TowardtheRepotentializationofaMarxistTheory

TowardtheRepotentializationofaMarxistTheory

byNormanLevine

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In this paper, 1 I hope to contribute to the revitalization of a Marxist theory of politics. I have commented upon the Marxist 2 and Leninist 3 theory of the state in other writings, but this is my first attempt at setting forth a series of propositions upon which a Marxist politics can be reformulated. I embark upon my comments from a conservative point of view, since I feel that the reconstruction of a Marxist political theory can begin from the texts of Marx themselves. The ideas which are presented in the following pages proceed from an internalist perspective, from the conviction that it is not necessary to borrow from other traditions of political thought in order to reconstitute a Marxist theory of the state which is appropriate to the contemporary era. Even though Marx left only fragments of a political theory, there are enough suggestions in his texts to repotentialize his political thought in a manner which corresponds to the needs of modern man. With the exception of the Russian proletariat during the Bolshevik Revolution, the politico-strategic message of Marx did not find an 'addressee'. In the western world, the industrial proletariat which Marx assumed would carry out the socialist revolution, refused to carry the burden of this historical task and thus ended the Marxist idea of the unity of theory and practice. Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousnes is irrelevant today, because the western proletariat has refused to accept the message of revolutionary transcendence it was assigned. The loss of the revolutionary subject does not mean the collapse of the totality of Marxist theory . Historical materialism was an amalgam of many elements and the collapse of one element (the proletariat is no longer a revolutionary force in the western world), does not suggest that all the various strains of Marxist theory need also be consigned to the dust-bin of history. The argument that a continuity exists between Marx-Lenin-Stalin is wrong. This argument holds that the theory of party totalitarianism was first stated by Marx, amplified by Lenin and brought to completion by Stalin. The thesis of a MarxLenin-Stalin continuity is basically a right-wing anti-Bolshevik critique, which seeks to employ anti-Stalinism to impugn the original intentions of Marx. The MarxLenin-Stalin hyphenation is also employed in the contemporary world by other theorists who begin to re-think the issue of the modern state from the ground of an anti-Marxist position. 4 These new theorists, while themselves not right-wing anti-Bolsheviks,s do use an argument which was initiated by right-wing antiBolshevism in the modern age. 6 When Marx-Lenin-Stalin are hyphenated together in this fashion, it is a model which presumes guilt by association: all three
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are condemned for the sins of one. Lenin's State and Revolution is vastly different than Stalin's organization of the state. The remainder of this paper will show that Marx's theory of the state not only differed from State and Revolution, but also was a total rejection of Stalinism. Hyphenations always distort because they always stress the connective, while they inherently omit the disassociative, and this paper seeks to de-hyphenate and individualize. With this larger programmatic design in place, I think of a Marxist theory of politics as having to confront two fundamental questions: (1) in what manner must we conceive a Marxist political theory if we are to retain the concepts of: (a) history as a process of human self-formation; (b) the re-politicizing of contemporary man (the Rousseauist project of turning men into citizens)? Jiirgen Habermas in his Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit 7 has clearly outlined the de-politicization of modern man, and a Marxist political theory must answer the problem of contemporary man's re-politicization from the point of view of extending citizen control over sociallabor and the productive process in order to reduce socially necessary labor time and thereby increase the domain of freedom. (11) In what manner must we conceive a Marxist political theory if we are to place it within the republican tradition of the West? The term' 'political" is complex, and is composed of at least five connotations and unless one distinguishes between these subtle shadings it is possible to completely distort the political theory of Marx. These five dimensions of the concept' 'political" in Marx are: Political (I)-civil society; Political (2)-governance; Political (3)-procedures of social decision; Political (4)-the state; Political (5)-strategic action. I will defme each meaning in the following paragraphs. Political (i)-civil society. The Marxist idea of civil society relates to a sphere of human social life which exists independent of Political (4)-the state. Although Marx believed that civil society existed prior to the state, it is not necessary for contemporary Marxism to retain this definition. In this paper the term civil society will not be used as referring to a human condition existing antecedent to Political (4)-the state, - but rather it is assumed that civil society and Political (4)-the state - are cotemerous. Even though Political (1) and Political (4) are coeval, Political (1) has a being outside of Political (4). Civil society is the sum total of the economic and social practices in which human beings engage in order to ensure their sustenance and continuity. Civil society concerns a mode of production and the relationship between civil society and the state is always isomorphic. The state is shaped by other forces of determination, but civil society is one force of determination and as such the state is always congruent to this economic method of reproduction. Political (2)-governance. Governance refers to the need to establish sanctioned conduct within Political (1). Governance is different from both Political (3)procedures of social decision, and Political (4)-the state - for governance does not relate to the protocols by which a society or state reaches a decision or the total of decision-making institutions in a society or state. Governance refers to the necessity to organize social norms, presumed behavior which permits social cohesiveness and preservation. Governance does not relate to the creation of law, but to the desired effect of law. Political (3)-procedures of social decision. The procedures for social decision

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relates to the accepted rules and institutions by which a civil society or state reaches a decision. Political (3) concerns the protocols and institutions for social decision making. While governance refers to the need to establish social cohesiveness, the procedures for social decision refers to constituted protocols which are binding. Inherent in the procedures of social decision are subordination and power. The procedures of social decision cannot be divorced from civil society, and the protocols for social decision making are isomorphic to civil society. Political (4)-The state. The state is the total of those institutions and protocols which assist in the making of social decisions. Although not reducible to either civil society or governance, the state effects both civil society and governance. The form of the state corresponds to the productive mode of civil society. Just as social productive modes have changed throughout history, so forms of the state have changed in congruence with these productive formations. Political (5)-strategic action. 8 I have used the term strategic action here because it is frequently used as a synonym for Political (5). A person or group who acts in such a way as to successfully achieve his goal is referred to as "political," meaning that the agent has been able to manipulate circumstances so as to reach an end. 9 But Political (5), although it takes the word "political", relates more to a theory of action than it does to a discourse on the nature of the structure of the state. Political (5) is a synonym for action theory and not a descriptive term for a theory of the state. I introduced Political (5) here because of its appearance in the language of politics, but since it does not refer to state theory I will not refer to it again in this paper. In his Paris Manuscripts of 1844, Marx stated his intent to write a theory of the state,lO but never accomplished this goal. In an age when the re-thinking of Marxist political thought is perhaps the most pressing item on the contemporary Marxist theoretical agenda, the absence of any detailed comments by Marx on the nature of the state leaves an irremedial void. ll Regardless, it is necessary to build on what Marx did bequeath, an affirmation that civil society was the substance of the political. For Marx, civil society was subject: the political and the state conformed to the structure of the anthropological principle. In his later writings, particularly the Grundrisse, Marx emerged as an economic anthropologist. His research at the British Museum during the 1850's, as he prepared to write Kapital, concentrated on anthropological concerns. The mature Marx was concerned with how different civil societies produced their sustenance. He was involved in comparative economic anthropology,12 and based on a comparison of different economic forms Marx was in a position to pick out the uniqueness of the capitalist economic form. Kapital was a study of the uniqueness of capitalism as one possible form of civil society. He did not approach the notion of civil society in a Feuerbachian manner, searching for species being, but he approached it as an economic anthropologist: civil society as an economic productive agency. The nature of the Marxian revolution in the theory of politics comes from his elision of all transcendental elements from political thought, both in terms of morality and in terms of natural rights. He broke the tradition which stretched from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel and sundered the association of a theory of politics with morality, and also broke the tradition which stretched from Thomas Aquinas to John Locke and dissolved the association of politics with natural law. The Marxian

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revolution in the theory of politics consisted in the fact that political thought must begin with an analysis of the form and structure of civil society. Its purpose was to create a political form which was congruent to civil society on the assumption that such a state would be more democratic, would more accurately reflect the productive needs of that civil society. In the style of Rousseau, Marx's political theory was an attempt to re-politicize the citizenry within bourgeois civil society, only Marx extended the Rousseauist concern to include citizen control over social labor. Within a broader framework, Marxist political theory was part of the republican tradition of the West, but Marx enlarged the concept of political participation to include control over socially productive labor because only control over sociallabor would grant the citizenry freedom, since an increase in freedom was a direct function of a reduction of necessary labor time. Marx was a Rousseauist, not a St. Simonist. In order to understand Marx's theory of the state, it is necessary to draw a distinction between social stratification and class. Social stratification (the division of labor was the most universal form of social stratification) was a general category of civil society. Class was a particular form of social stratification which existed in capitalist civil society. Social stratification (the division of labor) was coeval with civil society. Social stratification and civil society were the general categories which would persist into communist society, while class was a particular social grouping which reflected capitalist relationships of production and would not continue into communist society. Marx did offer a dominant-group reductionist theory of the state, but he did not offer a dominant-group reductionist theory of civil society. While it is true to say that if all dominant-groups were abolished the state as the instrument of dominant-groups would also be abolished, it is not true to say that the elimination of all dominant-groups would lead to the abolition of civil society or social stratification. For Marx, the state, until communist society, was equivalent to dominant-group hegemony, and since this form of state was merely a function of the dominant-group the elimination of this dominant-group was simultaneously the elimination of this form of state. However, the dominant-group was not equivalent to civil society but merely a particular expression of civil society. The abolition of the dominant-group would still leave civil society and social stratification in existence. Marx recognized the differences between class and group. Class was a particular form of social grouping under capitalism in which labor was exchanged for wages. Groups, on the other hand, were social forms which were not defined by the exchange of wages. Social stratification and the division of Jabor had existed before capitalism, and social groups (both empowered and depowered) also existed. A social group was a social category which confonned to the division of labor. Women formed a social group in primitive times and after because the social divison of labor required them to care for the children, but they were not a class because there was not an exchange of wages. Under communism, social stratification, the division of labor and social groups would all continue, but classes would not continue because the wage-relation would have been destroyed. My remarks regarding Marx's vision of the state clearly relates to the kind of state organization he proposed for the communist stage of evolution. Marx offered

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an analysis of the state as it had existed until the overthrow of capitalism, but he also projected an image of the state under communism and it is to this projection that I am relating. Civil society was the productive form by which man created his sustenance, and social reproduction must continue under communism. Marx wished to expand the reproductive powers of civil society, and so he did not seek to destroy social stratification, the division of labor or social groups as general categories of civil society. He did wish to destroy any form of domination which arose because of the monopolization of any form of productive wealth. He did wish to destroy power which had freed itself from the control of civil society, which, because it monopolized productive wealth, had ceased to be an expression of civil society and had become the alienated force of civil society. In part eight of volume one of Kapital, "So-Called Primitive Accumulation," Marx described the coming into being of class in modern capitalist civil society. 13 Several social preconditions were necessary before the capitalist form of social stratification, class could come in existence. First, exchange relationships must dominate a particular market; for example, an urban industrial market. Second, as a result of the domination of exchange relationships labormust be turned into a commodity; it must be something that could be exchanged for another object. Third, a free-Iaborer must appear in the capitalist market-place, a laborer who could not provide for his own subsistence except by means of the sale of his own labor. The dispossessed agricultural worker must appear in the urban industrial market place. When these three conditions were met,when an uprooted former agricultural producer was compelled to sell his labor as a commodity in return for wages, the capitalist form of social stratification, class, made its appearance in history. In volume three of Kapital, in the chapter on "Classes" contained in part seven, Marx again indicated that the term class only referred to social groups under a capitalist society. Social stratification existed in all societies, but classes only existed in the capitalist mode of production. In this chapter, Marx wrote: "The owners of mere labor-power, the owners of capital and the landowners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground-rent - in other words wage-laborers, capitalists and landowners - from the three great classes of modern society based on the capitalist mode of production. " 14 Marx showed how classes in capitalist society conformed to the sources of revenue, which in turn was detern1ined by the ownership of productive property. Later in the same chapter, Marx wrote: "The question to be answered next is: 'What makes a class?' and this arises automatically from answering another question: 'What makes wage-Iaborers, capitalists and landowners the formative elements of the three great social classes?" 15 Classses were isomorphic to revenue distribution, determined by property, and this was the reason that capitalist classes differed from other forms of social stratification under other forms of social production. Property, dominion over the Ineans of production, produced not only the capitalist, those who had dominion over the means of production, and the proletariat, those who by reason of their exclusion from the means of production were placed in a situation in which they must exchange labor for wages to provide for their sustenance. Class, the outgrowth of capitalist exchange relationships and revenue allotment, was not the same as serf or plebian. The serf had a personal relationship

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to his lord, and also was entitled to work some portion of the lord's land without a cash exchange. The exchange between serf and lord concerned a portion of labor for military protection, while in a class relationship all personal elements were removed and the proletariat-capitalist nexus was conducted solely on fmancial terms. Marx saw the difference between a proletariat and a slave, indicating that what a capitalist owned in a proletariat was his labor, 16 while what a capitalist owned in the slave was the total slave. 17 In The German Ideology, which was the earliest formulation of his historical materialism, Marx indicated that the social division of labor was as old as mankind, since the process of propagating the species in primitive times required that women remain at home to care for children, while men were free to hunt and tender the herds. 18 Engels pointed to the division of labor as the basis of property, class and state. In his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels specifically listed the social division of labor as the beginning of male patriarchy, because men were not burdened with the care of children and had the license to be out of the home, the condition from which they claimed the property of the herds, and the property of the herds was the initial basis of male class rule and ultimately state creation. 19 The German Ideology also contained Marx's first morphology of economic productive formations, contrasting the reproductive process of primitive man, the classical man of Greece and Rome, and feudal or estate production. 20 Marx's interest in comparative economic systems was stated agin in his "Introduction" to The Critique ofPolitical Economy in which he contrasted Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois social formations. 21 His analysis of economic anthropology changed slightly in his Grundrisse, for although he still recognized the historicity of the mode of social production, he talked in 1858 of the Asiatic (Indian) village commune, the Greek and Roman polis and the Germanic agrarian communities. 22 Deriving from his concern with economic morphology. Marx believed that the totality shaped the particular, and believed that the division of labor differed in accordance with each different social productive formation. Even though social stratification was not reducible to class, in Marx the state was reducible to the instrument of power in the hands of those who controlled property. In terms of the five definitions of the political outlined in earlier portions of this essay, the state in Marx corresponded to Political (4). Just as Marx was aware that productive social formations differed in terms of internal structure, so he was aware that the morphology of states also differed in terms of the property owning relationship within each social mode. There were Asiatic states, polis states, feudal states and capitalist states, but even though these states had unique structures they were all instruments of power in the hands of those who possessed property. States, Political (4), power in the possession of the proprietor, were always alienated from a civil society because they represented a force, the ability to impose the will of those who owned property, which did not arise from civil society. States were always instruments of inequality, tools to preserve the domination of the propertied. The particular state-form which most concerned Marx was the capitalist state, just as the particular social group which most concerned him was the capitalist class, or its obverse, the proletariat. Since the state was reducible to an instrument

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of control at the disposal of the propertied, an end of state necessitated the simultaneous destruction of those who owned property, or private property in the means of production. When Marx called for the end of the capitalist state and the capitalist class, he called for an end of capitalist relations of property ownership . However, when Marx affirmed the need to abolish capitalist state and capitalist class he was not also stating the need to do away with all social groups - Political (1), or the need of governance - Political (2), or the need for procedures of social decision - Political (3) . In order to clearly show how the reconstruction of a Marxist politics can proceed, from the texts internal to Marx, it is necessary to return to the apparatus of the five definitions of the political set forth at the beginning of this discussion. Political (1 )-civil society. The communist revolution would destroy the capitalist state and the class structure of capitalism. But the destruction of the capitalist state and capitalist class structure would still leave civil society. Marx did not believe that the end of capitalist state and capitalist classes would also end the social division of labor. Civil society, as an economically productive fonnation, would still have social stratification and social groupings. The communist revolution would bring to a close social stratification based upon the domination of property, but it would not bring to a close social stratification which reflected the social division of labor in general. Marx was not a vocational or economic egalitarian. Although he clearly wished to expand the productive capacity of communist society in order to eradicate poverty , he was not a St. Simonian and did not want to turn the governorship of civil society over to a technological elite. The focus of Marx's political theory was not St. Simonian, on a managerial elite, but rather Rousseauist, in terms of citizen control over social productivity, the most socially productive force being necessary living labor. Neither was Marx a Babouvist, he was not primarily concerned that the entire population would have equal shares of the goods society produced. Marx did not focus on the equality of goods, but rather upon the democratic control over the use of social labor. The St. Simonian and the economic egalitarianism of Babeuf did continue in the work of Engels and Lenin. Both these men were aware that the social division of labor was the source of social stratification, of group differences, and they believed that ultimately social harmony could only evolve out of the elimination of all group differentiation. There were two ways in which, according to Engels and Lenin, group differentiation could be eliminated, and thus an era of universal harmony established: through administration and through egalitarianism. Building upon St. Simon, in Anti-Duhring, Engels spoke of the substitution of administration for political life.. It was Engels' belief that if all social decisions could be made administrative decisions this would eliminate the need for vocational differentiation and thus lead to social egalitarianism. Engels' instincts were basically democratic and he carried the discussion of socialism into areas that had not been extensively discussed before, into the areas of social skills, social professions, the inequality of talent. In this regard, Engels was doing pioneering work, but this does not hide the fact that he came up with the wrong answer. Engels faced the problem of professional skill and job differentiation and asked the vital question: how can these forms of social (vocational) stratification cease to exist in communism?

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The answer which Engels gave was to destroy vocational stratification, to destroy social differentiation based on skill, talent, training, and the way to destroy this form of social differentiation and prevent it from growing into another class was to bring about an equality of jobs through the model of an administrative bureaucracy.23 In State and Revolution,24 Lenin continued Engels' thinking on how to overcome the social division of labor and vocational stratification through management and egalitarianism. The democratic intent of Lenin and Engels was the same, to prevent vocational stratification from becoming the basis for the domination of one social group over another, this time in terms of skill or intelligence instead of property. Lenin believed like Engels, that the only way to prevent social and vocational stratification from becoming the ground of a new source of social elitism, was to institute social and vocational egalitarianism, and for Lenin this assumed two forms, accounting and control and economic egalitarianism. Lenin believed it possible that all social jobs be reduced to principles of accounting and control. He hoped that if everyone could do the same job, this would remove differentiation between people based on skill. Accounting and control would produce vocational homogenization and would deter the rise of any vocational elitism or domination. Similarly, Lenin maintained that the way to handle the problem of the distribution of social products was through economic egalitarianism. Everyone would receive equal shares of the products of social production, and consequently no economic distinctions would develop between people and so the process of social homogenization would not be disturbed. I maintain that Lenin was not a Stalinist, but this still leaves the fact that Lenin's political theory was deficient. It is possible to point out errors in Lenin's theory of the state, while at the same time maintaining the discontinuity between Lenin and Stalin. The S1. Simonian and Babouvist traditions lived on in the Bolshevik leader's political thought, and the main error of both Engels and Lenin was to apply the bourgeois notion of equal right to the area of vocational and social differentiation and economic distribution. Engels and Lenin did what Marx had warned against in his Critique ofthe Gotha Program;25 they applied a liberal rights argument to social group and economic distribution. Marx had rejected the equal right criteria because "it is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. " Marx was not an egalitarian, nor did he believe that society should be run by a St. Simonian managerial elite, for Marx was primarily concerned with re-politicizing the population by giving them control over sociallabor. Marx did not ask the St. Simonian question, or the Babouvist question, but he did ask the Rousseauist question, which concerned the extension of citizenship. Civil society, for Marx, still possessed social grouping and social stratification. Marx did not believe that social unity could be attained by social homogenization. He was concerned with governance, and how through the exercise of citizenship, social unity would transcend social difference. Political (2)-govemance. Marx was not an Anarchist, for he recognized the need to make norms of social conduct. As we have seen, in a communist society social stratification would continue to exist and there would still be the need to create

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social cohesiveness through socially sanctioned conduct. Communist society would be an industrialized society, and Marx was aware of the complexities of modern technological society and the need to plan to order to bring about a correspondence between its various parts. The difference between communist society and capitalist society stemmed from the fact that under communism governance would proceed without the interference of property. Under capitalism, governance proceeded from the basis of defending the dominion over the means of production, while under communism governance went on without relation to private property and thus reflected the interests of a society engaged the act of social reproduction. Marx's criticism of the Anarchists, from Proudhon to Bakunin, is well documented. 26 He rejected the Anarchist idea of direct democracy and their idea that the mass of the people could be immediately involved in the social decision making process, and he saw the need for societal organization and hierarchy through which governance could take place. In succeeding paragraphs, I will quote at length from Marx' s marginal comments to Bakunin's book State and Anarchy. These marginal comments were written as a form of critique of Bakunin, and the paragraphs I will quote and comment upon are chosen in order to demonstrate that Marx recognized the need to establish organs of civil society based upon the representative principle, which would set the guidelines for sanctioned social behavior.
A. "In a trade union, for example, is the executive committee composed of the whole of the union? Will all division of labor and the different functions that it entails disappear? And in Bakunin' s construction from the bottom to the top will everyone be at the top? Then there will be no bottom. Will all members of the Commune manage the common interests of the enterprise at the same time? Then there is no distinction between enterprise and commune. " 27

In the above paragraph Marx was attacking the Bakuninist idea of direct democracy by the mass of the people. In the course of his critique of Bakuninist romantic democratism, Marx made the following assertions about govern~nce in a communist society: 1) the division of labor and the difference in social function would still exist. 2) it is possible to organize the productive activities of a civil society on the model of a trade union. 3) but there is no direct democracy even in trade unions, but rather a system of representation, an executive committee, which practices governance. 4) there is a difference between the function of a trade union and form of membership of the trade union itself. 5) the function and the enterprise of the trade union requires some form of representative system to practice governance. 6) this carrying out of the function of the trade union is not a violation of the nature of the trade union.
B. "Asinine! This is democratic verbiage, political drivel! An election is a political form, both in the smallest Russia commune and in the artel. The character of the election does not depend on this description, but on the economic basis, the economic interrelation of the electors, and as soon as the functions have ceased to be political then there exists (1) no governmental function; (2) the distribution

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of general functions has become a business matter which does not afford any room for domination; (3) the election has none of its present political character. 28

In the above paragraph, the assertions which Marx made about the need of governance in a communist society took the following form: 1) the fact of the need of "economic interrelationship" implies that continued existence of social stratification in communist society. 2) different' 'functions" of civil society would still exist. 3) decision must be made as to how these different "functions" are to be "distributed.' , 4) elections would continue to exist. 5) elections would be the form of social behavior by which the distribution of functions would be decided. In the two paragraphs I have quoted above, Marx was clear that governance and the need of social organization would still exist in a communist society, that direct democracy was a chimera and that the principle of elective representation, committees or assemblies, was the best way to carry out the function of governance. Marx did add that this governance, however, must not have a "political form," must lose its "political character" and must cease having any quality of , 'domination. ' '29 What Marx meant by the ending of the "political" nature of governance, I will discuss under the category Political (4). Political (3)-procedures of social decision. Marx believed that protocols for social decisionmaking were necessary. Marx believed in elections, he believed in representative institutions and recognized the necessity of having mandated rules and institutions for social decision making to establish governance. Marx drew a distinction between the form of an organizaton and the function of an organization. The form of a trade union, one model upon which society could be organized, was mass democratic, but the function of the trade union, the social reproductive process, was elective. In order for a trade union efficiently to carry out its function, to reproduce society, an executive committee must be responsible for these functions. Direct democracy was not applicable to the functional aspects of organizations. The elections to representative organizations must be conducted primarily in terms of economic and productive interests. Election must reflect "the economic interrelations of the electors," which meant that the basis of an electoral decision must relate to matters of social productivity. When Marx wrote that an election lost its "political form", or abolished its "political character", he meant that the ground upon which a vote would be cast would not concern dominion over property but rather concern the expenditures of socially necessary labor. The protocols for decision making Political (3) must be congruent with the reproductive forms of civil society. When the procedures of social decision making were isomorphic to the economic form of production of a society, this would help ensure that social decision reflected the' 'economic interrelationship. " With the destruction of the political, the basic concern of a communist society would relate to the distribution of social labor, and the protocols of decision making must correspond to the economic organs of sociallabor in order to guarantee that these

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organs of decision making were democratic, allowed man's economic condition to be expressed. Political (4)-the state. When Marx spoke about the abolition of the' 'political," he meant the end of making social decisions on the basis of the control over property. In this sense, the "political" , was an alienation from civil society, for just as private property was an alienation from civil society so decisions which sought to preserve private property, the' 'political, " were also estranged from civil society. By the phrase the end of the "political" Marx did not mean the termination of Political (1), or Political (2), or Political (3), or Political (5). The cessation of the' 'political" also left no "room for domination. " According to Marx, when the struggle over the means of production came to a halt the need to struggle for "domination" over others came to a halt. Control over the means of production afforded power over others who needed to use these means of production, so when property was abolished the basis for "domination" over others was also terminated. Based upon these four categories, it is clear that a reconstruction of a Marxist politics can proceed from the ideas contained in the texts of Marx themselves. Although the writing of Marx on the political question are not as complete as one would desire, there is sufficient information to indicate Marx's rootedness in the democratic tradition. Marx's enterprise was to establish a democratic political heritage which did not evolve from the moral politics of Kant or Hegel, or the natural rights theory of Hobbes and Locke. The nature of Marx's revolution in political theory was to show that it was possible to overthrow the ethical tradition of politics as represented by Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, and still remain within the democratic inheritance. The radical political attempt which emerges in the texts of Marx themselves, was to establish the validity of democracy, not in terms of morality or natural law, but in terms of the social labor of man. The Marxian political project presupposed that the social reproductive activity of men could be used as the ground for the institution of a democratic politics, and the contemporary reconstruction of a Marxist politics should draw its inspiration from this original revolutionary enterprise of finding in the productive interrelationships of civil society the basis of democracy. It is not necessary to retreat to the natural law tradition, nor to return to a republic of morally equal individuals in order to establish safeguards for individual freedom, for the Marxist idea that politics must be congruent to the social activity of man offers sufficient guarantees against statist domination in any form. To return to question (I) posed at the beginning of this paper, Marx's political theory was an attempt to extend the notion of citizenship over socially necessary labor. Marx was a part of the republican tradition of the West, only Marx extended the republican notion from its original Machiavellian formulation of virt11 30 to include the principle of popular control over sociallabor. To answer question (11) at the beginning of this essay, Rousseauist inspiration is clear in Marx, although in his writings on the French Revolution Marx criticized the mere political freedom won by that revolution, for Marx's endeavor was the democratization of the decision making process concerning the expenditure of socially necessary labor. The major portion of Marx's work does focus on the labor of man as a constitutive force, and from this idea it is possible to also affirm that history is the

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self-formative process of humankind. Marx's political theory should be seen as an emancipatory project, the reconquest of freedom through re-politicization of human labor time. Even though the productionist model, as presented and criticized by Baudrillard,31 is central to Marx, the idea that necessary labor must be transcended is still relevant to the modern world. The conquest of necessary labor entails the conquest of free time, and the multiplication of human need 32 can only take place in the domain of freedom, the unrestrained arena in which time is expendable by free choice.
NOTES 1. This paper was originally written and presented at the International Political Science Association Congress held in Moscow, August 12-18, 1979. It has been considerably modified since that time to take account of changes in my own thinking regarding a Marxist theory of politics as well as to relate to more recent studies in the field of radical politics. Nevertheless, the essential insights of the paper, the five-part division of a Marxist definition of politics, and the attack on egalitarianism are as meaningful and useful today as they were in 1979. 2. Norman Levine, The Tragic Deception: Marx Contra Engels (Santa Barbara, 1975). See in particular Chapter Thirteen of this book in which I draw a distinction between the political theory of Marx and Engels. Although I would argue the case for the separation between Lenin and Stalin, I would also argue that many of the problems of Lenin's theory of the state stem from the Engelsian and not the Marxist influence. For some brief comments on how the Engelsian, as distinct from the Marxist, tradition lived on in Lenin, see my "forward" to The Tragic Deception: Marx Contra Engels (XIII to XVIII) and the 'Introduction" to my book Dialogue Within the Dialectic (London, 1984), 1-5. 3. On some of the origins of Lenin's theory of the state, see my article "Lenin's Utopianisrn" , Studies in Soviet Thought, 22, No. 4 (October 1984), 124-147. In this article I trace Lenin's theory of the state back to Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. I also show that when Engels talked of the abolition of the state, because he lacked a political theory, he lapsed into Anarchism, and that Lenin, following Engels in his regard, also lapsed into Anarchism in his State and Revolution. 4. Dick Roward, From Marx to Kant (Albany, 1985). 5. Jean Cohen, Class and Civil Society (Amberst, 1982). 6. Leszek Kolakowski, "Marxist Roots of Stalinism", in Stalinism, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, 1977), 283-298. 7. Jiirgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (Neuwied, 1969). 8. I borrow this phrase from the work of Jiirgen Habermas, who uses these words to distinguish this kind of action from communicative action and instrumental action. This is not the place to attempt an analysis of each of these suggestive ideas, but if the reader should wish to pursue this line of argument they are referred to Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. by Thomas McCarthy, (Boston, 1979), particularly Chapter One, "What Is Universal Pragmatics?" and also pages 208-210. 9. For an analysis of the question of power and how it was defined by Hannah Arendt and Marx Weber, see Habermas, Philosophical-Political Profiles, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, (Cambridge, 1983), particularly the chapter entitled "Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power (1979)", 171-188. 10. Karl Marx, Early Writings, trans. T. B. Bottomore (New York, 1964), 15. 11. Refer to Habermas, Theory and Praxis, trans. John Viertel (London, 1974). For additional studies on the re-direction of Marxist political thought see Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford, 1977). For valuable studies on the relationship between Marx and Hegel, the work of J acques d'Hondt is of interest. See his De Begel A Marx (Paris, 1972), and his La Logique de Marx (Paris, 1974). 12. Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formation, trans. Eric Hobsbawm (New York, 1968). 13. Marx, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, 1977), vol. I, 873-942. 14. Marx, 1025.

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15. Marx, 1025. 16. Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York, 1973), 778-781. 17. From this point of view, I would redefine the traditional way of interpreting Marx' s statement in the Communist Manifesto that all history is the history of class struggle. Marx did not mean to say, a meaning that is most frequently attributed to him, that the proletariat (modern capitalist class) has existed as long as civil society, and that the proletariat had always waged a class war for the repossession of the means of production. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx was not universalizing the idea of class, rather he was universalizing the conflict model of civil society and stating that the struggle over access to the means of production was a constant in this conflict model. The fundamental question was not over class, but over conflict, and while Marx recognized that social groups differed in terms of the form of society in which these groups found themselves he affirmed that conflict always was present in terms of the combat over access to the means of reproducing sustenance. 18. Marx, The German Ideology (New York, 1947), 8-9. 19. Friedrich Engels, The Origin ofthe Family Private Property and the State (New York, 1942), 144-150. 20. Marx, The German Ideology, 9-12. 21. Marx, "Introduction", A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. S. W. Ryazanskaya (New York, 1970), 21. 22. Marx, Grundrisse, 483-510. 23. Engels, Anti-Duhring, trans. Emile Burns (New York, 1966), 292-324. 24. Nicholai Lenin, "State and Revolution", in Collected Works (Moscow, 1974), Vol. 25, 461-480. 25. Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program" in Selected Works (New York, 1968),324. 26. Keith Thomas, Karl Marx and the Anarchists (London, 1980). 27. Marx, "On Bakunin's State and 'Anarchy''', in Karl Marx Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (New York, 1977), 562. 28. Marx, 563. 29. Marx, 563. 30. J. G. H. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975). This book should be consulted in order to trace the evolution of republican thought in the West from Machiavelli to Harrington and the American Revolution. It is extremely interesting to compare how Pocock treats the history of political thought in the West in comparison to the way that Habermas treats the same subject in Theory and Practice. Habermas is writing the history of instrumental reason, does not comment on any republican tradition and simply looks upon Hobbes as the beginning of a scientific and instrumental view of politics. Habermas writes the history of western political thought from the point of view of the conquest of the natural sciences, and in so doing Habermas overlooks the deep republican democratic traditions in western thought. Habermas is the victim of his own methodology, for in focusing exclusively on instrumental reason he omits some deeper traditions, which contradict his overall thesis. Pocock' s work is based upon the most recent scholarship in the history of western political theory, and Pocock demonstrates how the rise of instrumental reason was not the major motif of western political thought. Focusing more on the historical context of the great political theorists, Pocock uncovers a sustaining republican tradition in the West, which far from suffering from the defects of instrumental reason, actually served as the basis for the great age of democratic thought in the West. Rather than see accidental state theory as in a condition of decline after the rise of natural science. Pocock shows the 16th and 17th Century roots of democracy, roots which grew into the revolutionary democratic theory of Marx and Lenin. Habermas is over-schematized and Pocock more contextualist. 31. Gaston Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production (L. Louis, 1972). 32. Agnes Heller, The Theory of Need in Marx (London, 1977).