differences from the two republican lines of thought I have sketched above: the Roman and the French one.
The most important difference, with regard to the Roman republican tradition, is that in the case of the Roman republic, the office of the dictator was essentially a conservative institution.
The background assumption was that the republican order protected people’s freedom to a satisfactory degree, and civic harmony was only occasionally disrupted by extreme emergencies of an external or internal kind.
In the Marxist account, freedom is far from being already guaranteed by the existing institutional setup.
Since class struggle and conflicts between different groups are the background conditions shaping the existence of any political order, the task of realising freedom is not of a restorative kind.
Moreover, even if one were to accept that external aggression or internal threat are at the root of specific crises, this is just what appears at the surface.
The real conflict, at the bottom of all others, is of a material nature, and has to do with control over the production and distribution of resources and the way in which different social classes are positioned vis-à-vis particular relations of production.
Secondly, although dictatorship is in both cases a transitional and provisional institution, the goal of transition has very different meanings and implications.
In one case, the Roman republican one, a political order returns to the status quo ante and offices and positions continue to be distributed in the same way they were before.
In the case of Marxism, the transitional period of dictatorship already begins to shape a new distribution of political and social roles.
Political offices become revocable, the bureaucratic class is disbanded, the professional army is abolished and replaced by citizen militias, ordinary working people begin to fill traditional judicial, administrative and governmental roles by rotation. 23
Finally, to return to the temporally limited nature of dictatorship, there are some differences here too.
While in the Roman case the terms of office of the dictator were constitutionally restricted to about six months, in the Marxist case, no time frame was specified.
But since the transition was constrained by the progressive reshaping of political roles indicated above, we can safely assume that it would have been longer than six months.
And even though Marx and Engels conceived the duration of dictatorship in terms of years rather than generations, there is one case in which the estimate covered a whole life-span and stretched to the time where “a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap." 24
Some of these differences between the Marxian conception of dictatorship and the Roman one are in line with the adaptation of the Roman idea to revolutionary circumstances, an adaptation that, as we saw, has its origins in the Conspiracy of the Equals. 25
21 Ibid, p. 105.
22 Ibid.
23 I shall return to these measures in the following section.
24 Frederick Engels, "Introduction to Karl Marx's the Civil War in France," in Collected Works of Marx and Engels (hereafter CW) (New York: International Publishers, (1891) 1990), p. 191. For a discussion of the temporal dimension with regard to Marx and Engels and some further evidence on the claim that Marx and Engels thought of the transition period as taking years rather than generations, see Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Volume 2: Classical Marxism, 1850-1895 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), pp. 231-246.
25 For reasons of space, I will leave aside here the important debate during the French Revolution that shaped both the discussions of the conspirators and the experience of the Paris Commune which clearly influenced the Marxist analysis, but for an excellent discussion, see Albert Soboul, "Some Problems of the Revolutionary State 1789-1796," Past and Present 65, no. 1 (1974).
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority, continued ...
The greatest area of overlap with the French republicans consists in changing the function of the institution from an essentially conservative one, due to restore freedom, to a radically transformative one, oriented to a future state of affairs that realises freedom for the first time.
But the Marxian conception of dictatorship, and that of the early communists also differ at various critical junctures.
The most relevant for the purpose of explaining the limited legitimacy conception of political authority is perhaps also the most neglected, and relates to the analysis of the agency of the oppressed in circumstances of transition.
Dictatorship during the Roman republic was the temporary rule of one man only.
Dictatorship for the French republicans was the rule of a small group of enlightened revolutionaries over the uncultivated mass of people.
The novelty of the Marxist position was to challenge the orthodox conception of dictatorship embraced more or less indiscriminately by all those who followed Babeuf (Buonarroti, Blanqui, Weitling, Saint-Simon, Bakunin, Proudhon and Louis Blanc, to mention but some) and to make a crucial distinction between ‘dictatorship over’ and ‘dictatorship of’ the proletariat. 26
Let me explain.
Dictatorship for Marx and Engels is not the rule of one man as in the Roman republic.
Nor is it rule by a group of revolutionary leaders over a mass of uncultivated people, as in the French revolutionary case.
It is the rule of the oppressed majority of people, sufficiently aware of their oppression to want to change the existing state of affairs.
The way to reach this awareness where it is absent is through democratic political activism and the attempt to develop the political character of class struggle.
Marx and Engels’s conception of dictatorship has a profound democratic character, in line with the traditional understanding of democracy as rule by the people.
The distinction between dictatorship over the proletariat and dictatorship of the proletariat is essential to underline this point.
Nowhere does it come out more clearly than in the explicit rejection of the early communist conception of dictatorship popularised especially by Blanqui and whose paternalism Marx and Engels condemned.
As Engels made it clear, "from Blanqui’s assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture."
"This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals”. 27
But it will only be a matter of course, Engels emphasised, that such principles “will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life” (aka Blanqui) and “drive him from one folly into another”.
Therefore, rather than abandoning oneself to such plans, the first step of a working-class revolution was to “win the battle of democracy” 28 by “establishing a democratic constitution and thereby, directly or indirectly, the political rule of the proletariat”. 29
26 See on this Draper cit.
27 Engels, Frederick “The program of the Blanquist fugitives from the Paris Commune” (1874) available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /06/26.htm .
28 Marx, Karl, “The Communist Manifesto” in Selected Writings, p. 261
29 Check Engels Preparatory Notes to the Communist Manifesto.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
Legitimacy, Dictatorship and Utopia: A Marxist Perspective on Political Authority, continued ...
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority, continued ...
The greatest area of overlap with the French republicans consists in changing the function of the institution from an essentially conservative one, due to restore freedom, to a radically transformative one, oriented to a future state of affairs that realises freedom for the first time.
But the Marxian conception of dictatorship, and that of the early communists also differ at various critical junctures.
The most relevant for the purpose of explaining the limited legitimacy conception of political authority is perhaps also the most neglected, and relates to the analysis of the agency of the oppressed in circumstances of transition.
Dictatorship during the Roman republic was the temporary rule of one man only.
Dictatorship for the French republicans was the rule of a small group of enlightened revolutionaries over the uncultivated mass of people.
The novelty of the Marxist position was to challenge the orthodox conception of dictatorship embraced more or less indiscriminately by all those who followed Babeuf (Buonarroti, Blanqui, Weitling, Saint-Simon, Bakunin, Proudhon and Louis Blanc, to mention but some) and to make a crucial distinction between ‘dictatorship over’ and ‘dictatorship of’ the proletariat. 26
Let me explain.
Dictatorship for Marx and Engels is not the rule of one man as in the Roman republic.
Nor is it rule by a group of revolutionary leaders over a mass of uncultivated people, as in the French revolutionary case.
It is the rule of the oppressed majority of people, sufficiently aware of their oppression to want to change the existing state of affairs.
The way to reach this awareness where it is absent is through democratic political activism and the attempt to develop the political character of class struggle.
Marx and Engels’s conception of dictatorship has a profound democratic character, in line with the traditional understanding of democracy as rule by the people.
The distinction between dictatorship over the proletariat and dictatorship of the proletariat is essential to underline this point.
Nowhere does it come out more clearly than in the explicit rejection of the early communist conception of dictatorship popularised especially by Blanqui and whose paternalism Marx and Engels condemned.
As Engels made it clear, "from Blanqui’s assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture."
"This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals”. 27
But it will only be a matter of course, Engels emphasised, that such principles “will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life” (aka Blanqui) and “drive him from one folly into another”.
Therefore, rather than abandoning oneself to such plans, the first step of a working-class revolution was to “win the battle of democracy” 28 by “establishing a democratic constitution and thereby, directly or indirectly, the political rule of the proletariat”. 29
26 See on this Draper cit.
27 Engels, Frederick “The program of the Blanquist fugitives from the Paris Commune” (1874) available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /06/26.htm .
28 Marx, Karl, “The Communist Manifesto” in Selected Writings, p. 261
29 Check Engels Preparatory Notes to the Communist Manifesto.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority, continued ...
The emphasis on the democratic character of the proletarian revolution is essential to underline the difference between the Marxian conception of dictatorship and the French one.
In the case of the French republicans, the necessity of a dictatorship of the revolutionary leadership was essential to compensate for the corrupting effects of inequality on the capacity of the oppressed to understand their oppression.
In Marx’s case, the route to remedy these effects is through political participation and the involvement of the oppressed in their own emancipation.
Participation in the construction of a democratic constitution and real exercise of collective self-rule are central to enacting these learning processes.
Political education consists in the learning process that democratic political activism makes available, not in the reliance on the alleged political competence of those who claim to know better.
Contrary to what Blanqui and the early communists advocated (as well as to many later interpretations) there is no way to sidestep or neglect the consent, endorsement and full involvement of the oppressed themselves.
The anti-paternalist and anti-authoritarian tendency reflected in this Marxist conception of dictatorship appears clearly when we turn to the actual measures advocated during the period of revolutionary transition, as shown by Marx’s analysis of the Paris Commune (the closest approximation to his ideal of democratic rule that is available to us).
Marx applauds many of the measures adopted by the communards as channelling true popular rule: the progressive dissolution of state bureaucracy, the attempt to reduce the role of experts (or what we would call nowadays technocrats) in making political decisions, the abolition of the professional army and its substitution by a citizen militia, the revocability of administrative and judicial roles and positions, and the more general progressive transformation of representative democracy into direct popular rule. 30
During this transformation, it is clear that while the dictatorship of the proletariat relies on the coercive power of the state to realise its goals, it also seeks to undermine it from within. 31
Indeed, this very work of internal erosion and the attempt to bring traditional executive, judicial and legislative institutions under direct popular control is one of the reasons for which Marx praised the Paris Commune for being “a thoroughly expansive political form”, “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the emancipation of labour”. 32
30 For the analysis of these measures as conducive to the progressive erosion of bureaucratic and administrative power of the state as isolated from society, see “The Civil War in France” in Selected Writings. See also the discussion in Leipold, cit.
31 For further emphasis on the anti-authoritarian and anti-paternalist character of Marx’s conception of dictatorship see Ralph Miliband, "Marx and the State," The Socialist Register 2 (1965).
32 “The Civil War in France” in Selected Writings, p. 589.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority, continued ...
The emphasis on the democratic character of the proletarian revolution is essential to underline the difference between the Marxian conception of dictatorship and the French one.
In the case of the French republicans, the necessity of a dictatorship of the revolutionary leadership was essential to compensate for the corrupting effects of inequality on the capacity of the oppressed to understand their oppression.
In Marx’s case, the route to remedy these effects is through political participation and the involvement of the oppressed in their own emancipation.
Participation in the construction of a democratic constitution and real exercise of collective self-rule are central to enacting these learning processes.
Political education consists in the learning process that democratic political activism makes available, not in the reliance on the alleged political competence of those who claim to know better.
Contrary to what Blanqui and the early communists advocated (as well as to many later interpretations) there is no way to sidestep or neglect the consent, endorsement and full involvement of the oppressed themselves.
The anti-paternalist and anti-authoritarian tendency reflected in this Marxist conception of dictatorship appears clearly when we turn to the actual measures advocated during the period of revolutionary transition, as shown by Marx’s analysis of the Paris Commune (the closest approximation to his ideal of democratic rule that is available to us).
Marx applauds many of the measures adopted by the communards as channelling true popular rule: the progressive dissolution of state bureaucracy, the attempt to reduce the role of experts (or what we would call nowadays technocrats) in making political decisions, the abolition of the professional army and its substitution by a citizen militia, the revocability of administrative and judicial roles and positions, and the more general progressive transformation of representative democracy into direct popular rule. 30
During this transformation, it is clear that while the dictatorship of the proletariat relies on the coercive power of the state to realise its goals, it also seeks to undermine it from within. 31
Indeed, this very work of internal erosion and the attempt to bring traditional executive, judicial and legislative institutions under direct popular control is one of the reasons for which Marx praised the Paris Commune for being “a thoroughly expansive political form”, “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the emancipation of labour”. 32
30 For the analysis of these measures as conducive to the progressive erosion of bureaucratic and administrative power of the state as isolated from society, see “The Civil War in France” in Selected Writings. See also the discussion in Leipold, cit.
31 For further emphasis on the anti-authoritarian and anti-paternalist character of Marx’s conception of dictatorship see Ralph Miliband, "Marx and the State," The Socialist Register 2 (1965).
32 “The Civil War in France” in Selected Writings, p. 589.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: MARXIST THOUGHT
Lea Ypi
London School of Economics
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority, continued ...
The political form so described exemplifies precisely the process of involvement and concrete political activity of the majority of the oppressed in the course of taking back control over the conditions of their social life.
It begins a work of social emancipation which does not rely on an elite of professional politicians, technocratic institutions or bureaucratic managers to achieve its desired political objectives but takes radical freedom to be progressively vindicated in the process of making oneself free.
Marx’s praise for the workings of the Paris Commune and the way in which it supersedes “the unproductive and mischievous work of the state parasites” 33 reinforces our initial interpretation that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a democratic institution, whose democratic character is affirmed by people as they exercise their political will through real political participation rather than relying on others to cover existing administrative, judicial and legislative roles.
Other leading Marxists have sought to clarify this point further by making more explicit its relation to freedom and the idea of democracy, understood as rule by the people.
Rosa Luxemburg, for example, argued that the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat consists “in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination”. 34
And even Lenin, whose appeal to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat has often been taken to epitomise the necessity of proletarian violence, 35 argues that “the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority”. 36
Notice however that in emphasising the democratic character of dictatorship, both Marx and successive Marxists insisted on its transitory, provisional nature.
The political form taken by the process of social emancipation was never conflated with its end goal, just like the forms of direct political participation that it promoted could not succeed in fully eliminating class struggle but merely afforded “the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way”. 37
As Lenin explained in seeking to further articulate Marx’s conception of legitimacy, the idea of democracy for the majority is different from the idea of complete democracy. 38
Thus the dictatorship of the proletariat is still different from communist society; only the latter can fully realise freedom.
Communism alone, Lenin emphasised, is capable of providing “really complete democracy, democracy without exceptions”.
33 Ibid.
34 Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, Democracy and Dictatorship.
35 On the misguided interpretation of the role of violence in Lenin, see Lucio Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin. Studies in Ideology and Society (Monthly Review Press: New York), pp. 220-1.
36 Vladimir I. Lenin, "The State and Revolution," in Essential Works of Lenin, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: Dover Publications, (1932) 1987)., p. 339.
37 Marx, “The Civil War in France”, p. 589.
38 Lenin, cit., p. 301
TO BE CONTINUED ...
London School of Economics
4. The republican model in the Marxist reflection on political authority, continued ...
The political form so described exemplifies precisely the process of involvement and concrete political activity of the majority of the oppressed in the course of taking back control over the conditions of their social life.
It begins a work of social emancipation which does not rely on an elite of professional politicians, technocratic institutions or bureaucratic managers to achieve its desired political objectives but takes radical freedom to be progressively vindicated in the process of making oneself free.
Marx’s praise for the workings of the Paris Commune and the way in which it supersedes “the unproductive and mischievous work of the state parasites” 33 reinforces our initial interpretation that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a democratic institution, whose democratic character is affirmed by people as they exercise their political will through real political participation rather than relying on others to cover existing administrative, judicial and legislative roles.
Other leading Marxists have sought to clarify this point further by making more explicit its relation to freedom and the idea of democracy, understood as rule by the people.
Rosa Luxemburg, for example, argued that the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat consists “in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination”. 34
And even Lenin, whose appeal to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat has often been taken to epitomise the necessity of proletarian violence, 35 argues that “the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority”. 36
Notice however that in emphasising the democratic character of dictatorship, both Marx and successive Marxists insisted on its transitory, provisional nature.
The political form taken by the process of social emancipation was never conflated with its end goal, just like the forms of direct political participation that it promoted could not succeed in fully eliminating class struggle but merely afforded “the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way”. 37
As Lenin explained in seeking to further articulate Marx’s conception of legitimacy, the idea of democracy for the majority is different from the idea of complete democracy. 38
Thus the dictatorship of the proletariat is still different from communist society; only the latter can fully realise freedom.
Communism alone, Lenin emphasised, is capable of providing “really complete democracy, democracy without exceptions”.
33 Ibid.
34 Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, Democracy and Dictatorship.
35 On the misguided interpretation of the role of violence in Lenin, see Lucio Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin. Studies in Ideology and Society (Monthly Review Press: New York), pp. 220-1.
36 Vladimir I. Lenin, "The State and Revolution," in Essential Works of Lenin, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: Dover Publications, (1932) 1987)., p. 339.
37 Marx, “The Civil War in France”, p. 589.
38 Lenin, cit., p. 301
TO BE CONTINUED ...