The Revision of Marxism

Author(s): Sydney D. Bailey

Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Oct., 1954), pp. 452-462
Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf
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 The Revision of Marxism
by Sydney D. Bailey

IN ANY STUDY of the dissemination of ideologies, Marxism

must claim a special place for two reasons. First, Marxism is
both more precise and more all-embracing than any rival ideology,
and its advocates claim not only that it is a "good" ideology but
that it is the only correct ideology. Second, Marxism has been
revised, by people who call themselves Marxists, in a way that
would have astonished its founder.

1
The essence of Marx's philosophy, from which all his subsid-
iary doctrines derive, is the materialist interpretation of history.
This was not only an explanation of what had happened in the
past but an assertion of what was inevitably to come. It was,
moreover, more than a philosophy in the conventional sense; it was
also a guide to revolutionary conduct. "The philosophers have
only interpreted the world . . . the point, however, is to change it."'
Engels was often able to define Marx's views with more clarity
and greater precision than Marx himself, and it is Engels who pro-
vides us with the most concise description of historical materialism.
It is "that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate
cause and the great moving power of all important historic events
in the economic development of society, in the changes in the
modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of
society into classes, and in the struggles of these classes against
one another."2
Marx's great contribution to human thought, says Engels, is
this conception of history.
The whole previous view of history was based on the concep-
tion that the ultimate causes of all historical changes are to be
looked for in the changing ideas of human beings.3... The mate-
1 Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845
2
Engels, Introduction to the first English edition of Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific, 1892.
3 Engels, article on Marx in Volkskalender,1878.

452
 THE REVISION OF MARXISM 453

rialist conception of history starts from the principle that produc-

tion, and with production the exchange of its products, is the basis
of every social order; that in every society which has appeared in
history the distribution of the products, and with it the division of
society into classes or estates, is determined by what is produced
and how it is produced, and how the product is exchanged. Ac-
cording to this conception, the ultimate causes of all social changes
and political revolutions are to be sought, not in the minds of men,
in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in
changes in the mode of production and exchange; they are to be
sought not in the philosophy but in the economics of the epoch
concerned.4

If this doctrine is correct, then the revolution which Marx and

Engels considered to be inevitable would not take place in a
country because something had happened "in the minds of men";
it would occur because a certain stage of economic development
had been reached. Feudalism would give place to capitalism;
capitalism would bring into existence antagonistic economic
classes; the struggle between the classes, being "the immediate
driving power of history . . . [and] the great lever of the modem
social revolution"5 would lead inevitably to the defeat and destruc-
tion of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
A country could not omit any of the stages of this process; the
road was fixed and unalterable. In accordance with this theory,
Marx and his contemporaries expected imminent revolution in
industrialized countries like Germany, France, Britain, and the
United States; indeed these are the countries specifically men-
tioned in the Communist Manifesto. Russia and China were not
referred to because in those countries the capitalist stage had barely
begun and revolution was not within the immediate bounds of
possibility.
Nineteenth century Russian thinkers, whether they had heard
of Marx or not, were greatly interested in the question whether
Russia must follow the Western path and pass through a capitalist
stage. They recognized that Russia had been isolated from the
main stream of Western development and believed she had a spe-
cial mission. "Russia had a history of her own that in no way re-

4
Engels, Anti-Diihring, 1878.
5 Marx, Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and others, Sep-
tember 17-18, 1879.
454 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

sembled the history of a single European state," wrote Bolinsky.6

"We do not belong to one of the great families of the human
race," wrote Chaadaev; "we do not belong either to the West or
the East..... Standing as it were outside time, we have been un-
touched by the worldwide up-bringing of the human race." "We
belong to the number of those nations which, so to speak, do not
enter into the structure of mankind, but exist only in order to teach
the world an important lesson of some sort."7
Followers of Marx in Russia were clearly in a dilemma. They
believed, or ought to have believed, that a Communist revolution
could not take place until the capitalist stage had been passed
through. Malin wrote in 1906 that "as long as the proletariat
constitutes a small section of society the establishment of the So-
cialist system is impossible."8 Indeed, Marx had been quite pre-
cise on this point. In the course of his quarrel with Bakunin he
had stated his views on the necessary conditions for revolution:

England alone can serve as the lever of a serious economic rev-

olution. It is the only country where there are no more peasants
and where property in land is concentrated in a few hands. It is
the only country where the capitalist form - that is to say, com-
bined labour on a large scale under capitalist employers- has in-
vaded practically the whole of production. It is the only country
where the great majority of the population consists of wage-labour-
ers. It is the only country where the class struggle and the organi-
zation of the working-class through trade unions has acquired a
certain degree of maturity....8

Did this mean that there could be no revolution in Russia

until there were no more peasants, until all land was concentrated
in a few hands, until the capitalist form had an almost complete
monopoly of production, until the great majority of the population
consisted of wage-labourers, until the class struggle had reached a
degree of maturity? This seems to have been Marx's view. Rus-
sian Marxists found it a depressing prospect and were forever
discussing whether Marx had really meant what he said.
6
Bolinsky, V. G., "A View on Russian Literature in 1846," first published
in Sovremennik,
1847.
7
Quoted in Berdyaev, Nicholas, The Russian Idea, English edition, 1947.
8 Memorandumby Marx, sent to Dr. Ludwig Gugelmann, March 28, 1870.
9 Malin, Anarchism vs. Socialism?, 1906.
 THE REVISION OF MARXISM 455

Lenin put a stop to this fruitless discussion. In a well-known

pamphlet, What is to be done?, published fifteen years before the
October Revolution, he put forward the first substantial revision
of Marxism. Implicitly rejecting the control thesis of Marxism-
that "the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolu-
tions are to be sought, not in the minds of men . . . but in changes
in the mode of production and exchange"-he explicitly advanced
the view that revolutions depend essentially on the proper organ-
ization of the revolutionary movement. History was to prove
Lenin right. Lenin reduced his argument to five "assertions":

(i) that no movement can be durable without a stable organ-

ization of leaders to maintain continuity; (ii) that the more widely
the masses are spontaneously drawn into the struggle and form the
basis of the movement and participate in it, the more necessary is
it to have such an organization ... (iii) that the organization must
consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activities as a
profession; (iv) that in a country with an autocratic government,
the more we restrict the membership of this organization to persons
who are engaged in revolutionaryactivities as a profession and who
have been professionally trained . . . the more difficult it will be
[for the police] to catch the organization; and (v) the wider will
be the circle of men and women of the working class or of other
classes of society able to join the movement and perform active
work in it.10

A revolutionary movement, says Lenin, needs the stiffening of

a correct theory if it is to be successful. "Without a revolutionary
theory there can be no revolutionary movement."" In addition, it
needs proper organization based on "strict secrecy, strict selection
of members and the training of professional revolutionaries."l2
There can be no broad democracy in such a movement: democracy
is "a useless and harmful toy."13
Such a movement conducts two sorts of activity. Agitation
is used to foster discontent and indignation, to draw attention to
grievances, to expose the inhumanity of the bourgeoisie. The vac-
uum thus created is filled by the propagandist who expounds the
correct theory.
10
Lenin, What is to be done?, 1902.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
456 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Thus the circle is complete-theory, organization, agitation,

propaganda, theory.
Lenin put his ideas to the test, and in 1917 the Bolshevik
Revolution occurred, though the conditions which Marx considered
essential did not exist. Lenin then went on to assert that what
had happened in Russia was not a freak but the orthodox pattern
of revolution. "Bolshevism can serve as a model of tactics for all."14
Stalin quotes this sentence with approval in his Preface to On the
Road to October, and he also reinforces the conclusion that the
Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, not because a certain stage in
economic development had been reached, but because "it had as
its head, as its guiding force, a party so tried and tested as the
Bolshevik Party, strong . . . by reason of its experience and years
of discipline."15

II
Few questions have evoked so much controversy among Marx-
ists as Marx's theory of the State. Marx believed the State to be
nothing more than an instrument of class oppression. As modem
industry developed, "State power assumed more and more the
character of the national power of capital over labour, of a public
force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class des-
potism,"l6 "the organized power of one class for oppressing an-
other."'7 In time of revolution the essential task is not to transfer
the state "machine from one hand to another, but to smash it."18
Marx is credited with having held the view that after a Com-
munist revolution the State would wither away, but he never said
this explicitly. Engels, however, writing a month after the death
of Marx, asserts that from 1845 onwards Marx had "held the view
that one of the ultimate results of the future proletarian revolution
will be the gradual dissolution of the political organization known
by the name of the state."l9 As usual, Engels expounds the Marx-
ist doctrine with much greater clarity than Marx did.

14
Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918.
15 Stalin, Preface to On the Road to October, 1924.
16
Marx, The Civil War in France, 1871.
17 The Communist Manifesto.
18
Marx, letter to Dr. Ludwig Kugelmann, April 12, 1871.
19 Engels, letter to Philipp van Patten,
April 18, 1883.
 THE REVISION OF MARXISM 457

The proletariat seizes the State power, and transforms the

means of production in the first instance into State property. But
in doing this, it puts an end to all class differences and class antag-
onisms, it puts an end also to the State as the State . . . The
government of persons is replaced by the administration of things
.... The State is not 'abolished,' it withers away.2l
All socialists are agreed that the political State, and with it
political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social
revolutions, that is, that public functions will lose their political
character and be transformed into the simple administrative func-
tions.21. . Do away with capital, the appropriation of the whole
means of production in the hands of a few, and the State will fall
away of itself.22... With the introduction of the socialist order of
society the State will dissolve of itself and disappear.23

In practice the Bolshevik leaders have not found it possible to

dispense with the state machine. In Russia, as in other countries,
the state bureaucracy has increased greatly in size since the Revo-
lution. Moreover its power has grown steadily year by year. A
centralized bureaucracy not only implements what in the West
are called political decisions; it makes them.
The relation of the Russian Communist Party to the State
which obstinately refused to wither away has occasioned discussion
at successive Bolshevik party congresses. Stalin dealt with the issue
in 1924, apparently because there had been complaints of increas-
ing bureaucracy. "To carry the struggle against bureaucracy in
the state apparatus to the point of destroying the state apparatus,
to the point of discrediting the state apparatus, to attempt to break
it up, means going against Leninism, means forgetting that our
apparatus is a Soviet apparatus, which represents a higher type of
state apparatus compared with all the other state apparatuses that
exist in the world."24
Again in 1930 Stalin felt constrained to deal with this question.
"We stand for the withering away of the State [he told the six-
teenth congress]. At the same time we stand for the strengthening
of the proletarian dictatorship, which is the mightiest and strongest
State power that has ever existed. The highest development of the

20
Engels, Anti-Diihring, 1878.
21
22
Engels, On Authority, published in Almanacco Republicano, 1874.
Engels, Letter to Theodor Cuno, Tanuary24, 1872.
23
Engels, Letter to August Bebel, 1875.
24
Stalin, Report to the fifteenth party congress, December 3, 1927.
458 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

State power with the object of preparing the conditions for the
withering away of State power-such is the Marxist formula. Is
this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this is the con-
tradiction in life, and it fully reflects Marxism."2i5
Four years later, at the seventeenth party congress, Stalin again
discussed this question. "Confusion" and "unhealthy sentiments"
had arisen because certain party members had urged a relaxation
of the dictatorship of the proletariat and had suggested that the
State should be got rid of since it was fated to die in any case.
Stalin did not trouble to refute this view, merely ascribing it to
"Right deviationists. .. anti-Leninist groups."26
In 1939, at the eighteenth congress, Stalin again explained his
attitude, this time at considerable length. His justification was
rather like that of a defendant in a court of law who says: "I
didn't do it, and even if I did, I was fully justified."
Marx and Engels, he said, had not foreseen the position in
which the Soviet Union found itself. The Soviet Union was en-
circled by capitalists, preyed upon by bourgeois spies, assassins and
wreckers, and disturbed by Trotskyite conspiratorial activities. How
could the State wither away in such circumstances? In any event,
claimed Stalin, the classic formulation of the theory of the State by
Engels was not applicable while Socialism was victorious in only
one country. "Engels proceeds from the assumption that Socialism
has already been victorious in all countries, or in a majority of
countries, more or less simultaneously."27
In fact Engels proceeded from no such assumption. Engels
knew that revolutions would not take place simultaneously in all,
or even in a majority of, countries, since neither all nor most
countries were at the same stage of economic development. Stalin's
presentation of the issue at party congresses may have been in-
genious, but this does not alter the fact that he was amending
Marx.

III
The place of the peasantry in the revolutionary process has
created special difficulties for Marxists. Marx himself despised the
25
Stalin, Report to the sixteenth party congress, June 27, 1930.
26
Stalin, Report to the seventeenth party congress, January 26, 1934.
27
Stalin, Report to the eighteenth party congress, March 10, 1939.
 THE REVISION OF MARXISM 459

peasant class, regarding it as particularly unreliable and reaction-

ary. Engels insisted that the peasant had "manifested himself as a
factor of political power only by his apathy."28 A class-conscious
urban proletariat-"the only decidedly revolutionary class"29-
would act as the revolutionary spearhead.
In the first years after its formation, the Chinese Communist
Party endeavored to concentrate its effort on the Chinese urban
proletariat in accordance with Marxist orthodoxy. A succession
of leaders, striving to keep within the changing Kremlin-Comintern
line, failed to make any headway in practice. The emergence of
Mao Tse-tung as leader of the party in 1935 was due to his success
as a tactician rather than as a theoretician.
While the Chinese Communist leaders debated Marxist theory
in Shanghai, Mao was busy establishing a Communist Govern-
ment in Kiangsi. Mao succeeded because certain practical condi-
tions were fulfilled. These were the existence of a highly-disciplined
party organized on Leninist lines, supported by a trained guerrilla
army; the existence of what he called "a sound mass base"-a dis-
contented peasantry; and the existence of favorable terrain and
an economically self-supporting territorial base.30
The significant thing about Mao's conditions for a successful
Communist revolution is that, though they seem obvious enough,
they are not derived from Marxist theory. The disciplined party
and guerrilla army was borrowed by Mao from Lenin's experience
in Russia.
Mao's exploitation of peasant grievances, while successful in
practice, created difficult theoretical problems. Mao had to pay
lip-service to the proletariat while at the same time directing the
major attention of his party to the peasantry; this he did with
considerable dexterity.
"The peasants [he wrote] are the potential reinforcements of
China's army of workers... The peasants are the source of our
armies. . . . The peasants are the main foundation on which
China's democracy rests." Having described the factual position,
Mao pays his verbal tribute to Marxist orthodoxy. "I said 'main
28
Engels, The Peasant Question in France and
Germany, 1894.
29 Marx and Engels, Address of the Central Committee of the Communist
League, March, 1850.
30 Mao Tse-tung, Report to the Central Committee of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, November, 1928.
460 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

foundation,' because I would not ignore . . . the working class,

politically the most conscious of all classes of the Chinese people
and the qualified leader of all democratic movements."31
Mao's third condition was probably his own great contribution
to Communist practice, and one that has undoubtedly influenced
Communist world strategy. What Mao did in the Chinese Soviet
areas, the men in the Kremlin have been doing on a larger scale.
Discarding the doctrine of Marx that revolution depends solely on
economic conditions and can break out simultaneously in widely-
separated places, Mao stimulated and then consolidated revolution
in a self-contained, self-supporting area. He then moved his po-
litical and military forces to the border areas, gradually extending
the size of his base till finally all mainland China was absorbed.
A Communist State came into existence in Jugoslavia as a
result of spontaneous revolutionary impulses and was not imposed
under the protection of the Red Army as happened elsewhere in
Eastern Europe. Jugoslav Communism is essentially an indigenous
movement, which has owed little-doctrinally or materially-to
Moscow. Such a phenomenon is apparently displeasing to the men
in the Kremlin who, in the early stages of the Soviet-Jugoslav dis-
pute, complained repeatedly that the Jugoslav leaders were mani-
festing unbecoming independence and arrogance. "We feel that
underlying the unwillingness of the Politbureau of the Central
Committee of the Jugoslav Communist Party honourably to admit
their errors and to correct them is the unbounded arrogance of the
Jugoslav leaders. Their heads were turned by the successes
achieved. ... The Jugoslav leaders ... are still intoxicated with
their successes, which are not so very great."32 "They refuse to
answer the direct questions of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, and aggravate their mistakes by their stubborn unwilling-
ness to admit and correct them."33
These accusations of arrogance, so arrogantly phrased, at first
greatly pained and puzzled Tito and the other Jugoslav leaders.
"In answering your letter ... ," wrote Tito and Kardelj, "we must
31 Mao Tse-tung, On Coalition Government,1945.
32 Letter of Russian Communist
Party to Jugoslav CommunistParty,May 4.
1948.
33 Letter of Russian Communist Party to Jugoslav Communist Party, May
22, 1948.
 THE REVISION OF MARXISM 461

first of all emphasizethat we were terriblysurprisedby its tone."34

The quarrel between Jugoslavia and the Soviet Union began
like any ordinaryquarrelbetween two sovereignStates. The Rus-
sians complainedof difficultiesin securing informationabout con-
ditions in Jugoslavia; alleged that their spies in Jugoslavia were
being spied on; and assertedthat a whisperingcampaign against
the Soviet Union was being fostered by Tito and his henchmen.
But after a few months, the disputetook a differentturn, the Rus-
sians accusing the Jugoslav Communistleaders of variouskinds of
heresy and "deviationism." Tito indignantly denied that he was
a heretic, though he did not at this stage charge his accuserswith
counter-heresy.Yet there is no doubt that the Russian allegations
of un-Marxistconduct by Tito were largely true, though of course
Tito could have replied (and did indeed do so later) that the
Bolsheviksthemselveswere the arch-heretics.
The main Russian charge of deviationism was that "while
Marxism-Leninismstarts by recognizing the leading role of the
workingclass in the processof liquidatingcapitalismand develop-
ing a socialistsociety, the leadersof the Jugoslav CommunistParty
have an entirely different theory." The Russians then quote a
speech in which Tito described the peasants as "the strongest
pillar of our State." The Russians continue: "This attitude is in
complete contradiction to Marxism-Leninism . . . [and] expresses
opinions which are natural to petty-bourgeoispoliticians."35
Whatever the theory of Marxism-Leninism,the fact is that in
this respect the Russian Communists,and even more so the Chin-
ese, had themselves abandoned the pure Marxist doctrine. Any
other policy would have been doomed to failure. In neither coun-
try was there a substantialand organizedurban proletariatwhich
would act as a revolutionaryspearhead. Tito in Jugoslavia had
merely continued the process,begun by Lenin and Stalin and con-
tinued by Mao, of revisingMarxism.

IV
The process of revising the Marxist ideology is especiallysig-
nificant because the original doctrine was supposedby its believers
34 Tito and Kardelj to Stalin and Molotov, April 19, 1948.
35 Russian Communist Party to Jugoslav Communist Party, May 4, 1948.
462 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

to have a special authority and sanctity. No one is surprised that

liberal democracy, for example, has a different slant in 1954 from
that in 1854. A secular ideology, if it is to be dynamic, must be
constantly reinvigorated by fresh interpretations and new em-
phases. The surprising thing about Marxism is not that it has
been revised but that in the process of revision the skeleton of the
doctrine has been removed. The flesh is held in place by the skin
of party organization rather than the bones of historical material-
ism. Although the body is deformed, its original shape is still rec-
ognizable. In the Soviet Union, traditional Russian ideas and
practices are steadily assuming greater importance, and pure Marx-
ism is receding into greater insignificance. This process might not
have surprised Marx, who disliked and mistrusted those Russians
he had met.
Although Russia is likely to remain the most powerful Com-
munist State for some years to come, the ideological control of
world Communism may well move towards Peking. There are
two reasons which suggest that this may happen. First, the leaders
of world Communism, in considering in which direction expansion
is likely to be most successful and least costly, will no doubt con-
tinue to direct their attention to the Asian countries adjacent to
China. But more important than this is the fact that the survivors
of the first generation of Bolshevik leaders cannot have much
longer to live. Their successors will lack both the inspiration of
the original leaders and the courage to keep the doctrine up to
date. Bolshevism has now entered a stage of increasingly rigid
sterility.
The Chinese Communists suffer from no such inhibitions and
will doubtless adapt Marxism as circumstances dictate. Sinified
Marxism will emerge and may differ greatly from Bolshevism.
But Jugoslav Communism, freed from the shackles of ortho-
doxy, may well prove the most virile of all the contemporary ver-
sions of the doctrine.